As you may have seen, a lot of food photograph images are clear and crisp in one spot and soft in the rest of the image. Are they done using Photoshop manipulation or they are done right in the camera ? I guess you can only achieve this by using a LF camera. If so,how ?
Thanks for the tips.
Theo
Theo,
Using a LF camera allows you to "place" the plane of sharpness. All points on that plane will be sharp. Sharpness above and below that plane of sharpness (the depth of field) is controlled via the f-stop. Of course, smaller f-stops will give you a greater depth of field.
Alternatively, you can manipulate sharpness in Photoshop as well.
For further information on shooting food... take a peek at this website:
http://www.professionalphotography101.com/photography/HowtoPhotographFood.html
Cheers
Life in the fast lane!
If you are talking about the current trend in photography for cookbooks, I suspect that large format is being used little, if at all. It is too expensive. From the books that I have looked at, these images could just as easily be done with a digital or medium format camera at large apertures and tweaked in photoshop.
I think that this style of photography is being driven by cost considerations. There is nothing in the images except the food on a plate. The photographer has to do something to create interest, and everybody seems to have seized on the idea that the way to do so is to have a lot of fuzziness. Why do the photos show nothing but the food? I believe that this is happening because the minute you show a plate of food in a broader context, you are into the whole issue of creating a set. That complicates matters immensely. If you want to do a lot of shots in limited time at low cost, you just don't have time to individualize the photographs. Assembly lines work best when one eliminates variables.
I am currently working with a chef on a book. We are using 4x5 (for photographs of the food), 6x7 (for photographs of the chef) and digital 35mm (for photos illustrating cooking steps that we know will not be enlarged significantly). For the 4x5 photos, we are showing the food in context and we are using much more depth of field than is currently fashionable. We both know that the photography would proceed a lot faster, at significantly less cost, if we standardized the sets, eliminated background and shot digital. If we are working in the least efficient way possible, it is because the book is a labour of love and we are prepared to spend whatever time and money it takes to get the look we want. We are even crazy enough to do a good number of our summer shots outdoors under natural light. These summer photos look wonderful, but shooting outdoors introduces major variables (light quality, weather) that are eliminated if one shoots indoors under artificial light. You have to be slightly crackers, or be prepared to invest a lot of time, to shoot with whatever Mother Nature dishes out.
As you may have gathered, I don't think much of the current fashion
I'm very curious to know what others think of this question and whether they agree or disagree with my perception of why all of these books look the same.
Of course, our work will turn out to be a waste of time if the book is printed by a second rate printer on second rate paper. That is the case with an awful lot of the cookbooks that are currently being published, perhaps another reason why it may be pointless to spend a lot of time and money on photography.
It's much easier to make a convincing blur with a view camera than it is with PhotoShop.
Food photography is a pretty high-end business, so I think there is probably more and more work these days being done with digital backs to meet the needs of publishers, but it's still being done with a view camera, and not artificial blur techniques.
Check out www.bethgalton.com for some excellent food photography. Her studio recently sold off two 8x10" Sinar P's and a Norma, one of which I purchased (a P), and when I went to pick it up, there was a newer model (I didn't notice if it was a P2, P3 or one of the X models) on the stand in use.
Could someone tell me what is "excellent" about the photographs on Beth Galton's website. When I look at still life work over time, whether the product of painters or photographers, I don't see what is "excellent" about them. They appear to be standard commercial shots by someone who does competent work that is not very interesting visually. If you look at her television commercials, we are not talking about someone who appears to be in the same league as any one of a number of talented directors and directors of cinematography who are doing cutting edge work (e.g. Michel Gondry, whose work spans television commercials, music videos and feature films such as Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind). Tell me what I am missing. This is a serious question, not meant to be vexatious.
No claims that it is anything but commercial, but I think it's very well-executed commercial work. The food looks natural and attractive, including some particularly mundane and difficult subjects like a batch of french fries, which are hard to make look good on film, and the colors are well coordinated. Her credits are certainly impressive.
This raises an interesting question - is the problem not the lower quality of photos of food in cookbooks, or the inclusiong of photos at all? None of the great traditional cookbooks has photos at all, some have line drawings for illustration. While some simple photos of food prep technique can be useful, photos of the food just fill space, thus it is not surprising that the market is not supporting high quality work, esp. when the cost of the high quality printing makes the book too expensive.
Ed Richards
http://www.epr-art.com
Ed,
You raise an interesting issue. There are two reasons to include photos of the food. One is to tell the reader what the food will look like, something readers want to know. The other is to illustrate at least one way of plating the food, an issue that is important to some people, including readers who are themselves chefs.
That said, you are right that with only a few exceptions, most of the books that have had a long life have not incuded photographs. I've wondered whether this is the result of conscious decisions or the result of economics. The argument against photos, and perhaps in favour of line drawings, is that photos tend to become dated, adversely affecting the longevity of the book. Would people continue to buy Escoffier or Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking or the works of Elizabeth David, if they had contained photographs?
Let me tell you our own position on this question. We have been told, in clear terms by people who know the current market, that the book must contain photographs, the more the better. We have also been told, both by these people and by ordinary readers, that the current fashion for fuzzy photographs has more than run its course. That said, we may decide to have few if any photographs in the book. We are doing them, and spending a lot of time at it, to keep our options open. We are also exploring the possibility of using alternative processes for certain photos. It is possible that none of this material will be used. I don't think that we will make a decision about his for months. As I said in an earlier post, the book is a labour of love, not a commercial exercise. If it makes money, which I think it will, that will be great, but in the end, we're going to produce a book that we are happy with, and we are well aware of the fact that Joseph Wechsberg wrote beautifully about food and wine without a photo in sight.
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