Professional Food Photography Class 2: Lighting Bootcamp
This week, we’ll get into some more complex lighting techniques, including how to get those moody low key shots as well as how to capture splashes and pours. There is a lot to cover here, so feel free to ask questions in the forum for anything you don’t quite understand and check out the videos that will be posted throughout the week with more examples of the different techniques.
Shaping your Light
Using Modifiers
In the last lesson, we walked through the typical modifiers for lighting. These modifiers let you have more control over the shape and amount of light, as well as the light’s diffusion. The key to using modifiers is understanding what look you are going for.
Softer light can be achieved through a wide variety of diffusers. Softboxes are typically the most common. The large diffusion panel directs light over a broader area, while the black, opaque sides keep light from spilling out as much as a bare bulb.
Umbrellas come in two types: Shoot through and reflective (or bounce). Shoot through umbrellas are made out of the same diffusion materiel as a softbox which lets light pass through. The flash head is pointed at the inside of the umbrella, and the umbrella is then pointed at the subject. Reflective umbrellas have a white or silver lining and a black cover. The flash head is pointed at the inside of the umbrella, but then the whole unit is pointed away from the subject.
The light from a reflective umbrella is slightly more directional while the light from a shoot through umbrella is slightly softer, but the difference is fairly subtle. The following shots show the difference between the shoot through (left) and reflective (right).
Grids create focused light keeping the light from spreading over a wide area, reducing it somewhat in the process. Grids are graded by the degree of light spread; a 20 degree grid will create a smaller spot of light than a 45 degree grid. In this next shot, I used a 45 grid on my AB800 from camera left and relatively high above the subject, intentionally pointed just off the subject to create a moodier look.
Snoots narrow light even further, and are typically used for very directed lighting, for example to backlight a translucent liquid in an overall dark scene. Here’s an example shot where a snoot was used to backlight the gin bottle in a backlit scene. Most of the light in the final shot is coming from the softbox placed behind and to camera left of the set, with the snoot placed just off camera right of the set pointing directly at the bottle. The middle shot shows the light from the snoot (which was moved slightly before the final shot). Notice in the first shot that the bottle just looks a bit drab; with the focused backlight, it glows.
Here’s an example of some of the different modifiers for speedlites and what their results look like:
As you can see, the difference here is the spread of the light and that can make a huge difference in the way your subject looks.
Flags and Gobos In addition to modifiers that fit on your light, there are other ways to shape and control your light. Flags are used to reduce or block light from hitting the subject. Flags can be made from many different materials, but are typically black foam core or cloth.
In the following shot, the flag was a small piece of tissue paper placed directly behind the glass to reduce the hot spot on the bottom of the backlit glass.
Here’s another example use of flags to get rid of a hot highlight:
In this shot, not only was the soft box flagged off, but it was also turned so the light wasn’t pointing directly at the subject (see the fall off light section in this lesson), creating the dark background and reducing the highlights.
Gobos are like flags in that they “go between” (hence the term gobo) the light and the subject. But a gobo is typically used to do more than block a highlight. A gobo is often also used to deliberately cast a shadow onto the set, to give the scene more interesting or more contextual light. For example, stripping may be placed on the softbox to create the look of a multi-paned window or a mottled pattern may be used to create the dappled look of light under a tree. This is also known as a cucoloris, or “cookies.” Fall Off Light
Normally, when we position the light, we point it at the subject we are shooting (think about the imaginary clock circle we tend to reference).
However, sometimes that creates a light spread that doesn’t quite go where we want. One remedy for this is by flagging off parts of the scene to direct the light. Another option is to turn the light so that the angle of the light path is different. Instead of the strongest part of the light hitting the main subject, the fall off light hits it instead.
In this shot, the soft box was positioned so that the light falls off just behind the roll on the back plate. By letting the background go dark, more of the focus is brought to the foreground.
As you set up your lights, be sure to try different angles to see what the effect is.
Ambient Light & Strobes
We’ve mentioned that it’s best to avoid mixing light sources several times during this class. However, there are times that mixing light is useful. While strobes and daylight may not be exactly the same color (it would be hard for them to be, since daylight changes color based on the time of day and the cloud cover), usually it’s close enough so that daylight can be used as a fill for strobe and strobe can be used as a fill for daylight without creating any drastic color casts.
