Welcome to our P52! This project is designed to get you out with your camera once a week in a meaningful way. Each week I will post a prompt for you to consider. The prompts are merely suggestions, and you are free to shoot off topic if you wish. All images posted must be taken by you, be safe for work, and be taken with this project in mind. Please do not post archive photos. For a further discussion of the guidelines, please refer to this thread, and you can find the previous weeks linked there if you missed them. Feel free to join in at any time of the year, and you may go back to missed weeks if you still wish to participate.
Week 31: Food
![main.jpg]( "main.jpg")
Here’s a little known fact about me: food photography is probably my least favorite genre. I like the idea of it, but as someone who cooks pretty much every night, by the time I get around to having dinner actually ready to eat, the last thing I want to do is hold everyone up and tell them to wait until it’s cold so I can take a photo of it. I’m also not good at props/plating/angles. I really appreciate good food photography in magazines or on menus. But for some reason it eludes me. I have not taken a new photo for this challenge yet, and I promise really hard to try to take on this week.
![2023-07-31_0001.jpg]( "2023-07-31_0001.jpg")
For me personally, the vast majority of my food photography comes from family birthday cakes. That is about the only time it ever occurs to me to take a photo of food, and even then, not every birthday gets a photo specifically of the cake (although I do almost always take photos of the birthday celebrant blowing out their candles). Cake photos with candles typically look better when the candles are lit, although that is not a rule I always follow myself.
![2023-07-31_0004.jpg]( "2023-07-31_0004.jpg")
![2023-07-31_0003.jpg]( "2023-07-31_0003.jpg")
However, the same general principles for regular photography stand for food photography: good lighting, good depth of field. I think color plays a larger role in food photography, because no one will find a plate of turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes appetiizing when plated on yellow plates under hinky indoor lighting. If this is your scene, be sure to use natural light, add some greenery, swap out the plate to a darker color and don’t shoot straight down. I always also enjoy somewhat dimmer light, like restaurant lighting, and I like t try to have some clear glasses that are partially filled to help reflect the light, when appropriate to the scene.
![2023-07-31_0002.jpg]( "2023-07-31_0002.jpg")
![2023-07-31_0005.jpg]( "2023-07-31_0005.jpg")
Traditional food photography focuses just on the food and the tablescape, but often having a human element to a photo helps tell a story better.
![2023-07-31_0006.jpg]( "2023-07-31_0006.jpg")
You can also try a diptych style where you have two parts to one story, perhaps the cooking/making of, and then the final dish.
![2023-07-31_0007.jpg]( "2023-07-31_0007.jpg")
As always, have fun this week!
(PS - If you are a work ahead P52er, I have some logistical issues I am trying to work out for the next couple of weeks and I might have to switch the themes around. I am not going to change any of them, just the week that they will be live. I will keep you all posted on this and hope to have it worked out in the next couple of days. Planning the whole year out in advance is a good idea, but of course real life sometimes gets in the way of what I thought would be going on back in December when I put the schedule together).
Week 31: Food
Here’s a little known fact about me: food photography is probably my least favorite genre. I like the idea of it, but as someone who cooks pretty much every night, by the time I get around to having dinner actually ready to eat, the last thing I want to do is hold everyone up and tell them to wait until it’s cold so I can take a photo of it. I’m also not good at props/plating/angles. I really appreciate good food photography in magazines or on menus. But for some reason it eludes me. I have not taken a new photo for this challenge yet, and I promise really hard to try to take on this week.
For me personally, the vast majority of my food photography comes from family birthday cakes. That is about the only time it ever occurs to me to take a photo of food, and even then, not every birthday gets a photo specifically of the cake (although I do almost always take photos of the birthday celebrant blowing out their candles). Cake photos with candles typically look better when the candles are lit, although that is not a rule I always follow myself.
However, the same general principles for regular photography stand for food photography: good lighting, good depth of field. I think color plays a larger role in food photography, because no one will find a plate of turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes appetiizing when plated on yellow plates under hinky indoor lighting. If this is your scene, be sure to use natural light, add some greenery, swap out the plate to a darker color and don’t shoot straight down. I always also enjoy somewhat dimmer light, like restaurant lighting, and I like t try to have some clear glasses that are partially filled to help reflect the light, when appropriate to the scene.
Traditional food photography focuses just on the food and the tablescape, but often having a human element to a photo helps tell a story better.
You can also try a diptych style where you have two parts to one story, perhaps the cooking/making of, and then the final dish.
As always, have fun this week!
(PS - If you are a work ahead P52er, I have some logistical issues I am trying to work out for the next couple of weeks and I might have to switch the themes around. I am not going to change any of them, just the week that they will be live. I will keep you all posted on this and hope to have it worked out in the next couple of days. Planning the whole year out in advance is a good idea, but of course real life sometimes gets in the way of what I thought would be going on back in December when I put the schedule together).
