The First Annual (Virtual) G+ Bloggers Conference - How to Make Google Worthy Images

Hey there, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and we're here for session 5 of the G+ Virtual Bloggers Conference. And today this session is on photography and with us today I have Adam Barnes. Adam, say hi.

Hi everybody.

Okay, and we have Taylor Mathis on the other end.

Hello.

And we have a blogger in here, we have Dionne Baldwin, and we may get another visitor or two as we go along because we're waiting for Naomi Robinson to enter and possibly another guest or two. Alright, so we're gonna get started on this session, and this session was entitled, you know, how to make Google-worthy images, or really how to make good food porn images, or, you know, basically how to get your images— you know, Google+ is a photo-driven entity. It is really about images here. And you can see, like, when you get something really nice, how big they show up on the stream right now. If you get— it's one time when a horizontal image can do you some good because it can cover the whole stream if it manages to hit that right algorithm. So we're going to talk about putting these images up because on Google+ an image is worth 10,000 words. Alright, so we want to get those strong photos. And we're going to start with Adam. Let him talk a little about— you've heard him speak before, but have him talk a little bit bit more about his philosophy on how he shoots and what he shoots and what he looks for. And then we're going to go over to Taylor and let him do the same thing. And then we're going to take some questions. So if you have questions you'd like answered, you know, type them into the comment section and we'll get to them as soon as we can. Alright, so I'm going to turn it over to Adam. There you go, Adam.

Well, thank you, Jeff, for inviting me to do this. It's great to see you, Taylor, and meet you. And Dion, thanks for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Um, you know, I'm, uh, I'm something of a stubborn and rugged individualist. I think that— hey, Kim— I think that photography needs to be well executed, but it needs to reflect your vision of whatever it is that you're photographing. There were some interesting articles that were floating around recently about Making the perfect Pinterest image. And they mentioned a variety of things. One of the things was that red was a color that, you know, tended to draw a lot of attention. This is not really news. I mean, back when I first started looking at pictures long ago in the '60s, National Geographic would always place someone in a red windbreaker in a landscape. Because it sort of gave a sense of focus. And bright colors— reds, yellows— they tend to draw the eye. That's a great idea. The problem for a food photographer is that the number of red foods are relatively limited. I mean, you have strawberries, you have tomatoes, you have the inside of a particularly rare steak, although that's more really of a almost a burgundy than a red. It's important to— I think a well-crafted image married to an interesting food, a food that people want to eat, will be successful. I am not, like I say, a, a follower of trends particularly. I've always sort of pursued what it is that I felt expressed what I wanted to express in the photograph. My particular philosophy is context-driven. When I create a photo, I have a little story in my head. Is this something that was served at a bistro? Is this something that is being served at a picnic? Is this something that is at an elegant dinner party? And I try and develop that concept through propping, through lighting around the image. That's simply the way I like to work. I spent many years of my career shooting products and shooting a lot of advertising food. And to my way of thinking, there's— I'm sure this is going to come back and bite me someday in the near future, but there is nothing more more boring than advertising food and unappetizing. The food that is that perfectly shaped chicken breast, that perfectly oiled bean, that perfectly, you know, I'm losing my words, that burger where every shred of lettuce is actually perfectly placed. I remember doing a shoot in Los Angeles, at a studio I was working at shooting for a major, uh, fast food burger chain. Um, it was a very expensive shoot. This is back in the days of film, and everything was shot on 8x10 film, which was a painfully expensive way for, uh, to produce photographs. And the client came back demanding a reshoot because, um, they didn't like the way the shredded lettuce looked. And I'm sorry, but shredded lettuce is shredded lettuce, with all due respect to the client. And they paid for it and they did it. What they ended up with was, yes, an extremely, an excellently crafted photograph, but at the end of the day, an anonymous photograph. My response to that particular kind of thinking is You know, when you drive by a McDonald's billboard, you register it, but does it engage your attention? And as bloggers, and I've— you've all heard me say this so many times, our photograph is our calling card, and it's the first thing, it's the first impression that people get of who we are and of what we're presenting to them. And My idea is— my philosophy is to try and engage their interest as much as possible. Not only with the food looking good, but with the context of the food being something that can engage their imagination. We relate— we don't live in vacuums. Food are a part of our life experience. When we, you know, I mean, we celebrate with food. We, we, we comfort ourselves with food. We mourn with food. Food is an integral part of our life, and the way I approach food photography is to have that reflected in what it is we do, because people not only respond to, wow, you know, that's a great-looking hamburger or whatever, but they also respond to, this reminds me of a picnic we had at my grandmother's house, of experiences, a lot that happens on a subliminal level. And when people come to our blog and the first image they see is something that they can relate to, that, that, that hits them on an experiential level, I think it's, it's, it engages them more. And that ultimately is what we as bloggers are really trying to do, is engage engage our viewer, however that's done.

