Taking Pictures of Food – What I Have Learned (Part 3)

This is the third part of my series on what I have learned all these years taking pictures. As mentioned, in my previous two post, these are the planned topics:

• The Camera
• Camera Settings
• Taking the picture – this post!
• Post-processing

Once again, this is about what I have learned by taking pictures in the last couple of years and, by no mean, is a replacement for formal education from a professional. This is very important in this post because it brings the one issue with photography that makes or break a picture: composition. Yes, no matter how proficient you are with some apps *cough*Photoshop*cough*, you need that initial picture to begin with.

Here is a big note before we continue: photography is “art” and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No matter how a picture turns out, it is about you and how *you* like it. Nobody can tell you it is wrong or looks ugly. If you like it, that is what matters.

So, to start off, let’s start off with two pictures of the same subject.

These two pictures were taken in King Sushi in New Westminster. Both are unedited, copied “as is” from my iPhone. I chose not to take it with my SLR to take it as a factor. The first picture would be a picture I would take when I first started taking pictures of food; the second one is sort of the picture I would take lately (tough might crop it a little bit). So, which one looks “better”?

If you choose the first one… Oh, well, shame on me. If you choose the second one, then it serves to illustrate one rule of thumb called Rule of Thirds. According to this “rule”, if you draw two parallel horizontal lines and two parallel vertical lines to make nine equally sized rectangles (or, to put it plainly, a tic-tac-toe “field”), the main subject of the pictures should be on the lines or near the intersection of the lines instead of the dead center. As in here:

The reason behind rule of thumb is that the object shouldn’t be in the dead centre of the picture. By placing where these lines are located, it creates some balance to the picture and point(s) of interest. Of course, this is not a set in stone type rule. There are times that you will have to break it. For example, I “broke” it when I took this picture from the Alpen Club/Deutsches Haus:

(Notice that the iPhone has a 4:3 ratio, hence a “taller” image; the Nikon D40 is closer to 3:2, i.e., 3008 x 2000 ~= 6 megapixels).

I know that a lot of us are used to taking pictures in the dead centre; I have done that myself. But also keep in mind that this is applicable to this type of photography, if you take portrait pictures, this logic might not work.

Of course, for the Rule of Thirds to work, you need to make sure you can focus on that specific area. And that brings the topics of area focusing. Have you noticed that, when you try to take a picture with P&S, the camera will try to focus on some areas (in the case of pictures with people, their faces)? This concept is referred to focus points. In most P&S cameras, it will be done automatically for you but, a lot of times, that leaves the picture “flat”, i.e., everything will be balanced. In SLRs, you can do that as well; however, it is more flexible (and not flexible at the same time). Depending on the camera, when it auto-focus, you can have as little as 3 focus points (left, centre, right, as my Nikon D40), 9 focus points (imagine all the squares of tic-tac-toe) and so on. By “focusing” on that specific area, you can leave the rest of the picture with some blurriness or more detail. That creates some level of interest.

The focus on this image is on mint leaves on top of the sorbet, while the rest is intentionally left “blurry”

What, more blurriness or detail? Yes, as mentioned in my previous post of this series, by changing your aperture settings, you can determine the background detail level. Of course, it also depends on the intent of the picture, i.e., capture more background or not. Regardless of that intent, you can only change that setting, if and only if, there is enough light hitting that area. And that brings that one issue again: lightning…

Yes, yes, I know I have mentioned lightning a lot of times and, in photography, lightning is king. However, this time, it is about positioning the food in perspective of the sunlight or other artificial light source. In my case, since I seldom take pictures in an controlled environment, at times, it is important to determine the best way to take a picture based on the circumstances… Or, if there is sunlight, try to grab the table closest to the window!

For the most part, if there is enough light (to find out, just take a sample shot), it is just a matter of setting the white balance (or full auto) and go from there. But, when there is not enough light that is when things start to get tricky. For the most part, depending on your lens (in the case of SLRs) or how flexible is your P&S, the idea is to set a high aperture and a slow shutter speed and play with the settings a little bit. For example, when I was in Le Pichet (in Seattle), it was somewhat dark and, rather than using my flash, I decided to changed the settings of the camera instead. So, based on what I mentioned above about shutter speed and aperture, I was able to take this picture:

Picture taken at 1/8 second shutter speed and f/1.8 aperture.

But, if you choose not to go to these extremes, then that leaves that necessary evil… The flash. Yes, that one thing that bugs a lot of people, specially other customers/staff/restaurants. So far, I have been asked twice to stop taking pictures for this exact reason. Yes, it bothers others but if push comes to shove, I will use it. Here is one major problem with regular flashes, regardless of either SLRs or P&S: it sucks. For example purposes, compare the following unedited  pictures, taken directly from the camera (and thanks to Mukmuk for posing for the pictures!):

These pictures were taken in Programmed mode, with auto-focus disengaged and based on the basic JPG files rather than the postprocessed version. The difference is that the first one was taken without flash, the second is taken with direct flash (via the built-in) flash. While the first one looks disappointing in terms of colours/hue/saturation, the second picture does not necessarily fare any better. It is quite “harsh” on the picture. Now, compare it to this…

The difference? Rather than the light being concentrated from one point, here, the light was spread around a bit more, i.e., diffused. Just in case, I used the built-in flash rather than my external flash! So how this was accomplished? I placed a standard bond white sheet of paper a couple of inches from flash. There you go! Your 1 cent diffuser! Of course, if I were using my Speedlight, I would follow a somewhat different logic: rather than pointing the flash towards the food, I point to the ceiling. In other words, use the returning “bouncing” light, like when I took this picture when I was in Tenhachi:

There are lot of other topics (“simplicity”, shooting angle, et al) I can keep on writing on but, for the most part, I think the ones mentioned above are the basics. The other topics tend to be more subjective. And, most importantly, as mentioned initially, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In the end, it is how you like them…

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