(clapping)
- Chantel, your claps sucked.
- Suck it, (beep)!
- We're learning how to photograph food for Instagram!
- I don't think any of us take professional
food photos, but our Instagram stories
often have a lot of pictures of steaks.
- I take Instastories of my food constantly.
Usually with songs.
- Yeah, you do sing a lot, you're like,
♪ "This dessert is so good! ♪
♪ "How is it so good?" ♪
- ♪ "Melting in my mouth! Melting in my mouth!" ♪
- It's 'cause my photos aren't good so I must
elevate it with my voice.
Usually I'm just like,
♪ This is my steak ♪
♪ And it has polenta on the side. ♪
♪ And here's a bread basket ♪
♪ And its night so this looks like (beep) ♪
- Anyway, I'm really excited to learn
how to photograph something great.
Who is going to teach us how to photograph food, Michael?
- Who?
(clapping)
- Clap!
- Hi, I'm Rie, I'm a Tasty producer.
My job is making food videos.
I am trying to make food pretty and appetizing
so people at home want to try make it at home.
I always loved cooking and eating.
I wanted to be a food stylist,
so I went to culinary school,
learned how to cook and I took a food styling class.
I also did a food stylist's assistant.
I am so excited to teach LadyLike
and working together today.
Judging, its the hardest part.
I don't want to choose a winner
but I have to be as unbiased as possible.
- [All] Hi, Rie.
- Thank you for coming.
- Thank you for having me today.
Are you guys ready to decorate food?
- [Jen And Chantel] Yes!
- I love learning!
- Yes!
When you take a food photo, what occasion, and do
you take in a restaurant or do you take at home?
- If I spend X number of dollars on a piece of food,
I'm taking a photo of it so that I can remember this.
- I don't really take too many photos of food.
But when I do, its usually for special occasions,
I don't cook very often so when I do cook,
that's when I try and document it.
- I don't really take pictures of my food.
I don't know, especially when
its coming out at a restaurant,
I don't want my food to be cold when I'm eating it,
so I just eat it and enjoy it.
- That's actually good point, though.
Food is meant to be eaten.
So just take couple photo in the restaurant
and don't take too much time because,
as you said, food would get cold.
I'm going to teach you very basic skill
of food styling today,
and we have pie, spaghetti, and salad.
- You're trying to teach us how to take post-worthy
photos today? - [Rie] Yes.
- Okay, that's what this is about.
- I feel like people are always like moving stuff
around so that they can take it from above.
Or they're always just like doing from here
and close up so there's a shadowy depth of field.
- Or they'll kind of like use the salad as like
the bushes and they're like taking a picture of
their wildlife through the trees.
- So if you using phones, top-down looks much better.
If your phone has a feature, portrait mode,
you can do depths of the field.
So, if you can go a little bit closer and background
is kind of blurry and it looks very nice.
So the principle is take the photo, never use flash
for food, because it just doesn't look appetizing.
So natural light would be great, it looks great on food.
When you take photo for yourself, you kind of want to
study yourself, right?
Like hair and clothes.
So I brought something kind of similar.
So different kind of material, different plates.
- Different outfits?
- Yes! For food. Different outfit for food.
- Outfits for our food!
I got cold so we had to get out the extra tablecloth.
So we could snuggle.
What's going on with the salad?
- So we have salad.
If you make salad at home, don't put dressing before
you take photo.
Especially if the dressing has vinegar, salt,
that wilt vegetable.
Its also good thing to have a colorful salad,
it looks good on camera.
Also the height is important.
- [Jen] Do you want it to be a big mound?
- [Kristin] You want a hill.
- [Rie] Yeah, yeah, and you're trying
to make colors spread out.
This salad doesn't have parsley,
but I think just pop of color.
- [Jen] A pop of color, some personality on the side.
- [Rie] Yep, something interesting
thing is fork or a spoon,
this is the normal size, right?
Like dinner utensil.
It look very big on that, in picture on the camera.
So I try and I use smaller fork.
- [All] Cool!
- [Jen] What are those little forks even used for?
Children?
- They're used to eat children.
- Yeah, when you eat your children.
- With this set up, would you incorporate a napkin?
Or is that too many colors?
- If the food is very bland looking,
like not so colorful,
I will definitely use tea towels to pop the color.
But this salad looks already colorful and nice.
So I'm just gonna take photo first
and see what it look like.
- Okay, cool.
- [Jen] Very invested.
- I really wanna know what this looks like.
(camera shutter sound)
- [Kristin] Wow.
- [Rie] So natural light is very important.
So lets see how it look like with some tea towels.
I can do this like whole day
and sometimes talk to food like,
"you look so beautiful."
(camera shutter sound)
- [Rie] That's kinda nice right?
- [Chantel] That is nice.
- [Jen] This looks like it could be in a magazine.
- That looks really pretty.
- This restaurant should pay you.
- What is next, we're doing pasta?
- And meatballs!
- Spaghetti meatball!
If you are plating something round, chunky,
you want to use odd number instead of even number.
So if there is meatballs, you want to put three
or five, instead of two or four.
- That makes sense because then it'll look too
orderly and not organic.