Okay, well, I think that's a very, really good philosophy to have there. And you, if we see images that way, we'll probably begin to see our images become a lot more than we intended them to be. So I think it's a good way to look at it. All right, Taylor, how about you?

Well, I have to agree with Adam that I'm the same way, that I think the beauty of food is in the imperfections. And, you know, in the tomatoes that are not perfectly round, that have, you know, like heirloom tomatoes, you get the variety of colors and the shapes and all that. So I definitely agree with him on that point, because kind of with food photography, the two schools of thought, there's the advertising side like Adam was talking about, and then there's more what I call editorial, where it looks like the food that you actually eat. I feel like with food blogging, that editorial side is more what you're trying to capture. And when I approach the food pictures from a— either from a client perspective or from a blogging perspective, I'm very purpose-driven with the photos.. And that like, if I want the picture to include the recipe on it, like in the negative space with text, then that's something I have to think about ahead of time because I want to make sure I leave room for that. So pretty much when you're thinking about a food photograph, you don't want to be thinking about it when the dish is made next to you. You want to think about it before you start making the dish. You want to think about, you know, what background am I going to use that's going to go well with these colors? Or like, As Adam was saying, what kind of mood or scene am I setting? You know, because if you're going to set like a fancy, elegant dinner, you know, then china and a linen tablecloth would make more sense. But if you're going for more like the backyard barbecue rustic thing, maybe like a gingham tablecloth or something like that. And same with the styling, like if you're going to be more outdoors, then plasticware is more appropriate. But if you want more of the nice, you know, fancy dinner, then that's when you break out the china and the silver. And same with propping, using propping that makes sense with the environment that you're in. And as far as making your pictures Google-worthy, that thinking through the crop size is something that's very important. It changes kind of all the time. Facebook has a certain crop that it goes with. Twitter has a certain crop. Google+ has its own crop now. And that crop— and for those of you who don't know what crop size is, it's what is the ratio of pixels and what shape it's going to make that you're going to— like, your camera shoots in a rectangle, but like on Facebook or Food Gawker or Tastebotting, you have to submit things as a square. So you're going to lose part of your image. So when you're planning your shot, think about what that final size is going to be and set it up so it's going to be a square. And realize that, okay, I'm going to lose probably like the bottom third of my image, so I don't want to put an important part of the image down there because when I have to crop it, it's going to be gone. I think that's kind of my philosophy is I just take time to think about what this final image's intended use before I start going with it.

Okay.

If I could add, Taylor brought up a really good point that I think, you know, I don't think that we often really see ourselves as what we are, which is publishers. We publish a blog, we use the word casually, but if you stop and think about what does a publisher do? I tend to view what we do, and what brought this to mind is Taylor talking about creating photographs where you're gonna include the recipe or the ingredients or something, which is a great way to do things. I think it's really helpful to see our blogs as basically weekly magazines in a way that we publish. That's the way we look at ours. We frequently have sort of a thematic, you know, it's an Italian week or it's a fruit week or it's a grilling week or a Fourth of July kind of week. Looking at magazines and how they're put together can really help you create a more effective and a more readable blog. Not only looking at the photographs in the magazines and how they're crafted, but seeing how they're laid out in relation to, you know, the copy. There's an image versus copy ratio, you know, and I know that sometimes it's tempting and sometimes it's difficult to decide. I have, you know, 8 different photos of this and they're really cool. They're all— I like them. And you put all 8. Redundancy just gets boring. And so I've always found it helpful to view it as a magazine. In a magazine, you know, you will see maybe, you know, 3 or 4 photos in an extensive layout of, you know, the same table setting or even the same food in different contexts. But to do just to repeat the same photo over and over again, which you see quite often, actually detracts, I think, from the effectiveness of your blog.

That's a good point. That's good, something good to think about. What would be a good number of photos to make it kind of Google-worthy and also kind of appealing so it's not too redundant? What do you think would be kind of a good general rule of thumb for a number?

I think it depends on how much copy you have. There's a copy-to-photo ratio. And it just depends if you have a particularly long, you know, article. If some people, my wife among them, they, you know, they have sort of stories that, you know, family events and things that are involved and provide sort of an editorial, literary context for the recipe. And if those are longish, then you may want to include more than one photo. If it's just bang, you know, this is, you know, how you— well, if you're doing like how-to, how to make a béchamel sauce or something, then you are— it's a good idea to do multiple, you know, step-by-step kind of photos. If you're doing simply a recipe, I'm trying to think of one, you know, say a fruit a fruit torte or something like that. That's, you know, relatively simple. One, maybe two. I think that it's good to assume a certain level of intelligence on the part of the reader, wherein not every single step of the process needs to be illustrated. I think we can all figure out how— what it looks like to pour cream into a mixer. Now we may not know what stiff peaks are versus— what is the other one? Soft peaks, Chef?

