Studio Plan
My
plan for my first still life/food photography shoot is to take photographs of
various fruit and vegetables. First of all the reason why I chose to do food
photography for this assignment is because I’ve never took photographs of food
before so I decided to do something different. The first idea I had was to use
fruit and vegetables, mainly because most are bright, vivid, unusual colours. I
am going to take these photographs on a low key background with a black surface
as I want them to be quite unique compared to most food photography i.e.- soft
lighting, high key, in a kitchen. My reason for wanting them to be on a black
surface, aside from wanting them to look unique, is that I want them to stand
out, to look more colourful and vivid than they would usually look. I am going
to be using my DSLR- Sony A58 and my kit lens, 18-55mm. To light my photographs
I am going to use 2 snoot lights at 45-degree angle from the table, so the
fruit and vegetables will be evenly lit from both sides. I want to use these lights
because I think they’ll light every detail upon the fruit/vegetables.
For my second shoot I am going to be taking
photographs of Doughnuts and Cupcakes, again I am using this food because of
the bright colours that will work well against a low-key backdrop. My plan is
basically the same as the first shoot, mainly because my images should work as
a series and should compliment each other so I am not going to be changing the
backdrop or lighting set up. I am going to be using my Sony DSLR again as the photographs
I took on my first shoot came out successful, so I want the same consistency
with this shoot. I had some technical
issues in my first shoot, involving triggers not setting off other lights, so I
had to use one as usual, flashing and one light just as a modeling light. The
issue with this that I have managed to fix was that the batteries were running
low and were unable to set the light off.
For my third shoot I am going to take
photographs of Sushi. When researching what food to use for my next shoot, I
thought it would be interesting to take photographs of sushi as it usually has
decent amounts of different colours, i.e.- colour of the fish- peach, colours
from the vegetables- Red Peppers. I also
thought it would be interesting to use sushi as it has quite unusual textures,
i.e.- the rice, seaweed wrap and textures of the fish or vegetables. Again I am
using a low-key backdrop and a black surface as the images I have took thus far
have came out well enough and again I want the same consistency in my
images. And again I am using my Sony
DSLR for the same reason, as I want the same look and feel to my photos.
After shopping for the sushi for the third
shoot, I changed my mind on using this food as it was very unappealing and dull
and I don’t think it would have worked well if I tried to use this, it wouldn’t
have had the same bright look against the low-key backdrop as my other
photographs. I changed my food to Cookies and Nougat as I thought the Nougat
would look very different and unusual even though it is white which is
technically a dull colour. I am also using cookies mainly for the texture, as I
thought they would be interesting as they have unusual textures and would be
lit nicely with snoot lights.
