P#26 Q2B: The Magic of Color in Food Photographs

Subject Matters

Ron Goldman: The most important thing, and this is another thing that I talk about in the classes I teach, is that you have to go out and hand select your subject. My produce manager at my local store cringes every time I walk in the door. I don't have any problem digging through an entire pile of lettuce to find the perfect subject.

If I don't see what I want there, I'll ask someone to bring more out from the back. If I still can't find the perfect item, then I will go to another store or I will change and look for something else that's on my shoot list for that day.

You really have to start with the very freshest of ingredients. Unfortunately the camera picks up every single little flaw in your food photographs. In our day-to-day life, we see flaws in our produce all the time and we don't really think that much about it, but when it's on camera and you're using it on your portfolio or for a restaurant, they expect everything to be absolutely perfect.

If you start with yellow lettuce, you're going to end up with yellow lettuce. If you start with a nice fresh vibrant green head of lettuce, you're going to be able to replicate exactly what you're shooting.

Audri Lanford: So what you're saying is, if you get the right items to photograph, then the color will take care of itself? Is there more to it?

Ron Goldman: There's also some post-processing involved, depending on the camera. I encourage everybody to shoot all of their images in the RAW format, which gives you the very best quality as well as the most flexibility in working with the file.

Depending on the camera you're using, when you open the image in your photo processing software and you have that RAW file, all of the information is there. The images usually look a little bit flat in the RAW format, but it's very easy to bring them back to the natural state of what you saw while you were shooting and it doesn't have any degrading effect on the file.

Again, you can overdo it. If you try and over-saturate color, it's going to have a terrible look in the final product. It's really just a matter of correctly lighting, correctly exposing, and all that information is there when you open the file and it's very easy to get it to look exactly like the setup in the shot.

In Closing

If you want the best pictures, you need the best subjects. Food photography is no different. To bring out the best colors in the food you shoot, you have to start with subjects that looks almost perfect. Then, and only then, can your food photographs truly shine.