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so when it comes to food photography
just as important as your food styling
is your prop styling so there's some
best practices when it comes to overall
prop styling but then there's some
things that are specific to something
like a creative brief like taste of
heritage so for me
everything starts with the surface i
have this marble surface which is
relatively universal in food photography
right now but it's also you know
cultural italian marble
speaks to the heritage that i come from
but then on top of that the idea of the
warm tones that we talked about earlier
so something like this having a warm
wood surface in your studio or your
shooting space is really going to help
and you can use
a multitude of things but then also
something that maybe has some age to it
that also speaks to history and legacy
so this is a zinc top which is also low
reflective not very shiny and it gives
me a sense of history and and it has a
lot of style to it so these are things
that i keep
having a
having a multitude of these things is
sometimes really distracting in your
studio and it doesn't really help as
much but having three or four really
versatile pieces is great so i talked
about low shine a little bit
let's talk about why we use low shine
because anything that's matte in finish
is going to be less reflective and it's
got not going to distract or take away
from the food on the plates or the table
so for example plating again i go with
neutral colors like white and black
quite often and again this
you know low shine matte finish on
something is extremely helpful in
letting the food really jump off the
plate and not create any sort of light
distractions
or reflections that are going to be
problematic you'll also notice that
sizing matters let me give you an
example
so this
is a dessert plate
and quite often this is gonna substitute
for a dinner plate in food photography
i'll explain why in a second i also want
to demonstrate the difference just from
this top shot
in the size of these dinner plates
why that's problematic
and why this is more beneficial but also
serves as a serving plate in food
photography because of its size this
ring in the middle
and the shine on this plate which is
like a typical
restaurant plate is really problematic
for food photography because now all the
food has to live in the middle and
you have this edge that's going to
reflect light and create shadows that
you don't want in your food so
we're going to get rid of this
we're going to think about the full-size
dinner plate as a serving plate
and then we're going to think about the
dessert plate as the dinner plate which
means that everything needs to get a
little bit smaller so why do i do this
it's pretty simple when i'm using a
macro lens and i want to get really
close to the food and fill up the food
the frame with food i can't do that on a
dinner plate because i'm going to lose
the edge but getting close allows me to
fill the whole frame with food and also
pick up the edge of the plate which then
of course gives the illusion that we're
on a bigger plate so that's really
really
key something else about taste of
heritage in my work right is about this
sort of crafted beautiful items and
objects that seem like they could be
older than they are or maybe they
actually are older something like this
serving plate which is handmade and it's
really got some nice patina to it this
is actually new but it actually gives
the illusion that it's old and that
helps as well
so something like that which really
helps but then again like cooling racks
for baked goods
this one is a little bit older it has
some sort of weathering on it has some
caramelization on it this adds character
to the work and i i tend to not want to
use things that are brand new right out
of the box because you sort of lose the
story that this is like part of the
heritage or the or the the tradition of
the way we cook foods having things that
have a little bit of age on them and
again the warmth
of woods
the textures of woods these add a lot of
character to the to the photography so
when we're layering our prop styling so
we go with our surface up to maybe a
semi-surface then off to a plate
then i bring in some silverware again
low shine matte silverware
maybe something like a neutral colored
napkin
and i have a really nice little setup
here now of course all of this is
beautiful
but it's not going to distract from the
food and it's going to lend itself to
better food photography because i have
the ability to both pull back
and get closer
possibly with the same lens so it also
adds versatility so the idea that we
have all of these sort of props that are
neutral
they're warm in in tones they give us
the ability to kind of have low shine
situation all of these things kind of
combine to give you a really good
propping surface a really good propping
selection and the ability to make your
food just jump off the plate
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you