Here are a couple of shots from my recent Food Photography classes, with the tarps in action.

]]> http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/08/17/budget-linen/feed/ 12 http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/07/23/slw-julyaugust-challenge-matts-ultimate-summer-salad/ http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/07/23/slw-julyaugust-challenge-matts-ultimate-summer-salad/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:53:51 +0000 L http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/07/23/slw-julyaugust-challenge-matts-ultimate-summer-salad/ It’s no secret around here that I am a huge fan of Matt Armendariz and Adam Pearson. Both personally and professionally, these guys are some of my favorite people around. And when I saw this salad posted as part of Matt’s new column on the Cooking Channel website, I immediately wanted to make it. And, to make it the new remake challenge.

photo courtesy of Matt Armendariz; Styling by Adam Pearson

See, this photo hits one of my own personal challenges in food photography: Making a landscape photo look great. Whenever I am required to shoot landscape (and it usually takes a requirement), I cringe a little inside. It’s quite a bit harder to get depth into a photo when you have limited vertical space… and I find myself trying to figure out what in the world to do with all that horizontal space around it (unless I know that some copy will run there).

For this challenge, make a simple, non-lettuce based salad (I highly recommend following or at least adapting Matt’s recipe, because tomatoes photograph beautifully) and shoot it in a landscape composition like the original photo. Note where the light is coming from here too… you are going to need some sort of bounce to offset that lovely backlighting.

It’s really helpful when you use the new diptych format when you post your results! For this diptych the original photo goes on the top, and your take on the bottom.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of August.

Don’t you just love the charming colors and textures of these Wobbly Plates’ biscuit bowls.

This month’s challenge, which will start now and go through the end of June, is a subject very dear to me: muffins. I make muffins a lot. The particular recipe in the photo for blueberry streusel muffins comes from Lorna Yee’s beautiful cookbook, The Newlywed Kitchen.

“The Newlywed Kitchen: Delicious Meals for Couples Cooking Together” (Lorna Yee, Ali Basye)

Whether or not you are a couple, this book is full of lovely, delicious recipes that really work and I’d highly recommend picking up a copy (or giving one as a gift if you do have a wedding shower coming up). These muffins are insanely soft and fluffy, packed with fruit and just the right amount of spice.

For this challenge, you can use any sort of muffin you’d like though. I think the streusel topping gives a fantastic texture and adds visual interest, but your muffin can be simpler if you’d like. The key to this photo is the careful layering of linens, dish, parchment and wrapper, all that lead you up to that first bite. Getting a good bite can be a bit challenging because you want to make sure you hit the fruit and show a nice amount of crumb.

It’s really helpful when you use the new diptych format when you post your results! The original photo goes on the left, and your take on the right.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of June.

I knew I perhaps had a problem at the last blogger meetup I attended. As everyone was going around telling a little bit about themselves and their blogs, I began to worry. Which blog to I choose? Do I really list all of them? People might start falling asleep by the end. But, some people know me from Cook & Eat, others from Still Life With, others know me as that crazy doughnut lady or the photographer who is sharing a studio with Clare Barboza. And, would it surprise you if I said I had possible plans for even more?

The time had arrived to give my blogs a single, simpler home. Now you can find (almost) everything that I blog all in one spot. You can subscribe to the whole kit and kaboodle, or just the categories you are interested in:

• Cook & Eat
• Still Life With
• Doughnuts
• Photography Portfolio
• Love

I also added a snazzy new archive page. Literally. The plugin I’m using is called Snazzy Archives, and it’s kind of sweet looking.

I’m sure there will be kinks I’m working out of the next few days, but I hope you enjoy it!

I’m happy to announce the first of what I hope becomes many food styling and photography workshops in my new studio space, Spare Room! The classes are small, so if you are interested, you’ll want to get your tickets soon before they fill up!

You can purchase tickets on Brown Paper Tickets:

Natural Food Styling & Photography

This 1/2 day Natural Food Styling & Photography Workshop is for anyone interested in learning the basics of food styling and photography for editorial purposes. We will focus on simple plating and propping of food for the most appealing photos without resorting to tricks that render the food inedible. We will also cover creative lighting techniques using natural light. Students should have a working knowledge of their camera setting. This class is limited to 6 people.

Cost: $99 (plus ticket fees)
April 17, 12:30pm to 4:30pm

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/104299

Natural Food Styling & Photography

This 1/2 day Natural Food Styling & Photography Workshop is for anyone interested in learning the basics of food styling and photography for editorial purposes. We will focus on simple plating and propping of food for the most appealing photos without resorting to tricks that render the food inedible. We will also cover creative lighting techniques using natural light. Students should have a working knowledge of their camera setting. This class is limited to 6 people.

Cost: $99 (plus ticket fees)
April 28, 12:30pm to 4:30pm

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/104302

Low Light Food Photography

This evening photography workshop is for anyone interested in learning how to deal with low light situations when photographing food. We will focus primarily on using off camera speedlights to replicate a natural, daylight look for food, but also cover a few tricks for getting the best results from alternative light sources such as candle light. Students should have a working knowledge of their camera setting. This class is limited to 6 people.

