Food Photography Part Two with Adam Barnes - Community Education Series

I'm Chef Dennis Littley. Welcome to another of our series of community education hangouts, and tonight my guest is Adam Barnes of Picture Perfect Meals. We're going to be talking about part 2 of his food photography, and we're gonna kind of pick up where we left off. I just uploaded a picture, and you should be able to find it, of the basic studio setup. We're going to do things a little differently tonight, so you're going to see his basic studio setup. So Now that we have that up, I'm gonna turn you over to Adam, and we're gonna start talking about food photography. So get your questions ready. There you go, Adam.

Hey, Chef, it's nice to see you again. Thank you for having me again this evening. Basically, what we talked about last time was a basic and extremely effective lighting Lighting setup. And what you guys see in the picture here, what you see is a light bank where there's a flash unit in there and so on and so forth, but really that could be a window, that could be any kind of a light source. You can get these, these small kits from Amazon.com. The point is that it's a broad soft light source, which is very typical of window light. In fact, these light banks were designed for the express purpose of creating the look of window light. And what we talked about last time was using the window light, and as you can see on the right of the photo, a reflector card. It's a piece of foam core, it's like $3 or something at any of the big box stores. It's very effective. Now, that particular one is held up by a light stand. They're very lightweight. You can cut them into, into cut them in half. You can hold them on your table surface with A-clamps that you can get for a couple of bucks at Home Depot, any hardware store. So this is the basic lighting setup. Now, what we're going to talk about today is what we can do with it. I mean, right now, It's basically, you know, 90 degrees to the left. You can see the bread bowls there. It's basically 90 degrees to the left of that, and the reflector is, you know, is opposite. And I mean, this is a very simple, basic, and effective technique of lighting. If you want to go on to— well, why don't you put up the bread bowl shot, Chef, because you'll show what this resulted in.

Okay, let me do that for you. I started to put up the other one actually, and I did, I just put up your beer batter onion rings, but let me put up the—

Alright, we'll get to that one in a minute.

We'll get— come back to that one.

Yeah, we'll come back to that.

This is kind of a new thing for me here.

Yeah, this is all trial and error here, folks. How are we doing?

Okay, it should be coming up.

Okay, there we go. There you go. Now there you can see is the simple result of that simple lighting setup and these red balls. It's a pretty light. It's really effective because what you're doing is enhancing texture. I mean, obviously you're illuminating your subject, but you're doing it in such a way that you are bringing out all of the, the texture of it. And as you may recall from last time, texture is a major part of food photography. It's part of what we in our minds on a subliminal level respond to. And so now you see a basic result from this kind of lighting. If you want to go up to the next photo, Chef, of the antipasti, we're gonna get into what happens, all right, where your light remains in essentially the same position, but what starts to happen when you start to use your reflector, okay? Not just as a fixed source of bounced fill light, but as a tool in and of itself.

Should be coming up.

Okay, Brooks is saying they're not seeing the screen share.

Well, it's not a screen share. The pictures are coming up right in the comment section.

Okay, and I know these pictures are coming up in the comment section. If you go ahead and click on them and open them up in your browser, you know, you can see them bigger, which, you know, may help. Okay, we're getting a lot of people saying they're not seeing the photos.

Here we are. Okay, guys, you just want to— right where we're leaving the comments, okay? Scroll down through the comments, and we're uploading them in the comments section. So, Gail, there should be two below you. Lo hai. It's right below where you just asked, where are the pictures? So go down and scroll through it. Brooke, same thing. There's no screen share. You're just going to be looking for the pictures. So keep scrolling down through the comments section, and you'll see the pictures as they appear. We're uploading them to the comments. Okay, can everybody see them now, or—

Okay, so we just assume if They're not seeing them in the comments either. Gail is not seeing them. Brooks is. Okay. All right.

Okay, they should be below. You have to go down. Brooks found it. It should be just a couple below Gail where you said you can't see them?

Yes. OK. Anne is seeing them. OK. All right. All right. This shot, like I said earlier, if you want to click on the photo and make it bigger in your browser, it may be easier for you to see the kinds of things I'm talking about. All right. This shot of the antipasti is compared to the breadboard. It's really exactly the same lighting position, and it's exactly the same light source.

Source.

But what there is is a much more active play of light and shadow. If you'll notice, the shadows in this shot are a lot darker, and that I did on purpose because what I wanted to create was sort of a little bit of a kind of a painterly sort of feel to it, a little bit of a— almost like a Dutch Masters kind of look to it to achieve that. I like that because that way— the reason I chose to do that was partly to create a little bit of feeling around it, partly to emphasize the white of the, of that ball of mozzarella at the upper right of the photo, because the white then gets— because it's against a darker background, it stands out much more, and it serves very effectively as one of the focal points of the photograph. It's one of the compositional elements that draws your eye in and keeps you moving around the photo. I mean, to achieve this was very simple, whereas in the bread photo, the reflector— and I am sorry, but the setup photo is a little bit misleading in this sense. That the reflector during the shoot was actually about half the distance away from the bread that it is now. I apologize for that, but I took that after the shoot was concluded. In this case of the antipasti, going back to that shot, I actually moved the reflector considerable distance away for the simple reason that I just wanted to get just a— just enough detail in the shadow that you could see a presence there without everything being flat and even. Partly was because that also, I felt, helped give the sense of age to the wood that is, well, both the cutting board, which is an old, as you can see, kind of warped cutting board,, and, um, the wood behind it, which belongs to, um, actually it's a part of a very old armoire, um, the wood's probably a couple hundred years old, and I wanted to sort of have that, that sense of, uh, maybe of Italy and of, of, uh, something a little bit old world, and that's one of the things, you know, I'm always talking about how I like pictures to sort of tell a story, to evoke a sense of something. And that was my thinking behind this shot. As I'm talking, okay, if you guys have questions, go ahead and put them in the chat box because, I mean, don't— I'm not gonna, or I don't necessarily have to give some big lecture and then we try and, you know, remember what it was we were talking about. If you have questions, they pop up, Shoot them to Chef Dennis and we'll address them right there as we go along. Let's go to the next shot, which is the beer battered onion rings.

Okay, it should be coming up. You just leave your questions in the comments here and we'll— I'm watching the comments as we're doing this and we'll address them. Okay, it should be— there it goes.

There it is. Okay, this is another shot. I really like this shot. It's one of my favorite shots. It's just— there's something fun and kind of whimsical about it.

