Studio Plan

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.