Yeah.

I don't know them from a culinary point of view. So you may want to illustrate the stiff peaks if that's what you need your whipped cream to look like.

Or no peaks if you're like me and you make a lot of mistakes and you have to redo it.

Well, you just don't see my mistakes. You probably don't see Taylor's mistakes. We all make the mistakes.

We all do.

Dion, just one point to that. Like, with my blog, and I kind of look at my blog as a cookbook, and when you're shooting a cookbook, you generally only get one picture of the food. So I try and think of just one very strong picture that I'm gonna lead with. And also, when you— if someone comes to your blog for the first time and they're scrolling through, you know, and they see that you're using the same camera angle, the same prop the same background through every picture, you know, they're going to get bored. So what I try and do is I try and vary it. Like if, you know, this week's blog post I have like a bright light set, then, you know, maybe the next post will be more of a darker moodier. And, you know, if I'm shooting like from an overhead angle, maybe the next one I'll shoot like at a 3/4 angle. I shoot a bunch of different variations when I'm doing the shoot so that I have options to choose from. But as far as from what I publish, I kind of just go with one very strong image and I look at it as not just that post but as like, you know, the last 10 as a whole. Is there going to be redundancy in that type of thing?

Gotcha.

That's a really good way to approach it. I think that one of the things— yeah, I mean, there's two pictures that— I mean, we try and do the same thing, even if it's just shifting a camera angle or just getting closer on it. You know, sometimes you have this great shot and you— it's kind of a wider shot where you see sort of the food in its context of its, you know, glass of Chianti or bottle of Chianti, whatever is there. And then a second shot could just be getting closer and focusing more on the food. So you kind of have a storytelling, sort of a romantic component, and then you have sort of a practical component. That's another good good way to do it. You don't— I know that a lot of bloggers, and I forget this— oh, here comes the rain— work in a different environment than I do. I work in a studio and I work with a food stylist and I have the sort of time and luxury to to set things up in multiple ways. A lot of food bloggers are people who are trying to get the shot done before they serve it for dinner. But you can still— you know, planning goes a long way. If you know that you're going to be shooting tonight and you know you're going to be shooting, you know, your chicken marsala or whatever, think about it, you know, photography, even when it seems its most spontaneous, which would be sort of documentary photography or newspaper photography, there's an enormous amount of planning that goes into it. You know, your National Geographic photographer or your newspaper photographer is looking at the events surrounding him, and he's already— or she already has a plan of action in mind. That they're going to try and get to certain places, to certain positions, to try and anticipate certain action. I mean, the same kind of principles need to apply to food photography. Taylor and I have the luxury of being able to take our time and so on and so forth, but for someone who's making dinner and you're serious about, you know, your photography as well, you know, it's a budget buster sometimes to make things twice. But if you plan ahead and you start thinking about your photograph before you start making the food, then you can at least be prepared so that you can create some options for yourself.

Okay, excellent point. Naomi has joined us. So Naomi, can you hear me? Can you hear me, Naomi? Or you are on mute. Yes, I can. Thank you so much for persevering and joining us. I'm glad you could make it.

Sorry about the little technical difficulties there.

That's okay. We were asking each one to talk about their philosophy of how they shoot and how they come up with some of their shots. So if you'd like to tell us a little bit about how you get the shots you get for a few minutes, we'd appreciate that.

Sure. So I'm not like the others who are professionals. I'm really self-taught, and I do it for for just my blog, and I have picked up a few jobs here and there, but still now for the blog I primarily focus on— if you go through my blog you'll see it's a lot of top-down, but I really try to set up something where it depends. Sometimes I'll go for something that's really cold and even the food looks cold, but that just is personally my aesthetic. Sometimes I like it a little more rustic, I'll make sure there's crumbs and stuff, but it's, you know, I hate to say this, I really I don't know until I'm done making the food. I don't conceptualize my shots until the food is done. I walk out and sometimes some of the shots I'll do bright and then I'll go light and I'll go from there. So I don't actually have a great process other than, you know, to tell you guys that I'm actually still learning and it may not seem like it, but I take about 100 shots and then I'll go through, filter down to about 20 shots and then I'll edit from there. But generally I do like my food a little bit messier. I like the, you know, half-eaten shots, and the ones that aren't like that, it's sometimes will be my lead shot and sometimes not, but I'll do both styles.

Okay, well, you do a really great job with them. That was, you know, your photography is very impressive. So for not being a professional, you're at a very high level, that's for sure. Better than most of us that are blogging. So I appreciate your insights on that. We do have some questions, and I want to start getting to them because they're starting to back up a little bit. And we had the first one was from Adam Holland, and he wants to know, how do you determine what engages the viewer? I tend to use the food porn sites while I'm batting, and he's batting about 125, so that's not batting real, real well, but I think he's in a lot of company with that too. So any advice on how to engage the viewer with your image? I know, I think Adam, you touched on it by your storytelling a little bit.