This is—

although the light, as you will notice, okay, is coming from the right-hand side of the photograph as opposed to the left-hand side in the previous photograph.. It doesn't make any difference. It's exactly the same principle that's involved here. But you'll notice that this is a lot lighter photograph. Okay, the shadows are much less dense. And again, it was— my thinking was, this is, you know, to me it's a modern food. It doesn't take the same kind of treatment that something like an antipasti, which is Italian and old world. I mean, to me, onion rings are very American food. I don't know the history of onion rings, but to my mind, they're very American. They may have come from Germany, I have no idea, but they're very American to me. And again, with that in mind, I kind of had the idea of a fair or something in mind, a country fair kind of thing. We took out the brown paper, and you know, the brown paper is irregularly ripped. It's not perfectly square. There's grease marks on it. From the lighting point of view, again, we have the same big medium light bank, the same big soft broad light source, and the reflector is now much closer in to the subject, because I wanted it to— I didn't want it to have a very heavy shadowed feel to it. I just— because partly also because it's a very simple graphic shot. Heavy shadows would have distracted from the simple graphic nature of the shot. So again, same lighting setup, completely different lighting result. All you're doing is moving the reflector. And again, why? Because the camera was a little bit further away from the subject, and the onion rings are relatively speaking small. You could also get away with it because what you're really more than anything else visually describing are the shapes of the onion rings. Yes, there's, there's always texture issues when you're shooting food, But because this food is relatively speaking small, okay, you're really— it's not as critical an issue. The texture will show up in the breaks of the breading, you know, because it's not completely smooth and there are places where the onion peeks through. And all that goes to emphasizing the texture and also the texture curiously, or not curiously, but to some of you might be surprisingly emphasized by the extremely smooth, simple, white, round of that ramekin, which was designed to echo the— or chosen rather to echo the, you know, the circular shape of the onion rings and to deliberately contrast all the brown and gold tones in this whole picture are deliberately contrasted by that bright white and that intense red of the tomato sauce in the ramekin. And it's that focal point of color that takes you all the way around, and that color is then drawn down. I don't know, you can go to our website, Picture Perfect Meals, and there's actually in the in the studio section, there's actually a breakdown of how we arrived at this shot. But one of the things that we did that was sort of a final touch for me was to add some ketchup down on the onion rings that are outside of the dish, of the baking dish. We added a little touch of ketchup there as though somebody had bitten it off, as somebody had taken a bite of it. And, you know, these are again little storytelling elements where I think you take something and it kind of adds another dimension. And again, it just, it adds that on a sort of subliminal level. It kind of speaks to us. We'll be answering a question later that someone asked. One of the things she mentioned in her question was that she felt like the donut that she was referring to was sort of calling out to her. I mean, that's really, in a way, our objective. As food photographers, as food bloggers, is to— for our photos to call out to people, to make them hungry, to make them say, "Oh, I want to know more about this. That looks good. It makes me hungry. I want to know more about this." So moving on. Okay, if we move on to the olives.

Okay, I'm getting that one for you.

Now, this shot that's coming up is done again with really the— exactly the same lighting setup and very similar to the shot of the onion rings. As soon as this is up, you'll see it's linked from the right-hand side.

Should be coming up.

But what we did— come on, come on. Are there any questions in the meantime that can be answered?

There it is. Sometimes you might have to refresh your screen too if it's not coming up. Oh, here's a question from Paula Montenegro. She says she has a DSLR camera and a macro lens. What should be her next 2 or 3 purchases in order to start building a home studio, considering she's an amateur photographer?

Okay, I'm trying to refresh, by the way, and it's telling me your event doesn't exist. So we'll just continue on. All right, the question was she has a macro lens and what lenses should she invest in to successfully grow her Was that the question?

Yeah, for her home studio. And she says she's still an amateur, so what would be the next good— next 2 or 3 purchases?

I would recommend some kind of a good telephoto, something in the nature of like a 70-200mm, depending upon what you can— you know, they can be very expensive— depending upon what you can, what you could afford, something in the 200mm range, because it allows you, if you are interested in getting into sort of selective focus type of photography, a 200mm lens is an extremely useful tool for that. Is everybody else getting this event? Because it's disappeared.

Yeah, mine has too, but I have one open still. It was something on the refresh, but it still seems the people that are in are fine. Yeah, go ahead, Adam.

Okay, fine, we're back. All right, all right. Actually, this shot of these olives speaks to this question. This was shot with a 200mm lens, probably at about 160 or 180. It was a zoom, 70-200 zoom lens. And what you can see is that it allows for you to use that kind of very restrictive, that very shallow focus, which we generally refer to as selective focus. And this is— it's if you like to do this kind of photography, and it's a very effective tool in food photography to use a restrictive focus because it keeps your viewer where you want them to be looking, then a 200mm is— something that goes up to a 200mm is an extremely useful lens because it allows you to do this kind of stuff. Macro lens as well is really an optimal lens for food photography because if you're getting— particularly when you're getting close into a subject, you can get a similar kind of effect if you open it up, you know, to f/4. I mean, even probably f/5.6 if you're close enough, you get a similar kind of selective focus effect where what you want is in focus and the rest of it kind of drops off. And obviously, as far as macro lenses go, the closer you are to your subject— really, as far as any lens, the closer you are to your subject, the less depth of field you have. And depth of field is just simply how much of the image the native clarity of the lens, the native focus of the lens will carry.

Adam, we do have a couple questions now on your olives. We have a bunch of questions coming up, but— okay, good. One of the questions on the olives was how to know when it's best to take a picture with the whole dish and surroundings, like the onion rings, and when it's better to crop it like the olives.

You know, it just— it, it, uh, It's really a very subjective thing. It's what— well, it remains subjective. Olives are small things, so you're going to naturally want to get a little bit closer on them. But you could very well have done this shot pulling back considerably and maybe propping out the shot a little bit more. For. To some degree, it's a choice of what you want your viewer to see. When you get in close like this, what you're showing them and what I want them to see is the lemon, the olives, the recipe described visually.. And in the case of olives, it makes some sense to move in close. This could well have been done in a more decorative setting, if you will, in a wider setting. A lot of it is very subjective, but if you have— you say you're shooting a plate, you have Cornish game hens Okay, and there's some kind of wild rice and there's asparagus or something, and this— and it's a serving. You want to create a serving, then you're going to want to pull back, and that's a case where you would want to have, you know, perhaps a wine glass or a bottle of wine, or— I'm trying to see if we have a photo in this situation that might better describe what I'm talking about. Why don't you load up the chicken enchiladas, Chef?

Okay.

If you don't mind.

Not at all.

Just by way of, of Alicia, of addressing your point here, when you have a plate that has a number of important items on it, okay, if you're talking about the dinner of the Cornish game hen and the wild rice and the asparagus, then you need to feature all of those things. You know, food photography is an art in the sense that you can create a graphic, you create images, you create artistic images, but it's also a means of communication and you are communicating to the people who view your photograph what it is that your recipe, in this case, is about. And the— your photograph should reflect what it is that your recipe is about. If it is just the Cornish game hen and the wild rice and the asparagus are just there, you know, because you need color and it needs context, then you get bigger on the Cornish Game hen and you fill your frame a little bit more. Also, just sometimes it's honestly— I guess it sounds kind of silly to say, but how does it make you feel? What sort of feels right to you about it? What makes you happy? Ultimately, this is about enjoying it. And what are the things that— what is it about the image that makes you feel satisfied, that makes you feel good? You know, ultimately this is a subjective thing. It's what— there are rules, yes, and there are techniques, but all of these things are subordinate to the picture that you want to make. They are your tools. They're not what governs the photo. They're the tools that you use to express your ideas. Going back to this, this Olive thing, I just wanted to mention, again, we've taught— we've looked at the same lighting setup here that has now created 3 different results. And I just wanted to— because that's kind of what we were all going to talk about what we set out to talk about. I just want to address the third effect of the lighting on these olives, which is what we did was we moved the olives in such a way that behind us was shadow so that we had that play of light and shadow. How— I understand that, you know, not everybody has a movable light source, but the light source is always what is in relation to you at the camera position. It is what— if you can't move the light, then move the camera and how you move around in relation to the light. Okay, is what will, um, I mean, it changes the photograph that you are taking. Did we load those enchiladas? I've lost you, Dennis.

Yeah, they're up there.

