Cookies!

Guess what arrived in the mail today? Nope, not mail. Cookies. Real, live, monster cookies. They're gone now, but I had to document them as they are such a rare phenomena. It's not too often you have a chance to observe the native monster cookie in it's natural habitat.

Kidding, that's all photoshop, the cookies don't actually appear in rainbow clouds...obviously...okay no more lame jokes.

On to actual photography, here's my actual photos for today. I could decided on just one, I got into shooting them so you get two photos for today!

This turned into a experiment with shape and portions of a whole. Obviously, I couldn't just sit there and take pictures, I had to interact with my subjects like any good photographer. So my subjects slowly, mysteriously, began to disappear before my eyes. I started with three cookies, and when I was done there was only one! I have no idea what happened, maybe they got scared and hid in my stomach....

So as for lighting, I had a 560 in soft box about 5 inches overhead, and a snooted 560 just off to camera left.

The soft box added some really pretty light. It wrapped light everywhere, and made an amazing shadow. Super, super soft transition zone. But with just the soft box, the cookies didn't really have much depth. They were just kinda...there.

So I added in the snooted light as a cross light to give some texture on the cookie. The light was set very low, almost on the level of the cookie, so the highlights and shadows were sharp.

I didn't really need the snoot, the light was so close and I didn't have to worry about light contamination on the white mat board. I already had the snoot on though, so I just left it on. Did give the light a little bit of warmth to it as the snoot is made from card board.

In general, when you shoot food, you want to depict it as naturally as possible. You don't want to change colors and contrast too much, a little is find of course, but too much and the food will look fake. I like to do a mixture of hard and soft light for food. Give it some good texture, but also soften it just a little bit. The shadows are very important in food photography, they give the feel to what the food is. A hard shadow might convey intensity, or strength in flavor. A soft shadow is nice when the food is a treat or a "relaxing" food. If there's such a thing...

For cookies, I wanted the texture, but I also wanted a soft shadow. Cookies are amazing and hard shadows would just make them look rushed, or hard and brittle. I like gooey, soft cookies, and so I used soft light. Plus, it makes it look like they are floating a bit above the ground, almost as if they are magical (which of course they are).

I've done some food photography before, for my sisters blog. It's Emma's Baking Addition. There's some great recipes for treats on there, so check it out. I hope she continues it this summer...I get paid for my photography services with the treats sooooo.....

Anyway, what did I do to the cookies in Lr?

Not much. I find that I don't do much post anymore. I try to live by K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid. The more you do, unless you're good, the faker it looks. For these photos, I raised the highlights and vibrance a bit, and that's it. Obviously lens correction as well, but no other significant edits. The key to a good photo is in the lighting while you are shooting, no in Ps. You can't fix bad lighting later. It's just bad. But you can enhance good lighting very very easily and make it look even better. Do the extra in the beginning and save your self in the long run.

Camera setting were, f5, 1/80, and ISO100. I used a higher aperture than normal because the strobes are so bright up close.

For the background, I just put the cookies right on a piece of white mat board. Simple and quick solution. The stuff costs 50 cents, so it's one of the cheapest ways to improve your photography. You can use it as backdrops, reflectors, gobos...there's a long list.

All for tonight, go get yourself some cookies. See you tomorrow.