I think that's part of it. If you have a strong image— now, food porn, um, is sort of particularly defined by food being extremely big in the frame, and that can be a very useful technique. I think that it's a combination of well-executed photography and a recipe, a food that engages people's interest. And that, you know, it's a complete mystery to me what foods engage people's interest from one day to the next. It's always fascinating to me to look at our blog and look at the stats and see what it is that people are looking at. And I don't know that anybody knows how to figure that out. I know Cheryl spends an enormous amount of time reading magazines and looking online and, and sort of trying to anticipate to some degree. So that's, to me, is just an unknown variable. From a photographic point of view, if you have a well-crafted image, because people respond to it If an image has an awkward composition or it has, you know, unflattering lighting, I mean, people may not necessarily know what it is that they're responding to, but something about them sort of makes it uncomfortable to view that image. So to take the time and make the effort to learn how to craft your photography successfully is always going to put you ahead of the game.

Great.

Any other thoughts on that?

You can always add bacon or bourbon, that gets people's interest. But, um, kind of what Adam was saying, really, uh, exposed properly, good lighting, good composition, rule of thirds, you can, you know, it's fun to break sometimes, but you know, it is there for a reason. If you're kind of having trouble where to start. And then just like, you know, a good balance of color and colors that complement each other, or if you're going monochromatic and have all your colors kind of the same. But really it's a big mystery as far as the food porn sites, like what they accept and what they don't. So don't— I've bat probably half to 375 sometimes. I mean, I can't tell what they like, what they don't like. I just shoot food pictures that I know I like, and, you know, at the end of the day, that's— I'm happy with it.

And I think in the end that serves you much better. You know, at first, with particularly, well, one of the food porn sites, I guess I probably shouldn't mention its name here, but it's a prominent one, and they weren't accepting my images. And I mean, I was heartily offended, as you can imagine. But I— and then I started— it became sort of a thing where, well, I'm gonna find a way to craft an image that they will accept. And at that particular time, because their aesthetic has changed, crafting an image that they would accept and did accept actually left me with an image that I didn't particularly like. I think it's, you know, it's that whole Shakespeare thing, to thine own self be true. I think that if you follow your vision and your personal aesthetic, in the long run that will serve you best.

That's good advice. Okay, we have another question here from Stephanie Manley. Is there an ideal aspect ratio to hit multiple avenues on social media? And I think Taylor, you did touch on that about the square image.

I think square is the one that if you prepare for it, you'll be able to crop in So in a lot of the food port sites, you square. I know Facebook, if you put a square up there, like in the timeline, it'll show kind of the top part of it. And square is one of those that if you want to shoot something square and you're shooting a rectangle but not planning for it, you're going to end up cutting off part of the image. So if you can just plan for square, but— and you can also just research what every site has, and then you can plan according to that. But square should be okay.

Well, square, I've had a lot of people email me and ask me, and I think even you, Chef Dennis, has expressed some frustration about composing for a square. You know, if you have a well-composed image, it generally should not be a huge problem to crop it into a square. I think it's a little bit of a nuisance that they do these, these these square things, but I mean, it makes sense from a publication point of view, I guess. Our particular problem is that I prefer a— I crop everything to 8.5 by 11, which is sort of a fairly standard magazine page, you know, aspect ratio, because that's what I like to see on my blog. And so then I'm not going to compromise what I want to see on my blog simply to get on, you know, one of the myriad food porn sites out there. I think that you do, like Taylor says, you do need to plan and you do need to make some effort to understand the rules of composition, and how the eye flows through a photograph, because when it's properly crafted in a, in a full aspect ratio, which is, I guess, for most DSLR users is 2:3, it should crop fine to a square.

Okay. Naomi, what do you shoot mostly in? I see a lot of your really nice images are up and down.— or what do you prefer to shoot in? Do you shoot at all for food porn sites or just for yourself? I mean, how do you plan it?

I used to shoot for porn sites. I don't so much anymore because, like everyone else, I started to get a lot of declines on it. So now I won't even shoot for social media. I tend to think that you should shoot the style that you want, and if it's engaging enough, people will click on it, even if it's Even if it's cropped a little bit off for social media, and that's what I do. And Facebook, you can kind of move it and manipulate it some, but if it's engaging enough and you pull out just enough and choose that one, I do— I will always make sure there's one photo that's not so tight that if it goes on, you know, you're like, you're facing the middle of a cupcake or something. But if you pull it out enough and you use that one for social media and it's engaging, it'll come through. People will click through.

How have you found Google+ to be for your images? Do you enjoy that platform for them? It seems a little more robust.

