This week’s post is inspired by Steve Hansen, who’s a food photographer who uses 3D and motion graphics to enhance his food photography and video. His work includes photographing food with traditional photo methods, but he also branches out into 3D modeling and motion design, and he shared numerous insights into different software options that he uses as well as stories about his images.
In response, our assignment was to create a gustatorily appealing image of food. I’m pretty comfortable with doing illustrations, and drawing food-related images can be fun and imaginative or have super artsy effects, but if I think about the kinds of images that really make me hungry or make me think of the taste and feel of the food the most, they are photos. I’m also less confident with my ability as a photographer, so I decided to take this chance to try a low-pressure photoshoot.
I chose blackberries as my main subject for this little project. I wanted to use a simple fruit or vegetable that I could get close-up with and could show the texture and juiciness. I happened to have a little yellow bowl, and inspired by color theory class, I thought playing with the complementary colors of the dark purple berry and that yellow dish would be fun.
To set up the shot, I put a lot more effort into creating a scene than I normally would for a casual photo, including finding a time when the weather conditions were right: the natural outdoor lighting was especially lovely, and the wind was still enough to get a smooth reflection on the lake. I found and ironed a linen that I thought would complement the look and put some effort into arranging the scene with complementary green things and the reflection of the lake at a flattering angle even though the lake is actually surrounded by houses and buildings. I brought along a spray bottle to try to get water droplets on the berries for added juiciness. After taking many photos, I settled on one that I liked and experimented with different croppings and balances of light and hue in Photoshop to get an image that I was happy with.
I’m not sure that my image is perfect or even if I made the right choices that someone in the photo program would instinctively know, but it was a fun little exercise, and I’m fairly happy with the result. My goal was to give the feel of an early morning breakfast at a wilderness lodge or something similar, and imagine that it would be something that could be instagrammed, and I think this was successful overall. I think that practicing taking photos of different kinds of subjects in this way could slowly help me to be a more confident photographer, which would potentially be super helpful as a designer.