- You kinda want to make it natural.
- Give it a little toss.
- Yes.
- Are there only two meatballs?
- I wish there were three, but.
- Oh no!
- Maybe I'm going to break in half.
- [Jen] Oh, and then fake it!
Rie is a (beep)ing genius.
- Lets do blue.
- I like the blue. - Blue? Okay.
- [All] Wow.
- [Rie] Like that?
- [Chantel] Yeah, pretty.
- This looks ama- Oh wow.
I'm looking at it live.
(camera shutter sound)
- [Rie] Trying to think what else I can do.
Have a different plate.
- [Chantel] Oh I like that plate.
- [Kristin] Oh that's cute.
- [Chantel] That's a homegrown plate.
- Well that's at least one.
- Ooo, yeah it looks great.
- [Kristin] It looks like its a part of a
larger table setting.
Its like beautiful.
- [Rie] It's rustic, I think.
For dessert, we have pie.
So something big like this, pie or pound of cake,
you kind of want to cut it into sections so it
has more movement.
- It already looks really good the way it is.
- Yeah, I like the rustic feeling of this.
I also like those little crumbs.
I kind of wanna use it for my prop.
Maybe someone is holding this pie server and somebody
is passing plate.
Something like that?
- Okay, who has the best hands right now?
- [Kristin] That would be me.
- Yeah I got cuts all over my hands.
So Chantel, your hands are drafted.
- Okay.
- So you're gonna hold the pie slice, I think.
- Maybe you're holding tea.
- [Chantel] I'm gonna try and loosen my hand.
You know, we loosen it up.
- [Rie] Alright, action!
- (camera shutter sound)
- [Kristin] I was gonna say like wow you need a lot
of friends to pull this off.
Yes, you do!
- So over next week, you guys are going to take
beautiful food photos in the restaurant
or something you make at home.
And I am going to judge the photos and declare winner.
- [All] Oooh.
- This is exciting.
I do feel ready to do that.
- Oh yay!
- I love to be a winner at dinner.
- We'll see.
- [Chantel] Okay, so now I have to cook to take
pictures and style this food.
I'm realizing now I never care what my food looks
like if I'm cooking it.
I just wanna eat.
- So today I figured I was just gonna make a very
upgraded version of an instant Ramen.
I like to make it my own, so I'll cook a little bit
of meat, maybe an egg and throw it in there.
I will put in some fresh vegetables
and I'll really elevate it and then I'm gonna try to take
a beautiful photo of it so that I can win this video.
- [Kristin] I'm putting together a salad.
Its gonna be colorful, I'm trying to make
my mound high.
I'm gonna try and do some fun color blocking.
I don't know if that's gonna work, but we're gonna see.
- [Chantel] So this is kind of what I'm planning
on working with at the moment.
I can't try to take a food Instagram without
putting avocado or avocado toast somewhere in there.
I think its against the law.
- [Jen] These are the ingredients I'm going to be using
to make my ramen.
I'm gonna put some fresh watercress in there,
I'm gonna put some seaweed, I'm gonna put an egg,
I'm gonna fry up a little bit of Spam.
- And we begin.
So this is stuff is what I have to be really,
really careful to keep pretty
because I really like it crispy.
- [Jen] What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna slice a
piece of Spam off the top and I'm just gonna fry them
up in some oil.
And, yeah, just put them aside until I'm ready
to put them in my Ramen.
The spam is done.
- [Chantel] Here's my little fake bacon.
(pan sizzling)
Little bit of hot sauce.
- [Jen] What I'm gonna do is add the noodles.
Noodles are cooked.
So there's two packets that go in the soup, I like to add
them to the bowl first, then I add the water.
Then I put the noodles in.
- I just have to do my avocado and that'll be it.
Yeah, boy!
Rie told us also that it doesn't always
have to look super perfect.
Do some Zaatar, just here.
Gonna have to be a fair amount
in order to show up on the picture.
- [Kristin] I think I'm gonna photograph it
from this angle because from the top it just
kind of looks like a fruit boob.
Fred does not approve of fruit boob.
- [Fred] Genius, I keep trying
to think of solutions, but its still just a fruit boob.
But just a differently shaped fruit boob.
- [Kristin] Yeah, I mean I thought about just tossing
all the ingredients together,
but I feel like that's cheating a little bit.
That's not the assignment.
- And now for the fun part.
The egg's gotta go in right about now.
The nice thing is the egg has cooked after a few
minutes being in the really hot soup,
I don't know if you can tell, but its still steaming.
So we got Ramen, we got my egg, and I'm gonna
add some other fun stuff and then we'll see
how it looks when its finally time to take
photos and then eat.
- [Chantel] Should I do something like that?
Should I just do this?
- [Kristin] So there's no room in my apartment.
So I have figured out a way, I will be
shooting this on the balcony on top of an ironing
board stacked on a beer making kit.
Very worried this is going to fall over.
Oh no, the lettuce!
The Santa Anita winds are blowing my lettuce away.
How can I fold this napkin so that you see
minimal holes?
- I'm gonna be honest, I have an older phone.