To use ambient light as a fill for a strobe, instead of shooting at the max sync speed, reduce your shutter speed. The light from the flash will remain constant (the flash is always much faster than your shutter speed, so the flash will be completed far sooner than the shutter closes regardless of how long the shutter is open), but as you decrease your shutter speed, you’ll let in more ambient light. You can continue to reduce your shutter speed until you get the look you want. I use this technique quite frequently when the ambient light is quite soft such as in this shot. A large softbox was just to camera left, a bit behind the model, but my shutter speed was fairly low (1/50s... I was on a tripod, btw!), so I picked up the natural ambient light in the room, giving the shot a less contrasty feel.
o shoot with a strobe as a fill for ambient light, you’ll need to expose for the ambient light either using aperture priority or, if you prefer, you can continue to shoot in manual mode. Then, set your strobe to the appropriate power to fill (most likely quite low). Be sure that your flash isn’t creating its own competing shadows... it should be just a subtle fill light. This is most useful when you are backlighting with natural light and want to just pop a bit of light onto the front of the subject, usually from the top (see the beer shot lighting setup to see how this works).
Specialized Lighting Styles
High Key
You may have heard the term “high key” before. A high key shot has a lower key to fill light ratio; that is the main light will be very close to the same brightness as the shadow side of the image. That doesn’t mean it is 1:1, there can (and should) still be shadows in the image. If you remove all the shadows, the image will look flat. But the overall look of the image is bright and lit with very soft subtle shadows.
Good examples of this are shots out of Donna Hay or Martha Stewart, or blogs like Cannelle-et- Vanille.
High key shots are typically associated with natural light, but are simply lit with a key light and a fill. The key light can be any diffused light source; larger light sources are better. For the fill, you can use another diffused light source, but usually a large white bounce is sufficient.
In this shot, we had a large/tall soft box to the left, and just a bit behind the subject. The image on the left had no deliberate bounce (although some light still bounces back naturally from the white table and the walls in the room). The image on the right had a large white foam core bounce, positioned at about 3:00 (leaned up against the white table).
In food photography, high key shots are usually on white or light backgrounds, often backlight, or lit from just to the side of backlit. That said, high key doesn’t have to be white on white; the ratio of light to fill is just very low. Most of the shots we’ve shown so far has been fairly high key.
Low Key
Low key shots are those with a higher ratio between the key and the fill light. Like with high key shots, low key shots can be created with any light source, but the light has to be controlled to produce the look. In painting, this effect is called chiaroscuro, which literally means light-dark. The high ratio between light and dark highlights form, and makes for a very moody image. Unlike high key images where the composition and focus has to provide the clue to the hero of the subject, in low key images, the light areas direct the eye.
The low key look is gaining popularity for food photography, most notably popularized by the blog What Katie Ate.
Here is a shot of those same rolls on a dark surface. The first image was shot with the same setup as the high key shot with the bounce. The second shot has the same key light, but with the key light flagged with a black card to prevent light from falling onto the back of the board, and no fill card was used.
Here’s the setup shot for the low key photo. Notice the large black card flagging off the softbox, narrowing the light and keeping it on the rolls and not the background (but still soft).
Here’s another example. The shot on the left was taken with a large softbox placed at about 2:00 while the shot on the right was taken with a gridded strobe diffused with some bubble wrap in the same location (neither shot had a bounce). The hard light (softened some with the bubble wrap) from the gridded strobe creates a greater contrast of light to dark.
Here’s the setup for the above shot on the right:
White backgrounds
Often in food photography, you’ll need a shot of a product on a clean white background. While a light tent may evenly light most subjects to provide a shadow free look with a pure white background, this approach doesn’t help the food look its best. You want to be able to light the food as you would without the white background, shadows and all, and to be able to expose your shot for the scene. The best way to do this is to light the background separately from your food.
For an all white product shot, start with your food on a white surface that extends quite a ways beyond the food. I use a long white table top from IKEA. Place a clean white foam core board at the end of the table, behind the subject. Be sure to give yourself enough room to position lights both for the backdrop and the foreground... a little more space than you think you need is best. Place two lights with diffusion (a softbox or shoot through umbrella works great for this) on either side of the table, pointing at the foam core, and away from the subject. This should give an even spread of light on the backdrop.
If you only have a single light for the background, you can use an additional piece of foam core in place of one of the lights to bounce light back onto the background, but the background may be slightly darker on one side. Look at the example diagram below:
Here’s a sample shot with this setup... notice the very slight grey in the upper right corner. This is easily taken out in Photoshop.
