Food photography is a new area for me. It’s not entirely unlike the normal product photography I do, but there are some elements that make it a bit different. For instance, I did this shoot for Belgian Waffles, which is a wonderful new specialty waffle outlet that has recently opened up at the uShaka Village Walk in Durban. Now, ordinarily, when I am shooting product in my studio at home I have the leisure of time on my side. I can move reflectors, adjust flash outputs and take as long as I like to get the lighting exactly the way I want it. With food, particularly something like a waffle covered in ice cream, syrup and other things, time is most definitely not on your side. You have to shoot swiftly before things wilt, melt and absorb the air pollution around us. It’s good to have your set and lighting ready for when the plates arrive.
This shoot was great fun for me. On the back of a recent successful shoot for a regular client, I decided to shoot this tethered to Lightroom again. I’m really happy with the way this works because not only do you get to see any problems with your shot immediately on a decent computer screen (I use a 13″ MacBook Pro), your client gets to see the results immediately too. They can provide you with valuable critical input and the net result is hopefully a better end product.
For this shoot I began working on a tripod using ambient light, but I wasn’t happy with the background in the restaurant, so I moved over to where there was a white wall that I could blow out with a remote speed light. I had the food set on the table (not quite a white surface, but close enough) and then I added a couple of other lights, one for the side light and another for top light. This was entirely done with my Nikon D700 and a couple of macro lenses, the main one being a Nikkor 60/2.8 and the other the new Sigma 105/2.8 OS.
