She loves to bake, so in the summer she has a baking blog called Emma's Baking Addiction. She posts her recipes and what not as well as fun anecdotes that go along with whatever she made.
And of course I get the honor to photograph the baked goods in exchange for some of them :) omm nom nom.
For the sandwiches today, I wanted them to look summery but also cool at the same time. To give it both these features, I chose to have a really strong back and top light that would mimic the bright sun. We set up a little plate inside Emma's mat box thing (basically a bit white box) and put the sandwiches in it. She has some cool lamps that we used for some soft fill light, then I used two strobes for the main lights. I set up one strobe in the back at 1/32 power to blast light around everywhere. Then I had one strobe in the front right at a low power to just add some texture and light the front. I think the combination of the four lights makes some really nice soft light, as well as some awesome reflections on the plate. A giant plate with no edges would be fantastic. I may have to get one of those...
The problem with the light set up was that is sapped the contrast and warmth from the sandwiches. They just didn't look...good. Luckily, it's an easy fix in Lr.
I lowered the blacks and shadows to get that end of the tonal range back, and then warmed up the white bal temp. This helped a lot as it gave the sandwiches more of a sunset look. But it wasn't quite there yet. I then went into the color panel and upped the saturation of the long end of the visible light spectrum, and lowered it on the short end. Short story I made the warm colors warmer and the cool colors go away. Worked like a charm. No more purple coco chips, because who wants purple coco chips?
So as far as composition goes, I like to have some objects cut off by the frame. If everything is nicely inside the image, it feel it tends to make it boring. It just feels to staged to me. This goes back to the idea of the snap shot. Photography really got it's recognition as a fine art when street photography and portable camera's began to have their influence. Photographers went away from the painting format of having everything nicely in the frame and started purposely cut parts of the image off. Street photographers were the pioneers of this style, but of course their were the few masters who had caught on to this earlier in other disciplines of photography. But as a style of framing, it really took off as the snap shot became well known.
Short explanation but little photo history for you.
Focus is also a great method of drawing the viewers attention where you want it. The out of focus cookie just adds balance to the image, if there were two cookies in focus it'd be boring. You wouldn't know what to look at. But with a fraction of a out of focus cookie, it just adds a lead or path that directs your eye to the sharp cookie. Cookie sandwich that is.
Anyway, time to end. See you tomorrow.
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