Notice how in these shots, the white is solid, almost as though there were a white sweep behind the image. Properly lit, you won’t see the horizon where the white table meets the white backdrop.
Now, all you have to do is light your subject with a separate light and bounce to create shadows and highlights that you need. Expose for the hero, and adjust your background lights to get the desired bright white.
This technique is most useful for shooting product; once you get your basic lighting adjusted, it’s easy to simply place new product in, shoot, and then move onto the next piece.
You can use this same technique to create a white background for a scene. Instead of the white table, style your shot as you want, leaving plenty of room behind the table for your white foam core backdrop and lights. Set your exposure for your subject lighting, and manually adjust the background lights until you get the white intensity you need.
It’s also possible to get a white background by placing a large softbox directly behind the subject. This has the advantage that it is just a single light, so you will get an even light spread, and it is very simple to setup!
However, there are a couple of drawbacks with this approach. First, you may not be able to turn your light down enough to keep the background from blowing out. Secondly, you will be adding more backlighting than with the other approach. While some light may spill from the previous setup, it won’t be as much as from a softbox background. This may be fine for your image, but it might not be the look you want.
Special Techniques
Splashes
Although rarely called for professionally, dropping your subject into a liquid and capturing it at the right moment can make for a very interesting image.
The best way to capture a perfectly sharp splash is to use your strobes flash duration, or the actual amount of time that the flash tube illuminates your subject, in a completely dark room. If the duration of the flash is short enough, then you can simply open the shutter and leave it open (the “B”, bulb mode, on the camera does this); it’s not recording anything if there is no light on the subject. All that will record is the light from the flash.
Flash duration decreases as output decreases so if your strobe flash duration is too long at full power, you will still have some room to work with as you turn it down. Speedlites will generally have shorter flash durations than larger strobes but will need to be fired at or near full power to generate enough light so you might need to use 2 or 3 of them at lower power settings to get enough light of a short enough duration. You can find out the flash duration of your strobe in the manual that came with it or possibly at the manufacturer’s website. My Hensel strobes claim to have flash durations of 1/500 at full power and 1/1600 at their lowest setting. 1/500 sec is right on the edge for freezing fast moving subjects but 1/1600 is plenty fast enough. If you find that you are unable to get sharp images of your subject, try lowering the power of your strobe or speedlite and see if that fixes the problem.
Although it won’t be quite as sharp as just a flash duration shot, you can also get a very good splash shot using a flash with the more standard setup of the shutter speed set to the maximum sync speed. In these shots, we shot with a shutter speed of 1/250 second and an aperture of f11 in a naturally lit room; there was no bleed of ambient light into the shot. Before any splashing begins, we get the light set. An 800W strobe with a large softbox was placed directly behind the set, acting as both a backlight and the white background. We took a few test shot to make sure that the background wasn’t blowing out (the softbox was set to about 1/16th power).
Be sure to get a clean glass photo! You may want to composite a great splash with a the clean glass.
To shoot, it’s easiest if there are two of you. One to count down and fire the shutter, the other to drop the object that is creating the splash. You’ll be doing this many, many times to get the splash you want, so be sure to have a towel or two on hand.
There are also triggers that you can purchase that will fire the camera and flash for you. They are triggered by sound or motion and you have a controller that you connect to the camera and flash and then with some test shots and adjustments, you will have a very repeatable method for capturing perfectly timed splashes. This does go beyond the scope of this class but if you are interested in learning more about this, take a look here for more information: http://www.cognisys- inc.com/stopshot/stopshot.php?osCsid=8b5573a010000920e7e7627b28dedd94
Remember, liquids and electricity don’t usually play well together so make sure that you think safety first and keep them separated at a safe distance. In our setup, the strobe was a reasonable distance from the splash zone, but if your strobes need to be closer, use clear plastic trash bags loosely draped over them to keep them from getting wet.
This goes for your camera too, but better a fried camera than a fried photographer. Use a fairly long lens for a safer working distance. No shorter than 100mm and closer to 200mm to really be safe. You might need an extension tube with a longer lens so that you can focus close enough. Also, the farther back your camera is, the longer your shutter release will need to be if you don’t have an assistant to drop your subjects for you.
Here’s another setup, capturing the splash underwater. I like to use an aquarium as it has plenty of depth and you don’t need to fill it all the way to the top which helps keep as much water from flying on you and your gear. The larger the container, the easier it is to contain the splash and you get a larger working area to capture the action. Any clear glass container will work though as long as it is deep enough to give you the space you need for your subject.