All right, okay. I'm just wanting to load them because this is starting to get into my next point as well as addressing Alright, once again the event can't be found.

There are, before we move away from the olives too, there was a question from Simi on how you pick the color of your props and dishes.

Well, well, I work with my wife, who is a stylist, and we do it together. I will say I'm very lucky in that a lot of times she just kind of, you know, picks the stuff. There is a certain logic to it. You know, olives, they're very earthy. Okay, they're, you know, again, they're very associated with Italy. Now, I lived in Italy for a long time, which is I don't know why it keeps coming up, but olives are— I mean, they're very kind of earthy food. And so a kind of earthenware— that dish is not terracotta, but it is an earthenware dish with a glaze— just fits appropriately. And the browns pick up nicely on— they interact nicely with the yellow and with the sort of that deep, deep maroon color of the dark olives. And they pick up nicely on the green of the green olives and the gold color of the garlic. So again, partly it's storytelling, partly it's mood creating, it's, you know, partly it's messaging in the sense that, you know, you want to prop and create colors, or rather choose colors in what you create that reinforce the idea behind your food. Because again, most of us are food bloggers. It's different if you're shooting Corn Flakes for a magazine ad. That's a completely different discussion. Okay? These things don't really come into play in, in the way that we're discussing them. This is more what you would call editorial photography. You know, it's a kind of idea where you're trying to evoke a mood or a sense of place or an idea for someone. Again, it's very subjective. You know, this shot could have been great on a brilliant red dish, you know, or in— a lot of it is personal taste. My personal tastes and my personal aesthetic tends to run a little bit toward kind of old woods and very earthy kinds of things. But that again is a very subjective decision. Boy, we are getting a lot of questions here. I had one last point. Alicia, I just wanted to point out the shot of the engine. The shot of the enchiladas is an example of pulling away and bringing in more to the photo because there's more information that you're trying to put across to your viewer.

Okay, you want to move on to some questions?

Let's move on. I'm sorry, I'm going to try and keep these answers a little more concise. Sorry, guys.

Okay, we have a question from Jerry Russell, and I don't know if you use them or not, but he wanted to know your thoughts on the low ego lighting.

Okay, I use Lowell Lights. I'm very happy with Lowell Lights. I am not familiar with the EAGLE Light, but I'm Googling it right now to see what basically it is.

I actually use the EAGLE Lights.

I am sure it's an extremely excellent product. You know, I will say one thing, it's sort of a fluorescent-based tube. You know, there is someone in the universe who's finally been kind to photographers, and I'll tell you why. Back in the days of film, whenever you had to shoot with fluorescents, which I did frequently, fluorescents were a photographer's absolute nightmare because you could never filter either the the camera or the lights to get a good clean color. The beauty of digital photography and the great gift to us today is that digital photography may best respond to fluorescent lighting. So, I do think that just on first blush, and also from what I know about digital lighting and the way cameras respond, I suspect they are excellent light source.

Okay, our next question was from Amy Stafford, and she wanted to know if you use Photoshop or Lightroom to edit your pictures.

I use Photoshop. I just have for years. It's not that it's— how can I say— it's not a bias issue. It's just what I became accustomed to using, just like I use a Mac. Because that's what I started using and that's what I'm familiar with. So I know— I don't know much about Lightroom, but I do know it's an excellent program. There are a lot of good image editing programs out there. I think Photoshop is the sort of probably the industry standard, but I know a lot of people use Photoshop Elements, which is a Photoshop Lite, which is an excellent program. And they all, you know, will achieve the same ends, you know, with practice.

Okay. All right, we had a question from Carolyn Hurley, and she wants to know what is a good pixel size? What is the largest pixel size to load for web pages? She thinks she's making her photos too large, seems to be taking a little time to upload her pages.

Yeah, I've actually mentioned this several times over the years to people. All you need for computer resolution is 72 DPI. Loading a 300 DPI photograph benefits you in no way whatsoever. And what it does, as you have noticed, is it slows down your website. And, you know, we live in an age of immediate gratification like we never have before. And I know that I'm guilty. If I have to wait more than about 10 seconds for a website to load, I'm out of there. And so you really— what I do for my images on Picture Perfect Meals, I size them to 8.5 by 11, which is basically sort of a standard magazine page size at 72 DPI. And they actually come out at— if you'll bear with me a second, I'll give you the actual pixel count. The program's got to boot up. But I think it's— Come on, come on, baby. There we go. The actual pixel count is 792 by 612, and that is more than adequate for anything you put on the web. Like I say, if you go to our website, you can check them out. I mean, they're big, they're beautiful, and it's all the resolution you need.

72 DPI.

Okay, thank you, Brooks.

Alright, we had a question— well, not a question so much as asking if you had an example of a sandwich photo from Sherman Co. What's your thought on plate and utensil layout?

Okay, the second part of that question, if you'll bear with me while I find the sandwich for you. The second part of that question is— oh, bear with me a second. Hello? Here we go. Utensils, specifically in regard to a sandwich? Or just utensils in general?

Yeah, it doesn't say. It just says plate and utensil layout.

I'm hoping he hears me and he can—

Sherman, here's a—

OK. All right. How do I upload a photo here?

The little picture on the side of the comment bar. Just click on that and then you can upload it right through there.

Oh, I see. Add photos. Yep. Okay, upload.

It looks like someone— they've— looks like we have something new now on these Hangouts. We see these checked in. Renee just asked, she's seen people checking in and I don't recall seeing that before, so it must be some new feature they've added. Google+ is like a big Easter egg hunt. They don't always tell you what they've added or what they're doing when they do it, so you have to come across it on your own, and when you find it, you're surprised.

Okay, well, I just uploaded a sandwich picture. It's one. I don't know—

there it is.

Okay, is it on there?

Yes.

Okay, good. Again, you know, what are you doing with plates and utensils? What is appropriate to your recipe and what is appropriate to your idea? Here's a sandwich I didn't include— I did, I included a utensil in the mustard.

Pot.

Because to me it was a sandwich food. It's a very English kind of grilled cheese with Cotswold cheese and maple bacon. And, you know, I wanted— it was sort of like pub fare kind of thing to me. So I did not include utensils in that particular shot because it didn't, you know, seem important to me. It didn't fit my idea of what I was doing.

He's asking about utensil layout in general.

In general? Yes.

Just clarify that.

In general, yeah, I think utensils are good. If you go back to the, you know, to the enchilada shot, there's a fork and a knife in there. I mean, I think that it's important to do what is appropriate to the recipe that you are trying to illustrate. It's, you know, I think that if you have a plated food, you should have a utensil of some sort. If it's a casserole, there should be, you know, some sort of a serving spoon. If it's soup, you know, it should be a soup spoon. If it's— I guess your rule of thumb is if you eat it with your hands, you don't really need utensils. If you would eat it with utensil, then it's good to have a utensil or the suggestion of a utensil in there. You don't have to put the fork in the middle of the food. It can just be— you can just have the fork, you know, sort of edging in along the bottom of the photo and so Okay. Okay.

Yep, we can move right along now. I think that's all the questions for now.

Okay, well, there were a couple of others. Earlier on, I want to say Lisa asked about a shot with her iPhone.

Oh, that's right. The example, if you scroll down far enough, you'll see a picture of a cupcake that she took with her iPhone.

