Basic Food Photography

With any skill, there is simply no substitute for practice. In this lesson, we talk about the importance of practice, introduce the equipment needed for this course, and you'll get started taking your first food photo shoot.

1:15 - Practice, Practice, Practice

2:28 - The 10,000 Photo Rule

4:10 - Your First Food Photo Shoot

5:03 - What You Need to Get Started

Telling stories through your pictures is the foundation of taking compelling food photos. In this lesson, we'll learn about the 4-step "story blueprint" and the tools that you can use to tell intentional and engaging stories through your pictures.

2:00 - Building a Human Connection

2:47 - The Food Story Blueprint

5:58 - Tools for Storytelling

8:55 - Examples: What's the Story?

14:40 - Two Takeaways

Styling your food is a crucial aspect of taking beautiful pictures - you simply can't take pretty pictures of ugly food. This introduction to styling shares before and after examples of food styling, showing you what a dramatic difference styling can make in your final photographs.

1:54 - Why Style?

3:55 - Before and After: Styling Examples

7:48 - Pretty Doesn't Just Mean "Neat"

8:36 - The Goal of Styling

NOTE: Download the section 2 cheat sheet with lecture notes and homework assignments below:

If food is your art, the dish is the canvas. The plate you use is an important consideration when styling your food for photography. In this lesson, we will learn what aspects you should take into consideration when choosing a dish. We'll also discuss tips on building a collection and how to get great pictures when at restaurants.

0:44 - Your Dish is Your Canvas

2:30 - Choosing the Right Dish

3:39 - Going Dishless

4:27 - Building a Collection of Dishes

6:09 - The Bowl Trick

7:12 - When Eating Out

Food styling can seem intimidating at first, but it is actually quite easy. You don't need gifted artistic ability or years of training. This lesson introduces the 6 elements of good styling that can help make your food look more appealing and photogenic.

 1:10 - The Six Elements of Styling

9:32 - Styling is a Personal Art

10:23 - The Importance of Pausing

Styling is your most powerful tool in telling the "story" of the dish. You want to be mindful of how your styling adds information and creates emotions. This video shares advice on accomplishing both of those goals while making your dish look as delicious as possible.

2:01 - Styling to Inform

3:19 - Styling to Create Emotion

5:33 - The Story of Delicious

Your eye interprets light very differently than a camera lens. Learning to see like a camera is an important step in setting your scenes to be beautiful and photogenic. In this lesson, we discuss the differences between the human eye and the caner's lens and provide instruction on setting up rectangular scenes that create appealing images.

1:45 - Your Eye vs. the Camera

3:03 - How to See Like a Camera

4:01 - Example: Seeing a Rectangle

NOTE: Download the section 3 cheat sheet with lecture notes and homework assignments below:

Nothing is more important to your image's overall appearance than proper lighting. This in-depth lesson provides a crash-course in lighting your scenes. We'll discuss many topics including: how to notice light, the primary lighting angles, tips for finding the best light in your home, and more.

1:41 - How to Notice Light

2:22 - The Primary Lighting Angles

4:50 - Scraping Your Light

 6:15 - Defusing Your Light

8:00 - Finding Your Light

9:35 - Making a $1 Reflector

10:56 - Artificial Lighting

11:52 - Shooting Outdoors

The surface upon which you're shooting food photos matters greatly to the overall composition of your sene. This lesson explores the options you have when choosing a surface, and it provides suggestions on creating or purchasing professional wooden tabletops.

   0:48 - Surfaces Tell Stories

   1:45 - Using Existing Surfaces

   3:02 - Using Foam Poster Boards

   4:03 - Making a Simple Chalkboard

   5:10 - Making a Wooden Tabletop

  An in-depth tutorial on making a wooden tabletop: http://www.jasonandshawnda.com/foodiebride/archives/7848

   7:07 - Dealing with Surface Reflections

   8:28 - Surfaces = Backgrounds

Props and accents are the elements that go around the plate to complete your scene. They can share information and add depth to your images. In this lesson, we'll discuss how and why accents are needed, as well as a quick rundown of the types of accents I use most often.