You know, I have to say, and I really apologize, I'm a little more new to Google+, but I think it's very similar to Pinterest to me. I've been lately— you know, I used to not put text on my images. I'm not a big person, I don't actually love having text on there, but because I do run a food blog and I do monetize it, I do notice that it does images do way better with text, so I do put the text on there. I try to keep it very minimal, and same thing with Google Plus, they tend to do a little bit better if people can see exactly what it is. I don't do anything fancy, I don't make it too big, I try to keep it very minimal.

I mean, your images are very noticeable on Google Plus, that's why I brought them up. I mean, I was sharing them, and when I was sharing them, they were doing great. Keep doing what you're doing then.

Well, I've seen Naomir images, they're beautiful, and I like how you do the text. And you know, although I don't do the text, when it's properly done, I think it's a great idea because it gives almost a more, almost professional feel to what you're doing. I'm not talking about what you see a lot of people just slamming their logo on there to, you know, prevent some kind of internet copyright infringement, but properly texted so it looks like a magazine page. I mean, you see this all the time. You look at a magazine and there's this full bleed shot and there's type saying, you know, "Blueberry scones" or whatever. And when it's well done, as I've seen you do, it's really very effective, not only from a self-promoting point of view, Naomi, as you mentioned, but I mean aesthetically it gives it a very much more magazine type feel, very professional kind of presentation.

Okay, great. We have a tough question here.

Go ahead, Naomi. Oh, really quickly, it's just you have so few seconds to grab someone and you don't want them trying to figure out what exactly they're looking at, so I want to be able to convey that quickly.

Yeah, exactly.

Excellent. Okay, we have a question from Mother Remy, and Colleen Hill also did that, is that she lives in Seattle where there isn't a lot of hours of natural light, and by the time she gets home from work, the light's gone. Is there an inexpensive setup they can put in place to enhance her lighting? Anybody has any thoughts on that?

Yes, there— I did a blog post on this a while ago, and I've talked about it in Photographing Food. You know, it's— if you go to your hardware store and look at the work lights, the 500-watt work lights, it's about $12. It can light, you know, it can look like daylight on a small set, which works for food. Only problems are it gets very, very hot. There's no on and off switch, and you kind of have to use it on a table or floor. But, you know, definitely switching to artificial light You can make stuff that looks like natural lights, but those work lights are the least expensive option, but there are problems with them getting very hot, and they're not on light stands, which depends on what your budget is. If you spend a little more, you can get compact fluorescents or halogens that have the light stands.

They're really not as expensive as they used to be. You can find some very inexpensive sets on Amazon. Get a softbox and then just use that as you would natural light, as Adam has shown us so many times in some of his videos. And I'm still trying to employ that, Adam. I'm working on it. We had a—

come to one of my workshops.

I'm gonna have to. I need to do something. Dion or Kim, do you have any questions?

My—

well, I do have a question about, um, if you Basically, maybe you guys can just kind of recommend what you— what size image you put in a blog post and maybe how you save it so that it might load quickly for the audience but it's still good enough quality to see. What do you guys recommend?

Well, this is one of my bugbears when I'm cruising the blogosphere. You only need 72 DPI to upload. I'm not sure exactly the reason. It's something to what monitors read. 72 DPI is all you need. To load a full res 300 DPI image onto a blog is to slow your blog down. And I suspect that I'm not the only person in the world who has gotten to the internet use loading quickly, and if something doesn't load quickly enough, I'm out of there. So 72 DPI is all the resolution you need. I would not— well, again, I don't really believe in using shortcuts. If in your imaging software there's something that says, you know, save to web resolution, I would simply do it by hand because that way you know exactly what it is that you're getting. My images that go on, I don't know what the pixel dimensions are. They are 8.5 by 11 images at 72 DPI, which is— I want to say it's close to 900 by 600 or something. I think one of the short dimensions is 600 and some pixels. That's plenty for Websites. I think it's— I think there's a danger of making your photos too small.

Is there a number of megabytes it should be, or kilobytes? I always get those confused.

Yeah, you need to be in— Taylor, please correct me if I'm wrong in this, because I'm— I deal— I still deal in inches, not in pixels. Excuse me. I think you want to be in, like, the kilobytes.

Yeah, you want to be— Under a megabyte, definitely. Most of it, like on Taylor Takes a Taste, mine, I've got like a template in Photoshop that I just drop them into that's got like my logo on it with a white border around it. And that square is 900 by 600. So I export in Lightroom all my images to 810 by 540 so that I have that border around it. And then if I'm going vertical, it's 810 high by 540 wide. So it's a 900 by 600 image. Image. And 72 DPI is what you need.