Okay, I get this question a lot about shooting with iPhones, and this photo illustrates some interesting things. First of all, it's a really cool photo, and Lisa, if if you're here tonight, if you're listening, I mean, you have a really good eye. I really like the color, the use of color in this photograph is really cool. That sort of aqua surface that they're on and the way it reflects on the silver paper of the cupcakes really makes the chocolate, the ganache, really stand out. It really is nicely done. From a strictly professional food photographer point of view, if you will, I would make this comment. These are Boston— what do they call that— Boston cream cupcakes. You need to see the cream. You see the beautiful ganache, you see the gold of the cupcake itself. You need to break out, because what makes a Boston cream cupcake or Boston, you know, cream cake is the cream inside it. Otherwise, it's a very appetizing looking vanilla cupcake. I mean, without a caption, that's, that's what you would think. If there was some cream, you know, breaking out of it, that would— you wouldn't— the photo would tell the story for itself. Now, there are a couple of interesting things. I get this question a lot about shooting with iPhones. iPhones are fine. I mean, it's a tool, okay? A camera, whether it's a big 4x5 View Camera or an iPhone, it's simply a tool, and it's how you use that tool. The only thing I would say about things like iPhones— and I know someone who shoots a lot, if not most of her stuff, on an iPad, which I think is a really cool idea— but there are limitations, and you have to just decide kind of what are the acceptable limitations as far as how you want to do things. What you have here is a good example, okay, of lens distortion. And this is one of the limitations that these cameras have. If you look to the left-hand of that image, the cupcake looks like it's sort of like the Leaning Cupcake of Pisa. It's like it's leaning out of the photo. And on the right-hand side, the— not the front cupcake, but the one behind it is being slightly pulled out of the frame. This is just a natural function of the type of lens that is in the iPhone. And, you know, it's a question of— from a technical point of view, again, sort of as a purist food photographer, it's not desirable. But I know of a— but I mean, it's okay. Again, it's a personal aesthetic. I know somebody who is doing a book of food photographs all on the iPhone. But again, you know, you have to work within, and this person knows how to work within the limitations of the tool that he's using and how to exploit those limitations as well. And all tools have limitations. I mean, you know, big expensive DSLR cameras have their limitations as well. But overall, I mean, I think this is a really cool picture. I think it's very imaginative. I think it's a wonderful use of color. It's a great composition. It's a very successful photo. Great.

We're getting some more questions now towards the top, Adam. Amy Stafford wanted to know if you shoot in RAW, and I'm hoping she means Camera RAW and not in the raw.

You have to take that up with my wife. Yes, I do shoot RAW. I shoot everything RAW, and there's a reason for that. JPEG files, every time you save them, they compress., and over a period of time they will start to develop what are called artifacts. Things— you'll start to actually see pixelation in them. And so that is one reason not to shoot exclusively JPEGs. A lot of cameras, most sort of mid-level DSLRs and up, give you the option of shooting RAW and JPEG. I understand the convenience of JPEGs. But ideally, I would recommend you shoot RAW and get some kind of an external hard drive or something and archive the RAW. Open it in your imaging program and then save it. I open it RAW in Photoshop, then I save it as a Photoshop document. And the raw image remains untouched, and I do whatever cropping or, um, whatever work or adjustments or color correction I want to do on the Photoshop document. And only when I'm done with that do I convert it to a JPEG. Um, you don't want to keep working on the same JPEG and saving it, saving it, saving it, uh, because you're just recompressing and compressing and compressing, and eventually it will deteriorate the image. So if you can, and you can get the storage, and, you know, external hard drives are not all that expensive anymore, but I would recommend doing that. And also because if something, God forbid, happens to your computer, you have an archive of your work that you can always go back to. 'Cause believe me, you don't wanna lose your work. It happened to me once, and it was very painful and very unpleasant.

So there it is. Okay, Charul Jani wants to know, she said she's using a half-frame camera, a Nikon D5000, for her food photography.

Yeah, that is the What's D5000?

Well, she wants to know if it's worth investing in a full-frame camera.

I'm just looking for a second at the D5000. I have something I want to know. Yeah, I don't think it's an issue. Full-frame cameras are incredibly expensive. What you are using is a smaller sensor, and actually the cameras I use have that same smaller sensor or similar smaller sensor. And the only real disadvantage to that is if you want to use extreme wide-angle lenses. For all practical purposes, it really won't make any difference. I mean, when the time comes where you're just naturally going to upgrade, then yeah, I mean, you could do that. I don't know what kind of lenses you bought with your camera, but bear in mind that Nikon, their lenses for their smaller, smaller sensors are labeled DX lenses, and those DX lenses will not give you the coverage on a full-frame sensor. So you may want to consider that you're not only buying a new camera, but you may be buying a new set of lenses as well.

Good to know. Okay, we have another question here. The Posh Latin Cook wants to know, she says, how would you compare pictures taken outside opposed to taking a picture indoor with artificial lighting? She notices when she takes her pictures outdoors that sometimes her pictures come out too bright, and she wants to know how she can fix that. Take— continue taking them outside but not have them come out so bright?

Well, there are a couple things you can do. Not knowing what kind of camera you're using, there is a— most cameras have what's called an exposure compensation function, and you need to go into your menu to find it. If your pictures are coming out too bright, you need to go into your exposure compensation and go to minus— try going to -1 to start with. The also— the other thing, it may not be your pictures, it may be your computer. You should calibrate your computer, which most computers have some simple kind of calibration. There are other ways to do that, but computer screens can be very misleading. You may want to look into that to see— it may be that your computer screen is off. The other thing, if you have a camera that you can control the exposure on, is to do what's called bracketing, is take a picture at the exposure that Okay, A300, let me take a quick look at it. Sony A300. All right, well, you should be able to, from what I'm seeing here, you should be able to, to make whatever adjustments on your lens, do what I'm suggesting. It's called bracketing. All right, you take a picture at the recommended exposure that your camera indicates. And then— that's a good point, Gail, I'll get to that in just a second— and then you want to take an exposure, um, so it's underexposed by half stop, and then one so it's underexposed by a stop, and then overexposed by half stop and overexposed by a stop. Okay, basically doing exposure on either side of your neutral point, and that should be, uh, allow you to find results that you're more happy with. Gail just mentioned, what about adjusting the ISO? Although cameras should compensate, even if you're outdoors and shooting at like 6400 ISO, the camera should still yield an appropriately exposed image. As far as adjusting the ISO, that's a very good suggestion, and that, that would be something else to look into. As Gail brought up the issue of ISO, people have asked me, you know, should we shoot at higher ISOs? Really, the lowest ISO your camera can shoot at is best for food photography because it yields the greatest amount of detail. It's— I know that particularly Canon now is making cameras that apparently yield astonishing results at extremely high ISOs, you still, I think, have some sacrifice of detail and resolution. So the lower the ISO that you can shoot with, the better. And that does mean, you know, investing in a good tripod. And there are a lot of good tripods that aren't that expensive. And as to Simi J, what do I think about the new mirrorless cameras? I mean, I think they're fine. Again, it's just a tool. It's a tool, and how you look through the camera, whether you're looking through a viewfinder or whether you're looking on a screen, it doesn't really make a lot of difference from a functionality point of view. I'm not familiar with the Sony NEX-6 in terms of its controls and what's available, but I mean, as far as can it make— is it a good tool? Yes, absolutely.

Okay, Denise Woodward just pointed out, asking about how to use— if she could use a scrim to cut out some of the brightness.