1:17 - Props Add Information

2:23 - Napkins & Textiles

4:06 - Burlap

5:08 - Kitchen Towels

5:39 - Placemats

6:48 - Utensils

8:20 - Using Nothing

Only after learning to style our food and set our scene do we begin to discuss the camera. This lesson includes an overview of the different categories of cameras to help you make an informed decision about which type to use for food photography. It also introduces the 3 aspects of exposure (Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO), and includes many examples that showcase the strengths of each camera type.

1:03 - It's Not the Camera (The Chef and the Photographer)

3:28 - A Quick Comparison of Camera Types

6:47 - The 3 Technical Aspects of Exposure

7:51 - 1. Aperture

10:23 - 2. Shutter Speed

11:19 - 3. ISO

13:00 - Which Camera to Use?

14:10 - Which Camera Took THIS Picture?

NOTE: Download the section 4 cheat sheet with lecture notes and homework assignments below:

Using an iPhone or other mobile device for food photography has several benefits. In this lesson, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using a mobile camera, introduce apps that give you more control on an iPhone when taking photos, and talk about how to get the most from mobile photography.

1:59 - Photo-Taking iOS Apps

3:04 - The Camera+ App

5:43 - When to Use a Mobile Camera

7:07 - Getting the Most from Mobile Photography

Point & shoot cameras can seem like they're stuck in the middle: not as convenient as mobile phones, but not as powerful as DSLRs. Yet, this category of cameras can take amazing pictures when used correctly. This lesson explores the situations in which using a point & shoot could make sense.

0:22 - Advantages & Disadvantages of Point & Shoot

3:14 - When to Use a Point & Shoot

4:15 - Getting the Most from a Point & Shoot Camera

5:55 - Are P&S Cameras Stuck in the Middle?

To conclude our series on cameras, we'll take a look at DSLRs; the most powerful and customizable category of cameras. In this lesson, we explore what makes DSLRs so powerful and when you may want to use this type of camera as opposed to another. The lesson also includes some final recommendations on how to decide which camera(s) you may want to use for food photography.

0:40 - What is a DSLR?

1:40 - Advantages and Disadvantages of DSLRs

4:00 - When to Use a DSLR

5:00 - Getting the Most from a DSLR

6:20 - My Setup and Recommendations

Composition is all about what you choose to include within the rectangular frame of the camera. With food photography, the way you compose your frame is critical to getting the best shots. In this lesson we introduce several elements of a well-composed photograph, including the rule of thirds.

0:50 - What's in the Frame?

1:37 - Getting the Right Angle

2:33 - Getting the Right Zoom

3:20 - Getting the Right Depth of Field

4:32 - The Rule of Thirds

5:52 - Shooting in Vertical (Portrait) Mode

8:40 - Use Closeups for Ugly Food

It's now time to put everything we've learned into practice to create a successful and efficient food photo shoot. Here we go through one entire photo shoot from start to finish, using the 5-step process that leads to great pictures every time.

The 5-Steps for a Successful Photo Shoot

1:10 - 1. Learn the Art of Copying

2:53 - 2. Set Your Scene

3:19 - 3. Compose with Stand-Ins

4:51 - 4. Prepare Great Food

5:40 - 5. Use the 5/10 Rule

8:08 - Using Cooking/Action Shots

8:55 - A Note on Flow

Before diving right into the technical side of editing, we need to pause and ask ourselves, "what goal do we hope to accomplish by editing our food photos?" In this lesson, we learn that editing food photos has the singular goal of enhancing realism, and we'll conclude by looking at several examples that illustrate this point.

0:33 - The Goal of Editing

1:19 - The "Do's" and "Don'ts" of Editing

4:19 - Editing Examples

NOTE: Download the section 5 cheat sheet with lecture notes and homework assignments below:

With the goal of adding realism to our photos through editing, we simply need to focus on 6 key editing effects. Each of these important effects are described in this lesson. We also take a deeper look at the practical differences between shooting in RAW vs JPEG format.