Yeah, I mean, the main thing you don't want to do, particularly if your blog is loading slowly, is— I mean, the kiss of death is that 300 DPI image. You just don't need it. Also, you know, for those of you who are particularly fussy about this kind of thing, 300 DPI is a print resolution.— and 72 dpi is not a very effective print resolution. So if somebody is looking to infringe your copyright, with a 300 dpi image, you've pretty much given it to them. With 72, they— I mean, if they want to then go and print it in a cookbook or whatever, claim it as their own, I mean, they can't really do that because 72 dpi doesn't print very well at all.

Alright, I think we had another question here. Autumn Giles wants to know, she's wondering if each of the panelists could share their one most useful prop that gets used the most in their work. Anyone want to start with that? Is there anything you use more than anything that helps you set up your shot?

As far as I go, as far as me, I mean, I know I'm definitely not the food photographer, like you know, like Adam and Taylor, but I swear by my tripod. You guys definitely give me feedback. I'm putting myself out there, tell me yes or no. But I know, Dennis, you recommended a tripod, and shooting without a tripod, oh my goodness, it looked like I was just really out of it. It was so blurry. But I swear by my tripod. That might not be a prop, but that's what I need.

I couldn't agree more. I'm always hammering people, you need to use a tripod. You know, I know that Canon particularly now Taylor, you're much more experienced. I use Nikon, and right now a little bit older Nikons. I know that Canon allegedly anyways delivers this really great resolution at very high ASA ratings. I shoot at 100 ASA almost all the time, whether I'm shooting natural light or electronic flash. And even with electronic flash, you know, tripod is generally thought of as a thing that just helps your camera hold still so you don't get camera shake. But to me, the, the usefulness of the tripod is— and I use it even shooting DSLR with flash— is composition, because literally millimeters make a difference in photographic composition. And when you can lock it down, when you know what you have you can get the image that you intend. Because even— and I've been doing this for a long, long time, and you know, I'm a pretty strong guy, so I can hold a camera pretty still. But even with that sort of experience and ability, you still move, and small movements can make a huge difference. If you're trying to get something that is perfectly centered and needs to be perfectly centered. You need to have that tripod. Now, as far as a prop, in terms of— now, I understood that question to be about stuff that we put on the set, plates, glasses, cups, things of that nature. I— we try not to repeat ourselves, although there are, there are types of props that I tend to favor, which tend to be aged. I like— I think I share this with you, Naomi— I like kind of an old older, more rustic, kind of, you know, worn wood, old cutting board. I guess there's one old cutting board that we like to use a lot. But yeah, I think that would be a favorite.

As far as like, I guess, prop, I have this old baking pan I love using. But as far as like camera equipment, that's, you know, Foam board, white foam board for a reflector is a must. It's inexpensive, lightweight. If you get it dirty, okay, you can just buy some new. And this is just a collapsible reflector. It folds in half so it can stand up when I'm working. This stays in my camera bag everywhere I go. You can tell it's kind of beat up. But this is probably the one thing I always have with me just to add fill if I need to.

Okay, we have a question here from Kristen King, and she wants to know if you recommend shooting a RAW format, or is JPEG good enough for blog purposes?

Always RAW. If you— if your camera will shoot RAW, always shoot RAW for a variety of reasons. You get the most information. JPEGs, the more you save them, the more they degrade. JPEG is really a format for a final image that you're not going to do anything with. It's a compressed format, and that's what it allows it to load to the internet and so on and so forth. But the other advantage of shooting a RAW file is you— the RAW file is essentially the equivalent of a negative or a slide. It's the original that has all the metadata that you're gonna need, including your camera serial number, your lens, your lens choice, your aperture, your lens speed, your ISO rating. JPEGs are— should only be sort of an end result photograph, because the more you work on them, the more they degrade, and you start to get, well, pixelation and Always, if you can, shoot a RAW file.

Taylor, Naomi, how do you feel about that?

I agree, yeah, RAW again for so many reasons. And also, if you're paying a lot of money for a DSLR that can shoot RAW and is like 20 megapixels or 18 megapixels, you're shooting JPEG, you're not utilizing all those megapixels. So you've kind of spent all that money, you're not using it. Yes, they do take up more space on your computer, but as Adam said, you know, you're getting that negative, and then you can make, you know, changes to exposure, changes in color temperature, changes, you know, sharpening. You just have a lot more flexibility in post-processing with a RAW. So unless I'm shooting, like, an event and not food, and I'm going to be click, click, click rapidly, then I'll switch to JPEG just because the buffer time is a lot shorter in JPEG. But for food, when the object's not moving and, you know, I take a picture every 30 seconds to every minute, then, you know, definitely RAW.

And also, I mean, Taylor mentioned that the size— it's true, it's a big file size. However, I would recommend this for a couple reasons. Get an external hard drive. They're not particularly expensive anymore, and store your raw images in whatever kind of archiving system you want on that external hard drive. This will free up, obviously, the memory and the, the storage space on your computer itself. But should, God forbid, anything happen to your computer, your hard drive is your backup, and all these valuable files that you put so much time and energy into will, you know, you'll have them on that backup hard drive.