You can use a scrim, but What my understanding of what she was describing is an exposure— is an exposure issue. I think that it's something in the— it's more what the camera is reading than— I mean, a scrim would knock— a scrim would be useful to knock out light so you could balance your exposure if you had one part of your photo that was completely blown out and, you know, your subject was in another area, then you can use a scrim to cut down light and create, you know, shadows. And that may well— you know, without having a photo in front of me or some idea of the camera function, it's difficult, you know, to conclude. I mean, a scrim is always a useful tool to have, and I think that is certainly an extremely good suggestion.

Great. Okay, we did have a couple other photos that were put up, Adam. Do you want to go back to those, or should I?

Where are they?

We had a donut picture that was way towards the beginning.

Oh yeah, yeah, I have two donut pictures.

There's an overhead that was just about where we started. I uploaded it. That was from Charul, that sent that in, sent a link for that.

Yeah, I'm trying to find the photo now. I'm trying to find the link.

Well, I can put it back up again, I think.

Yeah, go ahead and put it back up.

Alright.

Yeah, because this is actually a good question about creating mood, and this is the lady who said that her her, uh, she felt like it was speaking to her or calling her in some way, which I thought was quite, uh— here we go, I got it all the way at the bottom.

Um, it should be coming up too, just uploaded it.

Okay, while that's doing— uh, it's up there, it's up there. Okay, is it at the top again? Okay, her question was, you know, she sort of reacted to this photo in a— she felt it was very moody and it was sort of calling out to her, and I can understand why. Although in my case, a donut doesn't have to be this beautifully photographed to call out to me. But again, you know, a lot of photography is playing. It's sort of being creative. This was probably achieved through a combination of simple photography and Photoshop because it's, it's vignetted. The dark areas that go to, you know, around the edges are a vignette, and you can get a vignette. You can either get a physical vignette, which you actually put over your lens Or you can get— I mean, you can vignette things in Photoshop or other imaging software. I mean, this is a cool image, and this is, you know, brings up the point of how creative you can be with Photoshop as another tool in your photographic arsenal. And again, this becomes a very suggestive— I'm sorry, suggestive— subjective issue in that, again, speaking for myself, I tend to— I use Photoshop as basically a digital laboratory. I mean, like a film laboratory. I develop my images and I process them. I don't particularly use Photoshop creatively, excuse me, in this kind of way because that's just not what my inclinations are. But Photoshop is a tremendous tool where you can do tremendous, very, very creative things.— as in the case of this photo, it is. It's very moody. It's very— it's a very in-your-face donut. It's a very creative and successful shot. I see where Renee talks about the white balance. Yes. Yeah, I mean, you should always set the white balance because light is— this brings up the sort of a discussion of light and color temperature. Light changes according to where you are. If you're in bright sunlight, it has one temperature. If you are in shade, it has another temperature. If it's early in the morning, it has one color. If it's late in the afternoon going into the evening, it has a different color. In a rudimentary way, this is why a lot of the simpler cameras, they have like sunset setting and they, uh, an indoor setting and a shade setting and all these things because the light changes. And you should set your white balance. If you have one of the more advanced and frankly more expensive cameras that have an auto white balance, that's generally pretty good. But it's always a good idea to to make sure that the tools you're using are properly set. And white balance, especially if you're moving indoors to outdoors, is a very important tool because you can correct things to an enormous degree in Photoshop or an imaging program, but you do get to the point where it does— under some circumstances, it can be extremely difficult to get the the photo looking the way you want it to look, and you really should, you know, make a habit of checking your white balance wherever you change lighting environments, if you will. If the posh Latin cook, if she wants to load up a picture, that would be great.

She just did, Adam.

Okay, that would help our discussion enormously.

Yeah, I don't know if it came up for you yet, but she just did upload one.

Okay. Oh, I do too, Brooks. Okay, so this is what you're talking about as being too light. You know what, if you can respond to me through these, through the comments, that would be great. I don't actually see a photo that is too light. I see a photo that just lacks contrast. It just kind of lacks punch. It's, it's not a bad photo at all. I mean, there's things about this that I really like. It's a very interesting composition. It's a very interestingly balanced composition. I like the way— and this goes back to whoever asked us about cutlery, about, you know, knives and forks and things— I really like the way you have these two forks kind of crossed and the way they're coming into the shot. Okay, what you need— what would really help you, what would really help this shot, okay, is to get some directional lighting. The problem I think that you have in this shot is that it's big, flat lighting, and there's nothing that's really giving shape and form and texture to the elements of your photo, because the elements are beautiful. This sort of looks like a martini glass. You know, it's very interestingly styled. I mean, well styled. You have a really good composition here. What you don't have is any kind of light. And I don't know if you're shooting this sort of outdoors on a patio or God forbid you're shooting it in your kitchen with overheads, because that's pretty much the kiss of death. Why don't you let me know a little bit about how— what kind of conditions you're shooting this in, because what you lack here— what you lack here is lighting that has a little bit of personality., if you will. I mean, this is exciting food. I mean, it's very sort of— it is, it's very Latin. It's probably just full of flavors. You want to create a kind of light. I'm guessing those are some kind of potato chip or something there. You want to, you know, you can do something that like brings a translucence, that gives some translucence to that, but what you lack is It's not that your pictures are too bright. And please, I'm not being harsh in saying this, so please, I hope you won't misunderstand me. But what you lack is really nice quality of light. And that nice quality of light can be easily achieved by going to a window in your house. And kind of moving around your subject. And by a window, I mean like a window in a room. This might be in a kitchen where there's all kind of window light around, but your real problem is that your light is too flat, um, and it needs to have some directional quality to it as far as this image goes. And you can achieve that, like I say, in a number of different ways. Either through using artificial lighting or through using your sort of window lights to advantage and moving around your— okay, you're shooting on your patio. Try shooting indoors. Try going and finding a window in your house where the light's streaming in and And do that and get a reflector card. And if you could actually refer back to the beginning of this whole Hangout, there's a photo of a light bank and a reflector in proper relationship. All right? Just imagine that light bank is simply your window, because that's really all it is, is a portable electronic window. And, you know, move your reflector in and out. I think if you get light that's coming in from the side instead of just from all around it— this is why your photos are looking flat. You need some directional lighting. Try that and see what happens. And you know what, you're always welcome to email me, and I'm happy to to help you further, if you like.

Okay, great. We've had a couple other questions, Adam. I'm going to move on to those. Gail Watson says she's very interested in chiaroscuro lighting. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Can you talk about some of the best ways to approach the lighting and exposures for that?

