How to photograph flying food images. Now, why for a start? Well the reason I've
decided to make this video is that this particular shot that I took went down
extremely well on Instagram, I think we had like 10,000 or more likes on this
shot and to be honest I was a little bit surprised because whilst I like this
image it's not necessarily my favorite. My normal run-of-the-mill product
photography work is more like this sort of stuff, product photography, cosmetics,
alcohol, electronics that sort of stuff and beauty and fashion work but I was
surprised about the level of interest in that one particular flying food shot and
we did this shot as a tutorial. So I thought I'd dig a little bit deeper and
let's take a look up why maybe this image was popular and let's look at some
of the techniques to consider behind it. Now the idea for this shot came from
Anna Pustynnikova who is a food photographer and stylist and she was
working with me and she actually came up with the concept for this shot. So let's
think about this a second - levitating burgers, suspended salads, exploding tea,
this is all the craze of flying food and this type of flying food seems to be
taking over the food photography market but how are these images executed and
created. Well photographing floating images whether it be food or any other
product can be difficult there are a number of challenges that you'll need to
overcome including getting the composition and positioning your items
correctly not to mention the lighting on each different element now in our food
photography class, the one on the Flying Tea, food shot which you can find on our
website here in this stylist Anna Pustynnikova and I show you exactly how to
shoot an exploding tea image, but I've also summarized some of the most important
points for you in this video. So let's take a look at
how you can bring your own explosive creations to life. Now as with most
studio shoots the flying tea shoot can be divided into four distinct stages. The
first one is pre-visualization then preparation, lighting and then shooting.
Now each of these stages is crucial if you're going to get the best results
possible so I'm about to outline the stages for the flying tea shoot and
through this you'll also see these steps replicated in other flying shoots I've
done like the cosmetics splash shots or paint shots etc. Now number one is
pre-visualization. Pre-visualization is one of the most important stages to any
shoot this is something that I do for nearly all of my shoots and this allows
you to plan everything from composition to lighting as well as identify the
challenges that you can expect to face and determine how to overcome them and
for pre-visualization it's normally a process of just sketching the image out
and the very act of sketching the image out as you can see in some of
these previous images it gives you the opportunity to identify where the
challenges will lie. Now for this particular shoot on the flying tea, we
knew that we wanted to have the tea exploding out of the cup to represent
the flavor and the sort of aroma of the tea and we wanted the milk pouring from
the jug above and the sugar cubes floating in space - now to achieve this we
had to think about how we were going to have that exploding tea, while at the
same time a controlled milk pour and I knew it was going to be a composite shot
but I wanted to minimize the amount of composites to just three shots but I
still needed to be able to get each element absolutely right with the
lighting so that I could composite those three shots together really simply.
So creating a simple sketch often helps and it helps with the planning because
it allows you to more clearly visualize the final shot and it will help you
understand your composition and lighting and first of all composition very
important because with a pre-vis. sketch, you can already work out whether ever
everything in your image is going to balance right, will the milk-jug
sit in the right position if it's here, the pour of milk here, how's the petals
going to explode, the sugar cubes - so you can actually build your composition
completely during your previous sketch then with your previous sketch you can
start to decide what's in the foreground what's in the background where's your
depth of field going to be and it really really helps you with the shot, building
the shot. Number two is preparation. Now for this shoot there was a fair bit of
preparation required, that's for sure, and having identified a number of the
challenges through the pre-visualization stage I knew we needed different
solutions for each of them if we were going to get the final image to work
correctly. Now you can see all of the preparation in full in the class on Karl
Taylor Education for this particular shot, including how we suspended some of
the items, how we levitate other items, how we capture the rising steam and the
flying tea. Now perhaps the most important thing when it comes to
preparation is creative thinking it's actually problem solving, it's problem
solving and finding solutions. More often than not shoots require at least some
degree of problem solving and as photographers it's our job to find
solutions to the challenges that we're presented. So instead of feeling defeated
and writing the idea off, think about ways to overcome each problem and deal
with them in bite-sized chunks so that it feels more manageable. Solve one
problem at a time, fully solve it and then move to the next. Now get creative
when you're thinking about try and think outside the box a little
bit you'll be surprised at what you may come up with. Now lighting is number
three. The lighting setup for this flying tea shot was fairly straight forwards to
be honest I used a three light setup, two soft boxes, one on either side, and one
light from above. So the lighting wasn't really a big challenge - we were going for
a soft yet three-dimensional light but it needed to work with every element of
the shot from the cup to the milk pouring, to the flying tea itself. Now to
find the best lighting we fixed the cup and the milk jug in position while Anna
held the tea in position temporarily and from there I experimented with the
distance and the angle of each light to make sure that I got the best result so
those were my sort of lighting test shots if you like before deciding on the
final lighting. Now number four - the shoot itself. Once the lighting was finalized
the shoot itself had to take place in different stages and remember I wanted
to minimize this to three composite images so it had to take place in three