Their camera is pretty (beep),
most of my photos look like crap.
But, the soup, which is on the floor
so that I could get a shot of it in the sunlight,
looks delicious to the naked eye.
But I don't think it looks great on camera.
- [Kristin] This does not look good.
So we're gonna try, am I gonna have to go out
in the parking lot and do this?
- I officially made too much food,
so I'm cutting it back to this avocado toast
and the cantaloupe because I feel like
those colors look really pretty.
- [Kristin] Fred is now gonna try holding my salad
out while I, maybe it looks better in here.
Actually it does look better in here.
- Okay, we're gonna move the table back inside?
- We need a bounce.
- I need a a bounce.
- Oh that works too though!
You think you got it?
- I think we got it.
- Okay so I wound up moving over to
my coffee table, setting all that stuff out there.
And I finally got my picture.
So forever later, I can finally eat this.
(upbeat music)
- Kristin and I are at a lunch place with fancy knives.
- We are, we decided to team up and shoot our
stuff together, even though we are still fiercely
competitive.
- Yeah I love fighting.
- So I ordered the chicken and the salad,
because I thought I'd get like a backup item.
Sorry, Mike, I know
we're on a budget but I ignored it.
- Whatever!
And I got the filet mignon so I definitely
ignored the budget.
- Oh you threw it right in the trash.
- Yeah, but I got us bread service.
- So you really threw it in the trash.
- Yeah I threw it in the trash.
- Honestly I'm not even hungry, I'm mostly
stressed about making sure we get the shot correctly.
- Oh that's cool, I'm very hungry and if my shot
looks like crap, at least I tried.
- Well, together, we create one on-task human.
- Alright I love that.
- For the second part of this challenge, I have to
go to a restaurant, so I brought Devin.
- I get to eat too!
- Because I was like I don't want to just be sitting
by myself taking pictures of my food.
So now I'll have a friend so I won't feel so awkward.
- [Jen] Alright, thank you.
- I have taken about a thrillion photos
because I like insist on getting this right.
Even though I'm not necessarily gonna get it right.
We used a plate to bounce the light, it kinda worked.
- [Devin] Hey Chantel.
- I feel like I'm completely interrupting
my own meal, my own experience.
- [Devin] Looks good!
- Was this?
Because I'm like is this real, is this good?
- [All] Hi Rie.
- Thank you for coming.
- [Chantel] I'm excited for this judging.
- I kind of feel like I kind of knew.
So first round is restaurant.
I like this one, its very colorful and also I like
the knife and fork next to each other.
And its almost like you're about to eat.
From this picture I can tell which restaurant
this person went.
I think this is Night + Market because its iconic
tablecloth and I love it.
I feel like anything you put on there,
it looks beautiful.
Its like magical.
This one, yeah, I like how this person did a
knife and fork like crossed.
Little negative space, its like fancy restaurant.
So, winner is this person,
and I think this was taken by you?
- It was not, actually.
- I thought this was Chantel and this one is Kristin.
(laughter)
- So that was me.
- This was me.
- And then I had Night Market.
- I went to Night Market.
- Kristin and I went to the same restaurant.
In retrospect, which might have been a mistake.
But we just.
- We didn't wanna stand out!
- So like it wasn't, it was just a lot similar colors,
a little bit.
- I thought this is very fancy,
so I thought it was Kristin's.
- [All] Oh!
- That's a compliment!
- I love this compliment.
- But you guys went to same restaurant,
so I'm not too far off right?
- [Kristin] Same restaurant.
- I went to Night Market because I knew that their
dishes were really colorful and their whole
ambiance was really colorful.
- I'm proud!
- It looks good. Great job.
- Thank you, gals.
- The thing I like about this one,
so we kind of practiced with cloth right?
And that person took a moment and pick a pretty
cloth and put it on the table.
And I like the flower, and its very cute.
I love it.
The second one, very nice tablecloth, I want it.
I wonder if this is also Jen's because its the knife
and fork crossed.
I like the salad because it has different colors,
its vibrant and looks very delicious.
I think the third one is Ramen.
And that person made it fancy.
This person put vegetable and I think its
Spam and soft-boiled egg.
And it looks very delicious.
Its a very difficult decision but
I have to choose this person.
Because I like that little bit salt on it like the
cloth and the flower.
- [Jen] Who do you think did what?
- If I guess correctly, I was wondering also,
like spam, maybe you.
- Yeah, that was me.
- Maybe Chantel, and Kristin.
- [All] Yes!
- You did it!
- Wow, two for two.
- Good job Chantel.
- Thank you, it took me long enough to take that photo.
- Its so pretty.
You did a great job.
- It is very pretty, it looks very good.
- It does, the flower. Honestly, I would not
have thought of the flowers.
And the flowers really clenched it.
Also, this is a fitted sheet.
Its one of my bedsheets, its on top of an ironing board.
- I love it.
- Yeah and Freddie is holding it.
- Learning how to do food photography for Instagram.
- Lady Tested.
- Lady, that's a fitted sheet.
- Oh, plot twist!
(clapping)
- Can I knock them down now Mike?
- Do it!
(upbeat music)