Well, chiaroscuro is really just I mean, literally in Italian it means light and shadow, or light and dark, actually. And it's really the relationship between light and dark, and it's a relationship between light and the intensity of your shadows. And the way to achieve that, if you go back to the very first photo that we posted, the antipasti, Okay, you start to sort of get into that area where when you want to deal with chiaroscuro, what you want to do is you want to use your shadows to emphasize your highlights. Okay, and I mean, in principle, that's pretty much what it's about. It's about more dense— it's about And you do it photographically by creating more dense shadows. Okay, great. The posh Latin cook, I don't know your name, but please do, I'm happy to do what I can to help you. Heather, do I think natural lighting creates more moody images than unnatural? It's all natural. I mean, it's creating sort of moodiness is— goes back to the last question about chiaroscuro, about the relationship between light and dark. You know, and actually going back to that donut shape. Shot we were discussing a little bit ago, you know, again, you have a relationship between light and dark, and that is, in a sense, what creates moodiness. In an extreme, in an extreme sense, you create the moodiness of, like, the old Bela Lugosi Dracula movies, you know, where you have just ink-black shadows, and that's a certain kind of moodiness. You know, natural lighting is a term that Honestly, sometimes it's a little confusing to me. I'm assuming that you mean like a window light or something like that. Yes, I don't think— natural light is a source, and it's what you do with that light. All of these photos, actually, that you've seen of mine today were all created with essentially unnatural light with electronic flash with the idea of trying to create the same sort of feeling of natural light. If I had put those plates of onion rings, you know, by a window and executed, you know, the placement of the reflector in the same way, I would have gotten the same result. But do I think that a window light— well, there is such a thing as unnatural lighting, and that is the flash on your camera. I cannot say strongly enough, disable that sucker as soon as you can. Because nothing will ruin your food photographs faster than that little flash going off. That, to me, is the epitome of unnatural light. But anything else, it's— Heather, it's how you relate to the light, how you use— One of the things I wanted to talk about tonight is moving around. If you can't move your light, okay, you can't move your window in relation to the plate of food, move yourself in in relation to the plate of food and see how the light changes. Chef, you want to throw up— I saw we have from Sherman another photo, but do you want to throw up the meatballs, please?

Sure.

Okay, now we're kind of scrolling up and down these pages, but I'll tell you what, throw up the meatballs and the antipasti together because this will help me make my point. About relationship to lighting.

Absolutely. We also had a question while I'm doing this about what were your thoughts on watermarking photos, because this— she's having— Carolyn Hurley, I think it was, has a lot of problem with people taking her images and using them.

You know, I don't. I put a copyright on mine and And I leave it. I know that there are a lot of people who have a lot of trouble with it. It can be a lot of trouble. You know, unfortunately, there are unscrupulous people out there, and they just do it. And, you know, we all have to deal with it to a greater or lesser degree. I'm sorry you're having to deal with it. You know, it's— Yes, it affords a degree of protection, but if people are going to mess with your stuff, they're going to mess with your stuff. Like I say, you know, if your images are shot on a digital camera— and this is another, well, good idea to keep the raw image and to shoot a raw image— but every camera, every photo that you shoot with your digital camera has your camera's serial number on it. Okay, so if somebody's taking your images and claiming that they're their images, okay, if it's, you know, if it's really a problem and it's one specific person, you can have an attorney write a cease and desist and say, look, we have all the serial numbers that generated these original photographs, and you are in violation of federal copyright statutes. Copyright statutes go into effect the moment you create the photo. All right? Whether it has your copyright on it or not, it remains your copyright. You should always put your copyright on it. Okay? But unfortunately, there ain't much we can do about unscrupulous people, I'm sorry to say. Watermarking is a way to do it. It can be expensive, and it can be a big hassle, but you know, you have to sort sort of, it's certainly a valid way to address that issue. All right, let me go back to what I was talking about here, okay. Who was I talking to? I was talking to Heather. Yes, it's true, Heather, it is sometimes easier, and sometimes that's intentional. But when you have Well, I'll go ahead and finish my point. This shot of the antipasti and the shot above it of the meatballs, okay, were taken with the exact same lighting setup. The only difference here is the relationship of the camera to the light. All right, in the shot of the antipasti, the camera was to the left, and it was really in a very sort of traditional relationship to the light. In the shot of the meatballs, the camera was actually almost directly opposite the light, and it just creates a different lighting. It just, again, it just tells a different story. It's also, going back to your point, Heather, this meatball shot has a very natural light look to it. It was shot with a studio flash unit. The reason that sometimes you can— it looks like there's— is because to get a real natural look out of artificial lighting takes a certain amount of skill and you really have to work with reflectors and you have to work with your fill lighting to get the proper relationship between, you know, your directional light and your kind of your ambient and your fill light. And a lot of that's skill. And a lot of times, you know, people intentionally want it to look as though it were taken with artificial light.

Okay, next. Alright, you did have a picture from Sherman below that.

Which is actually, I mean, again, that's a great composition. It's really taken tremendous advantage of the shape, the almost eye-like shape of the plate that everything is on. It's very effective use of these bamboo— they look like skewers. The only thing I would say about this is very nice lighting idea. The only thing I would say is you lose too much detail in the shadows, particularly the— might be a banana boat, like a banana leaf wrapped into a little boat or something. You lose too much shadow detail. You see there's a suggestion of something in there, and that could be filled in a little bit. But other than that, I mean, I like the shot. It's a nice composition. It has a nice flow of light to it. There's a nice movement. There's a nice relationship between light and shadow, with the exception of that one spot to the right. And, you know, maybe the simplest thing to do in a case like that would be to fill that more with whatever— it looks like some kind of a chutney or something like that that's in it— is to fill it more so that you just get rid of this big black shadow. But I mean, it's a really nice shot. It's colorful. It's happy. It's nice.

Okay. I'm going to actually upload some that we had earlier, too. For you, Adam.

Well, Heather, in response to your last comment, um, artificial light versus natural— I use a lot of artificial light. I'm kind of neutral one towards the other. Sometimes I prefer natural because it's easier and I don't have to haul out a lot of equipment, and that's why I'll argue for for natural light. But natural light has its problems. You have color problems. You can have real exposure problems, especially if you're in real bright light. But that was a good question. Thank you. Okay, I do want to say this. This wonderful photograph of the soup— and she was the same lady who asked me about the M6 camera. I'm sorry, I've lost your name here. That's Sammy J. Sammy J. This is a great shot. I like this shot a lot. I tell you, I like a lot about this shot. I like the composition. I like the use of negative space. Again, from a purely nitpicky point of view, all right, I would say this. I think your bowl is a little bit too full, and it looks kind of like it's spilling over. And the— just to the right of the middle of the top of the photo, there's a— looks like basil, I guess. It's kind of sticking straight up, and the way it breaks the edge of the photo your eye kind of goes there and gets stuck. Okay, but I mean, those are sort of nitpicky critiques. I will say this though, I think this is a beautiful photo. All right, I love what you did. I love the colors that you chose. I love the textures of the woods. I really like your composition even though it's actually a little bit off-square. I might recrop so that it was a little bit more square. Clear, but I mean, that's a really minor thing. Your choice of color and texture, I love the way the tray, I guess you have it on, frames it around the back. That's a really, apart from the two little minor details, and the only one of those that really, you know, sort of distracts is that green leaf just pointing straight up. Because it's kind of in an arrow form. It takes your eye right out of the picture. But I mean, that is nonetheless, that's a really beautiful— I like the lighting. I'm assuming that's some kind of window light or open light source. It's just really pretty. It's a really successful shot.

OK. And below that, we have one from Kat Davis of the donuts.

I'm sorry, we have one?

It is right below the soup, there's another picture.

All right, I'll be right there. I wish I could type. I'm a terrible, terrible typist, those of you who know me know. All right, so there's another below. I'm sorry. Oh yeah, these donuts. I love these donuts. I mean, they're fun, you know? I mean, this is something you can do with food photography. This is whimsical, you know? They're just whimsy there. It's just fun. Take a bite out of a donut. I mean, who doesn't want to bite this donut? I mean, who doesn't wish these donuts were sitting in front of them? What more can I say? I mean, it's It's good. I mean, it's a fun picture. And I mean, there's— I guess technically there's some things I'm a little— I find the composition a little unbalanced. You know, you might even— I find the sort of golden yellowish cloth above it a little bit distracting. I'm imagining cropping it down, but you know, I think the whimsy of it really kind of overcomes the defects. It's a really— it's a fun photo and it really does make you want to eat both of those doughnuts in my case. It's a good shot, it is.