stages now to start with we photographed the steam and continued to shoot until
we felt we had some good options of different steam shapes to work with. Next
we photographed the milk pour and for this Anna poured the milk into the jug
and we captured it as it poured out of the jug into the cup. Now the tea
explosion itself took slightly more time and slightly more complexity and we shot
a number of images before getting the best results and to make sure there was
no motion blur I had to use fast flash durations
and to maximize my chance of getting the timing right
I used the mirror locked up on my camera by using the mirror locked up we reduced
the delay time on the shutter so that when I'm triggering the shutter I'm
triggering it almost instantly. Now one of the things that you may have
noticed in this image is that whilst most of the tea is frozen
absolutely pin-sharp there are a couple of particles or a couple of elements of
the tea buds or the rosebuds that do have motion
but that motion blur was actually added in post-production because I prefer to
freeze things sharp and then artificially introduce motion blur where
necessary. Now this shot incorporated many of the typical challenges
associated with photographing floating or flying objects and a lot of my work
from paint splashes, liquid splashes, alcohol, food, all this sort of stuff, it
includes these techniques. Now how we suspend items and how we freeze motion
and how do we get the best lighting? So suspending items while suspending items
depends on what you're shooting there are a number of different options for
suspending items sometimes we literally just throw items sometimes we build
ramps to crash items together as we did in this complex paint shoot where we
actually built ski ramps so that the paint could fly down the ramps and crash
at the right moment at the right position. Now this is absolutely crucial
because what you're really trying to do with levitation splash or crash images
is control the subject and for it to happen a certain space within your field
of view. It's no good just randomly throwing stuff into the scene or into
the image because nine times out of ten it won't be in the right position so you
have to devise solutions that solve the problems of making the items appear at
the right place at the right time and as I said the example with the ski ramps
did exactly that and again with these food shots we again apply those same
principles of problem-solving. Now depending on what you're shooting there
are a number of different options and because I like to capture my images as
naturally as possible I generally don't use wires or poles to suspend items if
I'm shooting flying liquids I do prefer to throw the liquid but it is about
containing that liquid in that given space. If I'm photographing dramatic
paint splashes with my models, my models undoubtedly have to
have paint thrown at them but it's directed accurately to a particular
point so we know we're more likely to get a successful result now yes it can
get very messy but the realistic result you get from that guarantees that it's
well worth it rather than an artificial or a CGI look that you might get if you
did it another way. Now if I do have to fix items in place generally I use
acrylic rods that's my tool of choice because they're transparent and that
material allows the light to go through them so that it doesn't adversely affect
the subject that I'm photographing and you'll see me using these in a number of
our different tutorials on Karl Taylor Education - they're lightweight they're
fairly easy to retouch out of the shot and that makes them easy to handle and
suitable for photographing anything from cosmetics to food items. Now acrylic rods
are actually on one of my top ten studio accessories in another video that you
can find the link for here now tip number two freezing motion now if you're
suspending items then you generally don't have to worry about freezing
motion because they are already stationary however if you're like me and
you're photographing fast-moving liquids or flying foods then a fast flash
duration is essential now for this I use broncolor lights because they have an
extremely fast flash duration but speed lights are also a great option and there
are other brands of lights with fast flash durations as well if you're
needing to work on more of a budget. Now in many of our advertising product and
still-life classes on KarlTaylorEducation.com you'll see how I use a
combination of studio lights and speed lights to photograph a number of
different paint splash images. Now the next tip is lighting when it comes to
lighting floating objects as I've already mentioned that fast flash
duration may come in handy but the other thing to consider is the lighting on
your product or subject if you're comping your images together via
a number of images then it's imperative that your lighting remains the same
between each shot make sure you have your lighting as fixed as possible once
you've found your lighting setup that works because you need to be consistent
with your lighting so you need to make sure that your lighting has exactly the
same exposure and exactly the same color balance for each shot so that your
comping of layers and your compositing becomes far more easier and that's why I
like to work with broncolor as my lighting brand because I know it's going
to be accurate for every shot. Now at times different
items in your images may require slightly separate lighting and that's
when it's important to think important to remember things like the direction of
light, the shadows, the hardness or the softness of the light, and the angle of
the light because even the smallest inconsistencies will have a negative
impact on your final result so make sure you think about each part of the shot
and this is why pre-visualization is so important because it helps you plan
everything necessary for success in a flying or animated shot like this.
So in summary, whilst photographing flying objects whether it's paint,
liquids, models jumping, food flying, it can be very difficult but can also be
great fun and the difficulty can be reduced dramatically through
pre-visualization and good planning and applying some of the points and
techniques that I've mentioned earlier. Now if you'd like to see this particular
shoot from start to finish and pick up some even more tips on flying objects
and food photography head over to KarlTaylorEducation.com - Get my completely
FREE photography course with no signup required you can also access our free 90
page eBook just click the link or go to KarlTaylorEducation.com