Food, food, food! Something that everyone loves consuming and admiering… Well, if it’s good!
Over the past year I’ve taken the odd shot of dishes and learnt a thing or two. And sometimes it isn’t as easy at it might seem. Natural lighting, fitted lighting and strobe lighting, all of it can be a bitch to work around but if you play your cards right you can get the shot you need in no time utilizing every bit of light.

I had 3 photo shoots of food today and each one was a little different to work with but you can simply apply the same rules to get you by, and get you out — unless you get to eat it (And I got to!).

Shoot 1.

Spinnakers Restaurant on the harbor can be a great place to shoot if you can control the amount of light that reflects of the water through the 200º spanning windows!
It would be easy after a few trial and error shots to get both dish and view, but I find it distracting from what you’re actually trying to showcase sometimes; food!
The view is nice but to be honest I think more people come for the food than a view that they could get from the restaurant next door, 2 doors down, or possible a few blocks down the road!

First thing you need to take into consideration in a situation like this, is to know that if you’re going to get a shallow depth of feild, bye, bye background and hello white if you’re facing a window! So go with the white or angle the snap to get the table in.

Below is the setup and the final dish.

Shoot 2.

Restaurant Synergy at Mercure Centro Hotel is now my number 1 place in town (And not the factor I get to eat their dish after!).
This is a pretty nice place for photos — a true treat! I have almost an unlimited number of places in the restaurant to take a photo and a vast array of lighting sources. The only problem that I get with this restaurant is that nearly everything is white! If the colour of the dish is vibrant you really don’t run into any problems, even if the plate and table is white. You can get a great effect if you eliminate its shadows to make the dish appear that it’s floating. In Synergy I chose to go on a granite table to give it a little more depth and colour.

Below is the set up and the 2 final dishes.

Shoot 3.

Compass Restaurant at Rydges Hotel is one of the most challenging places for a shoot. It’s not the product, it’s the natural light. It’s quite cut off form the shades overhanging the windows.
Today was a good day for the lighting outside because it was shinning in pretty well.

Since the dish was so wide, the f number was large and a larger f number on a 50mm f/1.8 doesn’t really work too swell! But lucky the sensor in the 5D MarkII is so good that you can shift the ISO up pretty high (ISO 1000 was used on the final shot) and you really don’t get any grain.
I had to face the dish towards the light rather than away because the light coming up the back of the salad ‘distorted ‘ it. Another factor for facing it towards the light eliminated a lot of shadows and the flash that I needed to use to generate the missing light shone-up the juicy lemon so I had to shift position…
The flash was bouncing behind so it didn’t flood the dish or illuminate the lemon too much.

Hope this will let you experiment a little bit more and think about solutions to some problems that might spring up during a shoot.

I love food!