You can set your container on top of a colored cloth or towel to add some interesting colors to the surface reflections too.
In this setup, there were 2 500Ws strobes with 5” reflectors to control the light spread. One is pointed into the side of the aquarium to light the subject and the other is pointed at the wall behind the aquarium for a background light. There is also a white foam core reflector leaned against the opposite end of the aquarium for fill light on the subject. By using two lights, I can reduce their output to shorten flash duration and better my chances at capturing a sharp image. They are around a foot away from the water so they definitely need to be covered with plastic before I drop anything into the water!
The camera is farther back than the lights so I don’t need to cover it but a lens hood is a necessity to not only keep water off the front of the lens but to also help with contrast due to the strong back light that is created by the second strobe.
The blue tablecloth adds some nice color and also absorbs a lot of the splashed water making it easier to clean up afterwards.
As with any time we are shooting glass, it needs to be thoroughly cleaned before we start and then constantly wiped down and kept clean while shooting. Keep a good supply of cloth and paper towels handy as you will be using them a lot!
You will want to pre-focus your lens to the front of the glass and stop down quite a bit for good DOF to help make sure your subject is sharp. Depending on which lens you use, you might find that you need to shoot between f/11 and f/22 to get the proper amount of DOF. The subject will not always be at the same distance from the lens since it moves through the water differently each time you drop it. This also means that you will need a fairly strong light source. As always, make sure you are on manual focus. With the small reflectors and distance to the subject, I started with the main light as low as it would go and the background light 1 stop brighter. I want to keep them as low as possible but still get plenty of light on the subject and background. Take some test shots to check that the background strobe is bright enough and then start dropping your subjects and adjust the light level of the subject strobe. Also, placing a small piece of tape or clamp on the top edge of the aquarium in line with the center of your lens will help you line up your subject each time. Here are the results I like best out of over 100 attempts! Shooting tethered makes it a lot easier to check sharpness and subject placement.
Capturing a pour
Capturing pouring liquids is quite a bit easier than capturing splashes. It still requires some timing but you will find a much higher “keeper” rate. Shutter speeds of 1/250 or your camera’s sync speed with strobes, 1/500 or faster with continuous or natural light.
There are several setups that you can use depending on the look you want and the liquid you are using. Translucent liquids will usually benefit from some backlighting. A softbox makes a great background or you can use a white wall or white reflector to bounce light off of. Depending on your shooting angle and subject, that might be all you need. A softbox from the 10-11:00 position or the 1-2:00 position will also work well and can be used to create a nice highlight when needed.
You can also use an overhead light in addition to the side/backlighting. A softbox will really help control glare and hot spots when shooting reflective surfaces such as liquids and glass so I use them on all of my overhead lights for this type of work.
The following three images show what each light provides. The first is with just the overhead light. The second with just the backlight, and the third with both lights. It’s always a good idea to shoot sample shots with just a single light source on at a time; that way, you know what light is lighting what, and can adjust appropriately.
As you can see, using two lights works much better for an image like this. We used this same setup to capture the following image of beer pouring into a glass.
The following three images were shot with a single softbox at the 10-11:00 position (left), the same softbox as well as a second strobe bounced off of a white foam core board (middle), and then just a strobe bounced off the foam core (right). As you can see, they all result in different looks with the same subject. It’s always a good idea to experiment with your lighting gear and modifiers and see all the options that each one provides.
(BTW - these shots were just about showing the pour... when shooting wine glasses, compose your shots better than this... don’t cut off the feet of your wine glasses! Or, trim them just below the bowl so it’s intentional looking. :-) )
For this wine pour, a single softbox behind the subject was the only light source.
Again, timing is everything so be prepared to shoot and reshoot until you catch just the right moment.
Having several glasses, cups, or whatever you are pouring into can speed up the time between attempts by not having to empty and clean the same one each time.
When you miss, you need to completely clean up the container as well as the background before the next shot so keep lots of towels handy too!
You can combine some of the techniques in this lesson for completely different looks as well. Always experiment and try new things because you never know what they might lead to. After I finished shooting the rim lighting images, I was moving on to straight pours but thought I would try one with the rim light set up first since it was already in place. I was quite happy with the resulting image.