The 6 Core Editing Effects

1:34 - Crop & Straighten

4:39 - White Balance

This TED Talk on visual illusions was mentioned in the lesson and is highly recommended to gain a better understanding of how we see and interpret colors: http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html

7:24 - Exposure

8:50 - Contrast

10:16 - Sharpness

11:21 - Noise Reduction

13:21 - How to Save Time in Editing

14:24 - RAW vs. JPEG: A Comparison

When managing large numbers of photos, it can be important to setup an efficient workflow that allows you to easily import, sort, and edit your pictures. In this video, we will be doing a live screencast to introduce the Adobe Lightroom software and how it can help us accomplish all of these tasks.

0:17 - Adobe Lightroom Free Trial

You can download a free 30-day trial of Adobe Lightroom for PC or Mac at the following link: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_lightroom

1:15 - Introduction to Lightroom

5:30 Importing Photos into Lightroom

8:33 - Flagging & Deleting Photos in Lightroom

11:11 - Creating Collections in Lightroom

13:56 - Managing Files in Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom is the easiest and most effective way to apply the editing effects discussed in lesson 19. In this live screencast, we'll learn how to perform all of these adjustments and more on a food photo in real time.

4:30 - Crop/Straighten in Lightroom

6:09 - White Balance in Lightroom

7:28 - Exposure in Lightroom

9:56 - Contrast in Lightroom

10:54 - Sharpness in Lightroom

11:44 - Noise Reduction in Lightroom

12:38 - Spot Removal in Lightroom

13:41 - Final Notes

NOTE: Below are 3 unedited full-size images of my own. Feel free to use these for your own personal editing purposes to achieve the effects discussed in this lesson.

If you don't have access to Lightroom, or simply want a quick way to edit food photos on the go, Snapseed is a free app for iOS and Android that makes it easy to perform all the adjustments discussed in this course. Here, we'll look at how this application is used and discuss mobile workflow considerations.

1:15 - Advantages & Disadvantages of Snapseed

3:05 - An Overview of Snapseed's Features

6:48 - Quiz: Snapseed vs. Lightroom

8:41 - Mobile Workflow Suggestions

Download Snapseed for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapseed/id439438619

Note: In this lecture, I mention that Snapseed is unavailable on Android, but this is no longer true. Snapseed can be downloaded for Android here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niksoftware.snapseed

In order to begin sharing our pictures, we need to export them with the right format, dimensions, and image quality settings. This lesson discusses these considerations and shows a live screencast of exporting in Lightroom.

0:57 - Exporting & Compression 101

2:53 - Getting the Right Dimensions

4:10 - Getting the Right Quality

6:35 - Lightroom Screencast on Exporting

11:43 - Mobile Exporting

NOTE: Download the section 6 cheat sheet with lecture notes and homework assignments below:

Food photography and social media work perfectly together. Get maximum exposure for your food photos by following the practices shared in this lesson.

1:36 - Why Use Social Media?

3:11 - Photo Sizes for Social Media

5:50 - Instagram

11:05 - Google+

What The Plus?! by Guy Kawasaki: https://plus.google.com/+GuyKawasaki/posts/YCeBKxAaBuu

14:45 - Pinterest

19:45 - Explore. Have Fun.

What makes some pictures more successful on social media than others? A scientific research team found the answers. Shared in this lesson are the 6 elements found in most successful pictures on Pinterest. The original article mentioned here can be found at: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/06/this-is-the-perfect-pinterest-picture/

1:28 - The 6 Elements

3:48 - Recap

Food blogging is hard work, but it can be very rewarding. This lesson provides a brief introduction to the process of turning great food photos into a great food blog, including my 4 steps for becoming a successful food blogger.

0:50 - What is Food Blogging?

1:56 - Advantages of Food Blogging

3:28 - What it Takes

http://OneIngredientChef.com/pro-food-blogger

4:48 - 4 Steps for Successful Food Blogging

In our final lesson, we’ll do a quick review and tie up a few loose ends, including: where to get help moving forward, the importance of joining a photography community, and your final homework assignment.

0:43 - Course Review

2:00 - Things to Remember

4:08 - Getting Help

5:18 - Joining the Community

The Google+ Food Photography Community: https://plus.google.com/communities/114895417659148613939

6:50 - Connect with Me

7:15 - The Final Homework Assignment