Cost: $99 (plus ticket fees)
May 3, 5pm to 9pm

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/104305

The cookie shot seemed to be a bit intimidating (or perhaps uninteresting) to most of you, so let’s go a different route this month, with a simple green salad.

This is a shot that I took at the workshop we had with Penny De Los Santos back in December. In that class, we each had 3 assignments to shoot food that was prepared by the fantastic Springhill Restaurant in West Seattle. I haven’t talked much about that class, but that’s mostly because others have said it already. Penny is wonderful, and I simply loved hearing the stories from her travels.

The thing that Penny asked us to focus the most on was on pushing our own limits and viewing things a little differently. Shoot from a different angle, try a different lighting style, or maybe simply change your lens. I almost always shoot with either my 100mm 2.8 or 90mm tilt-shift, so for this particular assignment, I threw on the 24 to 105, a lens that Penny said she shoots with almost exclusively. Immediately, looking at the photos, I knew this was a good thing for me to do. The images looked fresh to me… a nice break from shots that sometimes I feel that I have shot a hundred times.

Anyway… enough of the back-story. The assignment is quite simple. It’s a lightly dressed, green salad, in a white bowl on a white napkin on a dark surface. To give you a one more additional hint… I was shooting on a very high ISO for this because I was hand-holding and the light was not particularly abundant.

Do go ahead and make your photos diptychs that show this original photo along with your version of it on the right.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of March.

For 2010, I’m going to start it up again, beginning with this question from a reader about a budget lighting:

I am an amateur photographer and enjoy taking pictures of food. Currently I’m trying to put together a family recipe book with photos.   The lighting in my kitchen is not very good. I found your blog and I read the blog post about food photography gear from 2006. My question is about lighting gear. Do you still recommend the Tota-Pak or V-Light Pak?   $200 would be about tops for my budget. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

My first recommendation, if your kitchen doesn’t have good light, would be to find a different room in your house with a window. You only need one good sized window, and a table set to its side. My kitchen doesn’t get good light either. My studio is upstairs, with windows on the south and west sides.  On sunny days, cover the window with a very sheer curtain or some tissue or vellum to soften the light or it will be too harsh.

But of course, there are still times that sunlight just won’t work, like when you are trying to shoot your dinner (or, in Seattle sometimes in dead of winter, your late lunch). So, having a nice, compact lighting set is nice to have.

The Lowell Tota‘s are good lights. They worked very well for me getting started… the bulbs last a long time, they give nice soft light when used with the umbrellas, and they are pretty compact. One thing to be aware of is that these lights do get very, very hot and are somewhat easy to knock over, so be very cautious running them around small kids or pets.

The other option, which is a bit less expensive, is the Lowell Ego light system which uses standard household lightbulbs (Update: they use compact florescent, which everyone should be using now anyway! See the comments for more on the replacement bulbs). These are super easy to use, and work quite well for tabletop work. As long as that is all you are doing, I’d probably say go that way. The Tota’s are more flexible though if you want to get wider shots, like people cooking in the kitchen.

I still use natural light 85% of the time, but I’ve moved to an off camera speedlight kit (with pocket wizards) which is super compact for taking on location, and battery powered so I don’t have to worry about finding electrical outlets near where I’m shooting (something you will have to think about with either of the Lowell lights mentioned above). You can get a very simple speedlight kit for about $249. I use rechargeable Nimh batteries because they do chew through the batteries pretty quickly.

Do you have questions? Send them my way!

I’ve had a set of these for the past 4 years and used them extensively. A simple switch of a background color can make a huge difference in the feel of a shot.

My old sheets were starting to look a bit ratty, so I made a trip down to Ecohaus earlier this week and picked up 9 “new walls” for the studio… which all store away in the tiniest space between my cabinets. I’m in love with some of the new colors they are offering.

Wallpaper would work great for this too! In fact, I’m particularly intrigued by the Madison & Grow papers. The samples are only $5, but I’m not sure how big they are.

PS: Something bizarro happened last time I upgraded WordPress and it deleted all of my categories… it’s going to take a little while, but I should have things recategorized in the next couple of weeks. And, I’ll be posting a new challenge for Flickr at the beginning of February.

Hi All! Happy Belated New Year!

Sorry for the long silence, but I’m excited to let you know that there are some big things coming up this year! For starters, I’m beginning to teach a few classes on food photography and natural food styling. These will be small, hands-on classes where we will focus more on the ins and outs of food photography (plating, lighting, lens choice) rather than camera basics.

The first class is coming right up! Thanks to the wonderful efforts of Seattle Bon Vivant, who will be hosting the workshop, a group of 10 of us will meet in downtown Seattle on February 16th. To sign up and for more details, email seattlebonvivant (at) gmail.com with a subject line of Lara Ferroni’s Workshop. The cost of the class will be $65 per person.

I’ll also be offering private one on one and small group (up to 4 people) workshops this year. For more information on those, send me some mail on what you are most interested to learn and we can talk about what works.