Sounds good. Naomi, anything to share on that? Any thoughts on how you shoot?

No, I actually, I'm really bad. I do use RAW sometimes if I'm shooting for a magazine, I definitely will. For my vlog though, because I shoot when I get home from work or in between family time, I shoot JPEG and I I can edit, you know, fairly well on it. I'm sure I can do better with RAW. It's just something I haven't quite converted to a lot yet.

Well, I think you're like a lot of bloggers out there. I mean, this is one of the reasons that I wanted you on the panel, because you've gotten some excellent results from doing things possibly not how a professional would. And you can still, you know, it's, it's not so much— Adam's the one that's always saying it's not so much the tool as the person using it. Isn't that right, Adam? You're always telling me that about a camera. It's the person behind it.

Yeah, it's the imagination. It's how you're seeing it. The camera is nothing but a machine that's, you know, that's in the service of your imagination. I would say many cameras allow you to shoot RAW and JPEG simultaneously, so you can shoot the RAW and store that, you know, for your own— for, you know, future reference, and then use the JPEG on, you know, your everyday usage.

Amy, you were going to say something?

No, to that point, just so everyone understands, you know, because I do this primarily for blogging and I work full-time as well, I don't have— it's not my professional job, so for me to develop— for me, the most important thing was developing my own voice and style with photography. So a lot of the technical stuff, I haven't had, unfortunately haven't had as much time in researching and, you know, getting it perfect and becoming an expert. But for all those other food bloggers out there like me, I would just say it's like if you want to be a writer, you have to read a lot. If you want to improve your photography, you're just going to have to look at a lot of photographs. And that's what I spent a lot of my time doing is looking at photographs, studying the elements I like, As well as I don't just look at photographs because I don't want my style to blend in with everyone else's. So I tend to actually look at other types of photography like still photography, product photography, commercial photography, and I work in elements from there. And it keeps your voice fresh rather than shooting like everybody else out there. Yeah, it's kind of like writing. If you studied writing, you would know the same thing. You, you, you want to be aware of what's in your space, but At the same time, you also want to make a distinction from everybody else, and the easiest way is not to just study your own space.

I do the same thing Naomi does. I don't really look at food photography, I look at other forms of it. I love watching movies and TV, like, you know, great movies where there's amazing lighting. I'm like, oh, I could— you know, that inspires me for food pictures. And then even like fashion, like just what color combinations people are like, oh, that would look really cool in a food picture. So going outside of, you know, what people are doing in food already to kind of develop, you know, your own voice and what you want to do.

Great advice. All right, moving along here. Are there any other questions? Please leave them in the comment bar. Ladies, Dionne, Kim, any questions?

I was curious what everybody is using for editing software.

I use Photoshop.

Photoshop.

I use Lightroom, and then if I need to, I'll take it into Photoshop.

Okay, do you all use the full version of Photoshop?

I do, yeah.

I do.

I do.

Okay, that's something I still need to learn too. So much to do, so little time.

Although on that point, I mean, the full version of Photoshop can be extremely expensive. Photoshop Elements is a great program.

Yeah, it is.

I'm not familiar with Lightroom. And I know that like there are some online things, but Photoshop Elements is a very affordable and very comprehensive program that for probably 98-99% of the needs of the food blogger, you'll be set. You know, that's something worth thinking about.

Absolutely. Okay, any other thoughts on those?

Well, Photoshop, they've just recently recently come out with their— it's going to the cloud now where instead of buying the $1,000 program, you pay a monthly subscription fee. So they have cut the cost down a lot, and you can get Lightroom with that too.

That—

yeah, it's the Creative Cloud. It happened a couple of weeks ago. So that is an option where, you know, it's— I think it's like $45 a month or something, but you have access to every program. So if you are, if you do want to start getting into the publishing side of things and use InDesign, because for Photographing Food, I use InDesign to create all the issues. So it's great for layout. If you want to start getting into that thing with your blogging where you want to lay out recipes on things, there is that option now. So they have made it a lot cheaper. But they'll just charge you every month instead of a large chunk upfront. But you get updates are free and because they come out with a new version probably every 18 months or so.

Yeah, there is also, if you have a student in the house or you are a teacher, you can get a student version of both the main Photoshop at quite a reduction, and also Lightroom. Lightroom is not as much, but it's not as expensive. So yeah, that's always a thought too if you have access to that, a student in your home, if you're looking to buy it.

Yeah, the student discount is awesome. It's—

yeah, Photoshop, it knocks it down to like a couple hundred dollars, I think.

Well, then with the Creative Cloud, they have a student monthly that's something like $20 a month or $25. I don't know all the pricing on them, but, you know, the monthly is definitely a nice option.