Okay, alright, well we're caught up on everything now. Do you want to move on, Adam, or is there something else you wanted to talk about?

Okay, we're— I have no idea where we were. Where did we leave off?

We showed the meatballs. I don't know if you want to go to sweet potatoes.

Oh, yeah, we were talking about lighting in— well, going back to what we started talking about, which is, you know, lighting is your light source, you know, whether it is a natural light source like a window or a strobe or some kind of a, of an Eagle Light or a hot light, everything is about the relationship of the camera to that, you know, and the thing that we, none of us really want is completely flat lighting because it just takes all the visual goodness out of the food. And it's how you move around, how you relate to— how you relate to your light source. And, you know, choosing— if we go back to the thing of the antipasti versus the meatball subs, you know, lighting is also about how you control your camera. The antipasti has what is probably a technically correct exposure. The meatball sub would have what is probably technically an incorrect exposure, but I deliberately chose to blow it out so that really only that front meatball was even a little bit shaded, because I mean, to me it looked like that could be in some bistro somewhere, you know, and that was the sort of feeling I wanted to to get out of that shot. So, again, we go back to everything being about the relationship of the camera to the light and what you do with your fill cards, because that makes an enormous amount of difference. And that is what will take you from something that's more of like a chiaroscuro kind of, you know, moody photo to something that's very flat and very open and very even. Now, if you want to upload the Sweet Potatoes, because this is an example of a shot that's very flat lighting and very even lighting, which is another way to do it, but there's a reason why.

And if we can—

as soon as it gets uploaded, I'll explain that.

Should be coming up.

Is it coming here?

Little slow tonight, I think. There you go. Okay, are we here?

Okay, yeah. I mean, this is a good example of just like really completely— it's essentially flat lighting. Again, I mean, my thought— you know, I always like to tell myself a little story in my head. I know it probably sounds silly, but when I'm creating a picture, I'm like, what is this experience for me? Where am I, and why am I eating these fries? And it's not that I'm in Paris or whatever. It's just it creates a context for it. And to me, this was a very outdoorsy kind of summery kind of food. I mean, that's when you kind of get a cone full of fries and go wandering around. To that end, I wanted a very kind of— it's not a flat light exactly because, you know, there is shadow because it's, again, light and shadow that defines the shape, the form, and the texture of the foods that we're trying to communicate, to illustrate the ideas that we're trying to communicate to people. But again, it gets behind what is the concept, what is it that I want people to take away from this? And it's the idea that, you know, it's something, it's light, it's fun. You know, we did this again, it was very simple lighting because the composition was really very graphic. There's cone of fries, and then there's a beer bottle, and then there's a glass of beer on the other side. And it's just a very simple graphic composition. And if you're doing graphic things, they can lose their effect, and it's— it can— getting— starting to get tricky with the lighting. Can interfere with the— I'm sorry, I was reading a comment. It starts to interfere with the graphics, and you start to look at the lighting instead of just the simple graphic of the layout. And sometimes a simple graphic is what most, again, emphasizes the food, which is ultimately what it's about. How often do I use real food versus painting, styling the food for photo? We almost always use real food. We developed a style of shooting with real food. I shot advertising for a long time, and I didn't enjoy it because on one level, the food just looked artificial to me. On another level, it was incredibly wasteful, but that's a whole other issue. And on a third level, years ago I met a lady and she was admiring some work in a cookbook, and she said, you know, "But I could never make that. It's so intimidating." And I realized that perfect food, if you want somebody to prepare your food, You don't want perfect food, which is the painting styling of the food for the photo. We don't do that. The other day we did do something with chocolate fudge sauce and Cheryl made some fake ice cream, but, you know, I mean, if we had been shooting ice cream, we would have used real ice cream. That was a matter of convenience, but the food that we shoot is all real. In a way, it's a different challenge shooting real food. So we, I mean, we really just don't get into the— the food is styled. The food, you know, part of styling is, look, if you have a piece of meat, a pork roast, a steak, something on your plate, and it's under the lights, and you're composing an image, and so on and so forth, it does, it can dry out. We do things like— there's a mixture of oil and water that you can do to kind of touch up the food to bring back sort of the appearance of some moisture. But we don't use, like on pies, they use Krylon dulling spray, okay, to give a machine— or they used to. We don't. That's just not our sort of philosophy on it. Tips for lighting for shooting beverages. We can upload that Cuba Libre photo. Hey, Renee. It's nice to see you again. Beverages can be fun to shoot. Again, one of the things you want to consider is what is the type of beverage? What is my idea for this photo? What is this? Chef's uploading a Cuba Libre, which we did for— I can't remember what. It was a while back, but it's a cool shot. And what was interesting about this shot, and what was fun about this shot? It's a Cuba Libre, so I'm thinking, at the very least, Miami or something, you know, someplace where there's ocean and sun and citrus fruits and, you know, sort of quasi-Caribbean kind of thing. What I did particularly in this photo here was, again, I— the light is not pointing directly into the lens, but it's really more from behind the subject for two reasons. I wanted the— I wanted it to look like sunlight, okay? And again, this, by the way, is using the same lighting setup we started with. I wanted it to look like sunlight sunlight. Okay? And to do that— to do that, I wanted the limes to, you know, be highlighted in that particular way. And the other thing I wanted was I had a dark liquid, and dark liquids don't look appetizing if they're just dark. So I wanted the ice cubes to have some definition in them and, you know, just to have that kind of fun, you know, sun, sand kind of feeling to it. So that's one of the considerations when you're shooting beverages. Other considerations, I mean, if you're shooting something like coffee or hot chocolate, one of the things that really, curiously, a trick that you really want to have is bubbles. And believe it or not, they actually make little glass or plastic bubbles now— well, they've made them for years— that are specifically designed to put in a cup of coffee. So there's something about bubbles in a cup of coffee that makes it look real. When you're shooting things like coffee, one of the things you have to be careful of— again, this goes back to your relationship to the light is that things like coffee, hot chocolate, tea, they can get a glare on the top of them. So you need to move your camera position such a way that you either eliminate it, minimize it, or it's established in such a way that it is not a distraction. Beyond that, Renee, if you can If you can get more specific in terms of a type of drink, I'd be happy to carry on if you'd like.

We also have a picture that was just uploaded to Adam by—

Mika Johnson?

Yes.

Well, it certainly makes you want to eat that, doesn't it?

Yes, it does.

