1 food and 1 product

[Corvphotography]

I was taking this Studio Lighting class and one of the assignments was to photograph some food and a product. So here they are and I love to hear what you guys have to say about it.

 

[joel28]

Re: the second picture, neither of the items are in focus

 

[TCampbell]

In the first photo I think you've done a reasonably decent job. Food needs to look appetizing. You never want the food to look flat & boring. So it's important that there be *some* shadow, because that provides the 3D dimensionality to the food. You also want a little reflection & shine on the food to help with the appetizing look and freshness of it -- you just don't want that shine or reflection to become "glare" and distracting.

I'm seeing the low "forks eye" view, good lighting, weak (but still present) shadows to present dimensionality, and some shine. All good -- well done.

The wide-angle distortion and the odd positioning of the background dishes are a bit odd.

I'm not sure they'll be grading you on food styling (food photographers sometimes use a food stylist or learn food staying in order to perform their craft. The stylist is sort of like an interior decorator..... but only for your the plate & table. The arrange the food & plates and table dressings to make it look really tempting. Then there's the whole question of "what are you selling"? Are you selling everything on the table? Or are you just selling some of the things on the table... or are you selling just one single thing. Selective lighting, cropping, and focus might be used to draw particular attention to those things your photo is supposed to be 'selling'. Stated differently... a tighter framing of just the foreground hors d'oeuvre but which really fills the frame and uses a longer focal length to flatten the field (avoid wide-angle distortions) might actually look more appealing -- if you're not trying to sell the plates, but just the food.

A food stylist would probably have a lot more to say about this shot -- but I'm guessing you'll just be judged on the lighting, focus, and technical aspects of the shot.


As for the product... the Prada sunglasses & case suffer from poor focus on both subjects and a glaring reflection on the case in that lower right-hand corner. When you did the food, it's ok that the background plates were soft because the focus was great on the foreground food and we can clearly see that the background is more of the same food -- so critical focus back there wasn't required. But for the sunglasses... if I were a shopper, I wouldn't actually know what these sunglasses look like. You've got a case spilling out of the front of the frame, and the glasses in the background -- you'd need quite a long DoF to capture all that sharply. You'd probably want to re-style the objects closer together so that such a long DoF isn't essential, and then still increase the f-stop considerably to create greater DoF. Watch those reflections!

 

[Corvphotography]

wow thanks alot for the critique. good points! i def. didnt think about all this. Id like to upload another one of the product shots and hear more about what you guys think please.

 

[Corvphotography]

i never thought about the bright spot on the case, so thats something i will look for next time.

 

[webrotate360]

Still a quite shallow DOF I think for this shot, and I think you are shooting too close to the subject as the case seems too bulky. Put it on F16-F18 and try to shoot about 3-4 feet away - adjust shutter to keep the exposure. Also looks like you have just one and pretty small light source that is also not defused, producing uneven lighting and pretty harsh reflections on the case.. Commercial product images of eyeweare are usually done on white background but this is a post-production step mostly - not sure if this is part of your assignment.