Hudson Valley Food Photographer { Walnut Craisin Goat Cheese Salad }
First off if you’re looking for a [Food Photographer in Hudson Valley](http://www.davebrownphotography.com/Hudson Valley-Food-Photographer.aspx “Hudson Valley Food Photographer “) check out my portfolio.
Well how was everyones holidays? I hope you all had a great time, good food, and good friends. I know I certainly did. It wasn’t as long as I wanted, but honestly what vacation is. I wanted to show off some recent shots I did of a rather nice little salad. It’s a vinegrette dressing, with fresh spring greens, goat cheese crumbles, with walnuts and pecans. The way that the goat cheese
and craisins work together is just awesome. It’s such a good starter that really can go with almost about anything, and it’s super easy to make. I also added a rasberry and some blackberries for presentation.
Warning technical photography discussion ahead…
So that’s enough about the salad. What I really wanted to do was talk about my lighting for this shot. I’ve been playing with more and more food photogrpahy, and as I play I learn a little something about it each and every time. This case was no different. Frankly I was really just trying to replicate a shot that I had seen that I had really liked. I’m trying to go for that wiked clean bright white look that you see in a lot of food magazines, and cookbooks. To achieve this I had to really study a bunch of different shots, and try and calculate out the lighting.
Here’s what I basically came up with. A 4 to 1 power ratio (I think), Basically I had my main flash which is almost direcly behind the subject at 1/2 power (bare), and then I had another light in front of the salad at maybe 1/16 power. Maybe even lower. It really didn’t take much to just barely light the front of the salad. You can see the angle of the main light by looking at the plate and the shadow it’s casting. You can also see the power of the fill light by looking at the green leaf to the right of the big red leaf. All those nice speclar bits of bokeh in the background, are from a cup of blackberries, and a bit of vegatable oil on them to make them shiny. I still can’t tell if it actually made a difference or not, but in my head it did. That’s pretty much it. Really it boils down to getting a really bright powerful light source really close to the subject, and then having a secondary fill light that’s softened by an umbrella to give a nice soft fill light. I’m pretty sure this will produce good consistent results everytime. However I have yet to try out my scheme on too many other subjects.
Tech specs for this first picture.
Exposure:
1/200 sec
Aperture:
f/5.6
Focal Length:
105 mm
ISO Speed:
200
Here’s the other version of the shot I did. I actually was aiming more for a portrait orientation, but ended up liking the horizontal one a lot better.
Anyways I hope that give you guys a better idea how this stuff works, and maybe you can try it out on your own and see what you come up with.
-Dave
