There’s a poll over at John Batdorff’s blog today asking if people would still take pictures even if no-one ever saw them. It comes as no surprise to me that 100% of respondents said that they would. In the wonderful words of Oscar Hammerstein II from the musical Showboat “fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly” and we have to make photographs even if they are of just an onion!
I’ve spent the weekend finishing up the last two assignments for my Food Photography class. This was one of my creations and I’m really excited about it. Actually I’ve really enjoyed this class for a couple of reasons. For the first time, I am finally starting to get my head around the importance of lighting in creating an image (as opposed to taking an image). One of my biggest obstacles to working with lighting equipment has been the learning curve but this class has helped me begin to understand the different types of lighting and when and how you’d use them. Here I used a softbox at about 12 o’clock and a reflector at 6 o’clock. The quality and placement of lighting is what gives this image texture and that’s what makes it come alive for me.
In the back of my mind I always thought I’d enjoy food photography. My family comes from a line of food merchants on both sides and for a short time in my early working life I was a partner in a restaurant. This class has given me another angle to appreciate those parts of my life. When we are learning this craft most of us shoot anything and everything to find out what interests us the most. As my friend Stuart Sipahigil shared with me recently we’re not completely sure where our niche is or even if we have one. As photographers we all have our own reasons for shooting what we do and eventually we will uncover them. That’s all part of the journey but in the meantime, we just gotta shoot.
Excellent shot, Sabrina. You’re on your way to being the next Kevin Clark!
I LOVE Kevin’s work so your comment is both a compliment and an encouragement. Thanks Mark!
Love this onion! You are getting this lighting thing down very well! Anxious to see more ‘food’ shots from you. I’ll just be sure to look at them after I eat!
This photo is so good it brings me to tears…;)
Not to worry, there’ll be lots more food shots, Sue! I have to say that Mitchell Kanashkevich’s eBook on lighting called “Seeing the Light” was very helpful to me too. Here’s the link for anyone who is interested http://learn.mitchellkphotos.com/.
John, you’re hilarious!
I wondered about those ebooks. They are a bit more than I thought I wanted to spend on an ebook. You liked it? Read others? Ps. Like the onion.
Chris, I really like eBooks and Mitchell’s ones are no exception. I did buy them when he had his “Buy One, Get One Free” offer so you might want to wait until you see another deal. Other than David duChemin’s books, I haven’t purchased eBooks by other authors.
If you’ve looked at Mitchell’s work and like what you see, his eBook will explain how he captured specific images. There’s a lot of detail there which I found most useful.