It's a nice shot. I think the biggest thing I have with this shot is I think the color balance is a little bit off. It looks like we're getting some spillage from— well, it looks like mixed sources. It looks like the highlight right on top of the curve looks like daylight. It's kind of bluish. And the rest of it is very sort of orange. It looks— and that's usually a hallmark of tungsten, you know, house door, ordinary household lighting. I mean, it's quite clever. It's quite whimsical. I probably would have had the cake sitting a little bit flatter, but I think that what— that the way it's kind of off-kilter and the way you're looking straight down the fork is really quite, it's quite clever, and it adds to the kind of whimsy of this photo where you start with this big, huge, desirable, wonderful piece of cake and then kind of wander off down the trail of lemons. Off into the back. I mean, it's a very nice photo. I'd correct— I mean, I think that some of the color balance issues could be corrected in Photoshop or Lightbox or some kind of imaging program. It's a cute photo, though, definitely. Sandra asks, "Any tips for shooting ice cream before it melts?" Yeah, that's always tricky. You know, back in my commercial shooting days, I mean, we would literally surround the set with dry ice. And, you know, but it's— what, you know, honestly, what I would do is try and take advantage of the melt. You know, plan. Food photography does require some planning. You do have to think ahead. A little bit. And I understand, okay, that a lot of these— okay, Renee, I'll get back to you in a second. A lot of these things are meals, okay? It's for the family, and they're waiting on dinner or they're waiting on the ice cream, but you can still plan ahead. I would prepare my my context, if you will. I would go in and I'd take, you know, whatever dish I was going to serve the ice cream in, and I'd put it in there. And I would take whatever other props I was going to have. I'd get my shot completely propped. I would get it completely laid out, and then I would put the ice cream in, and then I would shoot it and just work as fast as possible. The other option is making fake ice cream, which is— the ice cream itself is not that hard to make. What is really difficult about fake ice cream is scooping it out and making sure it comes out, you know, looking like— when it's properly made, it really does come out looking like ice cream. And there are I mean, there's lots of fake ice cream recipes, and I think actually Cheryl was talking about maybe posting one soon as well. So if you want to keep an eye on Picture Perfect Meals, they'll— or I'll certainly put it on Google when we do. It'll probably be at least 10 days from now, but if we do that, I'll certainly let you know. But it's either make fake ice cream, but I mean, and it's not just ice cream, but for any good food photograph, you need to plan ahead. And even especially with, you know, if you're feeding your family and things like that, it's all the more reason to plan ahead. But if you do plan ahead, it should make life a little bit easier. Cocktail or a glass of red wine? You know, red wine can be a little bit of a pain in the neck because it gets dense. Again, position yourself in such a way that you at least see the color, if not the— I'm trying to think where— it's not here. So that at least you see the color, even if you don't get any kind of luminescence through it. Red wine goes real dark on you real fast. I have a photo, unfortunately it's on the hard drive which is not currently attached to this computer, Renee, that I will upload for you maybe tomorrow, and, you know, with a little blurb about it. And maybe that'll be helpful to you. Okay?

Great! You want to move on, Adam? Anything else we wanna cover right now?

Where were we at here?

Well, we had the buttermilk dressing— We haven't shown...

Um... Uh, momomomomo... Okay, where were we? Yeah, I mean, the Butterball Dressing, those two photos just show again the relationship to fill lighting to your subject when you have an extremely bright object. Yeah, why don't you put them up? Because that'll— now, these photos that are coming up, OK, are two different results of the same photo. And again, they mainly illustrate the idea of how you're using your lighting. Are we up yet?

Should be coming.

Yep. All right, I'm not seeing them yet.

First one is a little lighter, the second one's more contrast.

Yeah. Well, it's— all right, I'm not seeing them here. I'm going to have to refresh. And I'm probably going to lose it. Come on, refresh, baby. Well, if everybody else can see them. What these two photos— oh, yeah, here we go again. What these two photos are illustrating is, again, the use of fill lighting When you have a bright object— well, now I'm seeing the event highlights. Is the event over? No. All right, because I'm not getting the event at all. All right, well, I'm trying to— if I can find these photos.

They came up. The one towards the end has got the more contrast in it.

My page here is just not working. Okay, I'll do— it's not loading again. I'll just go somewhere else. All right, the difference between these two photos is primarily this. If you look at the white jar, the jar of ranch dressing there, Okay? If you allow your shadows to become too dense, which is the Photo 6B, what happens is that the white— you can't get the exposure correct for the white because the white will blow out too much and you lose the detail. So you can't— you know, sometimes you're limited in how much mood, all right, you could— you can inject into a photograph because of the subject matter that you have. And in this particular case, because we had that white— you know, I would have loved to have done a much more, much moodier kind of lighting over these vegetables, but I was limited by the fact that I had this white jar of ranch dressing. And sometimes those are the things you have to consider, whether it's ice cream. You know, you shoot ice cream with a chocolate sauce, you're gonna have the same problem. And unfortunately in food— or not unfortunately, it's just a reality— that in food photography, a lot of what we get is contrast. You know, you get brown foods, okay, with white mashed potatoes. These things are— why is this not loading? You know, these are the things that you learn to compensate for, that the more control that you exert over your lighting, regardless of the source, whether again it's window light or studio flash or, you know, Ecolights or whatever, the more light and thought that you put into what it is that you're crafting here. It shouldn't be luck. All right? It should be— here we go. Finally, I'm back. You know, it shouldn't be just luck. That creates your photos. You know, there should be some thought that goes into it because, you know, your photo is the first thing that represents you. When somebody, you know, whether it's on Food Gawker or Tastebotting or on Google+ or on Pinterest or wherever, it's your photo is what draws them in. And, you know, as people who— as bloggers, as people who have an interest in, you know, sharing this talent that you have and this information that you have, you need to make sure that you're doing it in such a way to get the attention that you want to get from people.

Okay.

All right. I have completely lost— all I'm seeing is the pictures. Okay, here we go. Now this is weird. See Me Jay, you asked me about a series about food photography. Yes, I am, and there will be more on that very, very shortly. So thank you for asking and giving me a chance to plug it. And there's a few things we need to put into place, but when I do, I'll plug it. You'll be the first to know. Okay.

All right, Adam. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to cover. We're kind of coming to the end of this one.

Well, I mean, we've talked about a lot tonight, and there have been some really excellent questions. And you know, I mean, I covered what I wanted to cover, which was just simply You know, take these basic tools and explore your options with them because there are a lot more options than you realize are there. And I think we got a lot of good questions, and I hope people felt their questions were answered well, if at length. I'm sorry, I do get talkative at times. But thank you all very, very much for joining us. And, you know, if you have any questions, I certainly do my best to answer anyone's questions. I'm very happy to answer them. If you just want to go to our website or shoot them to me on Google+ or on our website and just be patient. I mean, it can take me a while to get around to them, but I will certainly do what I can to try and respond in an intelligent way.

Sounds great. Adam, you did a great job tonight. I really appreciate your time, your expertise.

Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.

My pleasure. We're going to have to do another one of these. I think the more we do, it seems like the more we need to do. Food photography is just probably one of the most important things we do as bloggers, and probably one of the things that we can all we need to improve on. So you're really helping us out here with all this knowledge and these excellent techniques you're sharing with us.

Well, appreciate it. My pleasure. It is a pleasure, so thanks for asking me.

Great. Alright, so thank you all for coming. Tell your friends, if you know food bloggers that are not on Google+, ask them why and get them out there. Get them to join our community. We have these events every Tuesday. Most of the times they're at 9:00, sometimes they're at 8:00, but we try to run something different every week. Put it on your calendar. If you can't make it, you can always watch the YouTube videos. This is Adam's second one, so you can go back and catch the first one if you missed it and catch up on the different series that we've done. We've got a lot more great things coming up for you, so stay tuned and stay in the G+ Food Bloggers community and show us your support. Give us your comments and post some things and talk to all the great people we have there. Thanks again for coming. I'm Chef Dennis Littley with Adam Barnes of Picture Perfect Meals, and we're going to sign off for tonight. Have a wonderful week, my friends.