P#26 Q3B: Food Photography Lighting Secrets Revealed
What every food photographer should know about food photography lighting
Mastering food photography lighting is critical if you want to give depth and dimension to your food photographs. When someone looks at your pictures, you want them to practically taste and smell the food in them. You need proper lighting to accomplish that. Ron Goldman had some advice to offer in this area.
The Rules of Food Photography Lighting
Ron Goldman: When you're dealing with food photography lighting you're trying to make your subject appear as 3D as possible. Lighting from the side or lighting from behind is going to give you a lot of shadows, which again add depth to the image.
A really good example is to set something like an apple on the counter where you've got no ambient light coming in and shoot it with the on-camera flash or a light source coming from over your shoulder, behind, and look at that image. Honestly, you can't tell what you're looking at. It could be a perfectly sliced, in-half apple and you're just looking at the front half. The image will have no depth to it and there are no shadows falling behind it.
If you move that light source 90 degrees to one side and take the same photograph, you then have the full shadow of the apple on one side and you can instantly tell that yes, it is a whole apple sitting there. If you move the lighting to the back, the shadows are going to fall forward. Again, you have that depth of the image that's missing when you light from the same angle as the camera lens.
Direction is crucial when it comes to food photography lighting.
In Summary
All areas of photography rely heavily on light. If you want to get your food photography lighting perfect, you need to pay attention to direction. If you don't, the shadows may work against you instead of for you.
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