I think the, the cloud one is for college students, and you have to show, and it's good for like 4 years. Okay, because I thought I could get it working at the school as well because I got my software through the school for Photoshop and Lightroom at, like I said, quite a discount. I think it knocked Lightroom down to about $79, which sometimes you can get on sale for that. Photoshop, it really impacted greatly. So, okay, we just had a question over from YouTube, and it is, anyone use GIMP, and what is your opinion if you did?

I've used GIMP, and it was before I had the cloud because I had Photoshop on one computer and then my laptop I didn't, and it can work. The interface just kind of frustrates me, so once I got the cloud, I just stopped using it.

I have a friend who's an amateur photographer.

I'm not a GIMP fan.

Go ahead.

I'll say I have a friend who's an amateur photographer, very enthusiastic, and he was pretty enthusiastic about GIMP. I've never used it. You know, Photoshop is pretty much the industry standard, and it's also what I learned on— and it's, you know, probably the apex of imaging software.

Yeah, I know a lot of people can't shell out the money for some of these programs. I mean, that's why I think Elements is a good option to go to for some of them.

Elements is a great program.

Because really, I mean, when you think about it, you can get stuff for free, but remember that adage, you get what you pay for. And if it's free, you know, it's, it's, it's not going to be the best software you can get. It's something to start with, that's fine.

But I mean, if once you're serious about your craft and you want to move forward and want to get better, you know, as a food blogger, you can be serious about your craft and want to move forward and still not have to spend $1,000 or $1,500 on Photoshop. I mean, that's where, you know, Elements, or I don't know if there's a Lightroom Lite, or, you know A lot of these so-called light programs, I guess for lack of a better term, are really very effective. I mean, we have to remember that, you know, the demands on, you know, a job that may come to me or to Taylor are going to be, you know, potentially much more extensive and complicated, and, you know, you get into design elements and things like that. A blogger will not necessarily get into. And if your interest is in crafting successful photographs and processing them well, then, you know, a program like Elements gets 98% of that done.

Yeah, it's really close to that.

I agree.

$69 or $79, depending, you know, if you can find it on sale. So it's not that costly. To try some of that software. But, you know, if you can, like I said, the full version— I still haven't learned how to use it, but I have a full version of Photoshop, so that's another whole thing entirely. Alright, we're—

any—

if there's any other questions, please ask them now. We're coming towards the end, so I'm gonna ask one last question. Alright, you're all food photographers, you're all very successful at what you do, and I want you to each give me one piece of advice that you would give a new photographer starting out on, you know, if you could tell them one thing and one thing only, what would you tell them? Adam?

Are you going to ask me first? Taylor, why don't you go first?

Alright, Taylor.

Um, practice. You know, we all started out as photographers, you know, at some point, and, you know, in photo school, the first teacher in our first class, he was like, your first 10,000 pictures are going to be your worst. You know, just get those out of the way. Yeah, it just— you gotta practice, practice, practice.

Okay, Naomi?

Um, I'm going to repeat what Taylor said along with that. Find your style and lighting. Lighting's really important. It will set the mood for your photo. That's probably the one thing I focus on most, is next to styling, is the lighting.

Excellent.

I'll second both Taylor and Naomi, it's a discipline. You know, you need to learn some fundamental things and you need to apply them. And once you've learned how to apply them, then you can apply them in your own way. But you do need to take the time and make the effort to learn the basics. It doesn't just happen. Oh, and that on-camera flash Burn it. Get rid of it. Tape it over. All right, there's— that is the single kiss of death to a food photograph, is the built-in flash on your camera. Get rid of it by any means possible.

That's even for people pictures, it's not the best because you get those red eyes all the time.

There you go. See, it's no good for anything.

Devil eyes. All right, well, thank you so much everyone for joining us. Adam Barba, Warrens, as always it's a pleasure having you with us today.

It's always great to be with you.

Taylor, it was great to see you today and thank you so much for stopping by.

Thanks for inviting me.

Naomi, thank you so much for persevering and showing up on this. I really appreciate that and you do have some excellent work so I hope to be seeing you more on Google+. Thank you. Kim, thanks for stopping by and offering— Thanks, thanks, thank you. Offering your support. It's always nice to see you.

Thanks, Dennis.

Dionne, thank you so much for showing up too. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. So we're wrapping up session 5 of the first annual virtual G+ Bloggers Conference, and thank you so much for being part of history as we're making history today as the first virtual conference on Google+. So I'll see you all soon, and we're coming up with Session 6, which will be the last session of the day, thank God, because I'm getting a little hoarse here. And it's the SMO of SEO, and I would tell you all to make sure you see it. If you can't see it live, catch it on the rerun because we got Mark Traphagen and Joshua Byrd coming up telling you things you're going to need to know about really getting yourself moved up in search engine traffic. Alright, so thanks again for coming. I'll see you in about an hour.