Rim Lighting
Rim lighting is a technique that provides a very thin highlight down each side of your subject. It is quite simple to set up using a softbox on your strobe or speedlite and an opaque material to block out the center leaving two strips of light. I use an 18x26 softbox blocked off with a 24” wide piece of black foam core to leave around 1” of the face of the softbox exposed on each side. Larger or smaller size softboxes will work depending on the size of your subject.
You can see the effect on the sides of the bottle that this set up gives. You can also see stray light hitting the subject which can be a real problem any time you are shooting glass. You will need to block out any stray light with a flag. Remember to do some test shots to see if you are getting any unwanted reflections or highlights from ambient light. If you find that you are unable to block all the unwanted light, you can always make a “tent” around your subject out of black foam core board.
Aperture choice will depend strictly on how much DOF you want. You will need to adjust your light output accordingly as you stop down or open up the lens. Shutter speed should be set to the camera’s sync speed.
The light on the right edge of the bottle is illuminating the wine in the glass. Depending on the location of the bottle in relation to the glass, you can increase or decrease the size and change the placement of the illuminated strip inside the glass.
Turning up the output of the strobe allows for a slight amount of fill light to hit the bottle label.
You can get a similar rimmed light look on white by using the same white background technique covered earlier, and then using two soft boxes on either side of the glass or wine bottle (or one soft box and a large white bounce opposite).
Getting a Glow
Translucent foods and liquids are ideal candidates for backlighting. You can really show off colors and patterns with your light shining directly through your subject. It is critical that your light source be intense enough and your subject translucent enough to make this work. If you are using fruits and vegetables as a subject, be sure to slice them thin enough to let plenty of light through. If you are shooting liquids, pick something that is fairly light in color. It’s much more difficult to get light to penetrate red wine than white wine or dark beers like porter and stout than something like pale ale. There may be times when you need to “water down” your liquid just a bit to get some light through it.
The setup is pretty simple and just about any strobe, hot light, speedlite, or even natural light will work. A softbox will make a great light source for backlighting fairly thin foods and light colored liquids as well as providing a nice high key background. A diffusion panel will also work as will a thin piece of white Plexiglas. You can place a very large reflector on your strobe, point it straight up and set a piece of Plexiglas on it to make a “light table”. You can get thin sheets of Plexi in different colors to make some interesting backgrounds as well. Another alternative is an actual light table or slide viewing box. Colored gels can be placed on these for different background colors.
Whenever you are shooting towards your light source, you need to watch out for lens flare so a lens hood is definitely required and you can even use your hand or a small flag to block any additional unwanted light from hitting the front lens element. Additionally, masking off your light source so that you are only allowing light through your subject and not around it will also really help avoid flare and increase contrast. Black foam core works great for this.
Strobe with white plexi sitting on a 7 inch reflector.
White plexi sitting on a small softbox.
White plexi sitting on top of a fluorescent fixture.
Another option to create a light box is to purchase a large white plastic bin, and top it with a piece of white plexi. Place a speedlight in the box (along with a trigger), pointed at the plexi. You may end up getting a hot spot in the middle of your plexi... if so, try adding some sort of diffusion to your speedlite.
By placing your subject on top of the plexiglas and shooting straight down, you can create some interesting back lit images.
Whew. That was a lot, right?
Here’s the thing. These are techniques that suggest some ways to use your light. This lesson could go on for hundreds and hundreds of pages talking about different ideas for lighting: but ultimately, it comes down to the same basic idea, putting the right quantity and quality of light where you want it. Photography (even commercial photography!) is a very personal and creative expression. We’ve recommend using light from the side around through the back... but you may have a look that requires front light. Generally, food looks good with a lot of diffusion, but you may have a brilliant idea that uses hard light with razor sharp, black shadows.
As part of your practice, try the techniques we’ve suggested here, but continue to try other things. Move your lights, turn them up and turn them down, shine them through interestingly shaped objects, break some rules! Study what other photographers (and not just food photographers...) are doing with their lighting, and take what you’ve learned in this lesson and see if you can work out what they’ve done. See if you can recreate it. Then, spend even more time creating and developing your eye and your personal look.
Assignment
1. Shoot a subject with high key and low key lighting. Post your favorite image of the two for critique, and the alternative image in the comment section.
2. Shoot a subject with an all white background.
3. Try one of the special techniques: pour, splash, rim light or glow. Feel free to try all of them... but just post your favorite.
In each of these assignments, be sure to note your lens details, exposure settings and any lighting details that are relevant. The more information you provide, the more detailed we can be in our critiques.