Emma started off by showing Tania how to set up her camera to capture food setups indoors
FIRST PORT OF CALL
Emma says… I like to shoot tethered via Adobe Lightroom. Being able to see the images as you’re taking them, while zooming in to check critical sharpness, is really helpful. Yes, it can be a bit temperamental and slow, but it’s extremely useful in a studio setting, especially if you’re working with clients.
FOODIE BLUES
Emma says… I like to set my white balance manually, starting at around 5600K and cool it down further from there. The temptation is to warm your images like a person’s face, but this can make the food look sickly. Always shoot in raw, so that if your colour temperature is off you can change it in post-production.
WHAT’S ON THE MENU?
Emma says… I shoot in Manual mode, and I often find that my aperture is at around f/5.6. While I’m usually shooting on a tripod, I still like to keep my shutter speed relatively fast to completely eliminate camera shake. While we know to keep our ISO low, Nikon cameras have become so adept in low light that you can often push your ISO a bit.
HOT SHOT #1
CAMERA Nikon D850 LENS 24-70mm f/2.8 EXPOSURE 1/800 sec, f/3.5, ISO250
When Tania arrived at Emma’s home studio, gorgeous morning W light was filtering through the windows, and Emma was busy adding berries to a delicious-looking Italian ‘pandoro’ cake. Tania admitted that she was both excited and a little nervous to be trying food photography for the very first time. But Emma soon made her feel right at home.
“I’m probably not very grown-up,” she told Tania. “Food is fun, food is joy, food is a celebration, and I want to show food in its best light.” As she finished preparing the pandoro, she outline the itinerary for the day. “I wanted to provide as much variety as possible, so I’ve got three sweet and two savoury setups.”
“That sounds like a lot,” said Tania. “It is, but you often have to work quickly,” said Emma. “If you’re on a commercial shoot, you’ll have multiple dishes to photograph, and as you’ll find later, some foods have to be photographed instantly before they spoil.
“Ultimately, there are three angles when shooting food photography: 45 degrees, eye level and flatlay,” she
