Here’s a really fun food photo of a mini cake we shot yesterday. I’m usually not a huge fan of tilting the camera, but in this case, I really think it works.

Food Photography Of Mini Cake

To tell you the truth, there isn’t really a whole lot I don’t like about this food photo.I think that the crop works really well.

Crop – I usually use spoons, forks or knives as design filler elements to round out the composition of the photo, but in this case, the spoon plays a more dominate roll.  I don’t think that the spoon is at all distracting and I feel it adds to the eye flow of the photo.  I find that I’m compelled to get  the whole product (mini cake) in the shot and to pretty much center it in the frame.  In this case, the cake isn’t quite centered, but almost…  I need to fight that instinct, so not all my food compositions look the same, but I think this seems to work.  But I always think that… I don’t know if this would be thought of as my style or my rut…  I love the way the plate helps direct the viewer’s eye around the lower half of the photo and up the strawberries and back around to the main subject, the cake.

Props – I was a little worried that the color of strawberries would be a little too distracting, but I think that the color ended up being muted enough not to prove a compositional distraction.  My eye still goes to the mini cake, and that’s what we were all looking to do.  Even though you only see a little sliver of the surface, I think that it adds to the shot.  It’s textural but it’s in keeping with the overall feel of the photo.  This is one of the rare cases where I think a napkin really wouldn’t have added much to the shot.

Lighting – This is a great sample of using a glare light to blow out the background.  By over-lighting the background, you really don’t need much in the way of props beyond the plate and this also tends to give the viewer of the photo an impression of  “freshness”.  Spoons are always a pain in the butt to photograph and the same glare light is the light that ends up preventing the spoon from being mostly black.

Focus – This image was shot with my aperture wide open to give a little romance to the photo.  Since this wasn’t really a product shot where we had to see every little nook and cranny of the subject, I was allowed to let parts of the product go out-of-focus.

Camera – Arca Swiss 6×9 View Camera

Lens – Schneider 120mm Super Angulon

Lights – Norman with Chimera light boxes

Here’s a side view of the set. All that is missing is the main light (behind me to the right) and the mirrors that I added to accent some of the details of the product.

The large box is set to dominate and blow out the background. It also works as a great glare light.

Here’s a shot of the set before I got into doing the final lighting detail work. You might be wondering why I don’t use the modeling lights when I set up my lighting. It’s because I need to see what the main light is doing. The other lights will be added one at a time so that I can see what each light does to the set and to the food.