13 Most Common Problems With Your Food Photos
If you have ever moved out of Auto-Mode of you camera you have probably encountered one of these problems with photography. In fact, there are some problems that you may have come across just because you didn’t move out of Auto-Mode. In other words, you may have encountered problems no matter what you do, lets look at the 13 most common problems with your food photos.
13 Most Common Problems With Your Food Photos
In the next couple of weeks, I plan to write about some of the most common problems that you may come across while making photos.
In these next few posts we will look at the photographic problems in details and we will talk about how to identify the problem, reason why these problems occur and how to solve these problems.
In this first post, we will tackle the first exposure related problem.
1. Overexposed Food Photo
When a photograph has some areas that are so bright that it distracts the purpose of the photograph and its subject, the photo may be overexposed. This may be technically correct, however there is a subtle distinction that should be understood. While having very bright areas in a photo may mean that certain areas are overexposed, it is important to see if the subject itself is properly exposed.
How to Identify – An overexposed photo can be identified if the subject of the photograph is way too bright to clearly see the characteristics and details of this subject. In the example below, this will be more clear.
Reason – So why are some photographs overexposed? Overexposure occurs when the amount of light that reaches the sensor or a film is more than the intended amount of light. Intended amount of light would translate into the degree of brightness a photographer wanted in the photo. It may mean that either the aperture was too widely open, or shutter speed was too low or both these reasons contributed to the overexposure.
Solution – An overexposed photograph can be easily corrected in post processing, however, the idea here is to avoid overexposure before taking the photograph. This means that you need to know how to correctly expose the subject and how much light should enter the camera and fall on the sensor/film. This judgment comes only after taking lot of photographs.
Example – Let’s look at the example below. In this case, the prawns are overexposed at left bottom area. The lower prawn is “too white”. This seems like a photograph taken with on-camera flash without diffuser. (If you can do me just one favor please do this – never ever use on-camera flash without diffuser)
Overexposed – Photo by DOS82 Too Bright ╪ Over Exposure
One thing to keep in mind here is that, overexposure can be used creatively and can enhance the photograph by a great degree. As I mentioned before, the key is to expose the subject properly and in order to do that, you may end up overexposing some other areas of the photograph.
This distinction is important. Look at the photograph by Mowie below. Here the subject is well exposed, however the background may seem a little too bright. This is a perfect case when too bright ╪ overexposed. Visit Mowie’s blog Mowielicious for more awesome photographs. If you haven’t heard it yet, his blog also won, “Good Looking Blog” award in January 2010. Say him Hi and congratulate him on Twitter.
Coming in Future Posts
In the next few posts, we will look at remaining 12 most common problems with food photos.
- Underexposed
- False Colors
- Grainy Pictures
- Out of focus Photos
- Shaky Photos
- Glare (or Flare)
- Vignetting
- Red-Eyed Chefs
- Wide angle distortion
- Spotty pictures
- Tilted horizontal
- Poor Composition
Has this Helped?
If you think this is helpful, bookmark on delicious this post or shrae this on twitter.
Did I miss any of the problem that you have seen in photos? Please comment below and I’ll add that to the list.
Photo Courtesy – Bright Orange by snaphappydan
Related Posts
- Wrong Colors in Your Photos: Common Problems with Your Photography – Part 3
- Grainy Photos and How to Correct Them – Common Problems with Your Photography: Part 4
- 7 Most Common Food Photography Crimes (and How to Save Yourself)
awesome post!! Thanks for showing examples so we could see what you’re talking about. Just an idea but I’d love if at the end of the series you posted some sort of “test” where we could try to identify what the problem is and how to correct it? I’m trying to train my eye and I know it would be very helpful for me and probably for some other beginning photographers.
Lauren,
Wonderful idea. I think all of us will benefit with this exercise. I’ll keep that in mind for my future posts.
Thank you.
I sure do face this prob and when i try to rectify they look under exposed
)))Lolol…..
Mia,
I think you are spot on. Getting the right exposure is a huge challenge and in my opinion the one technique that defines absolutely every aspect of photography. Exposure is the most important principle and that is the science behind photography.
This post talks about it in some detail.
http://www.learnfoodphotography.com/what-every-aspiring-photographer-absolutely-needs-to-know/
OMG Neel – I don’t know what to say! Thanks for using my photo as an example – such a compliment to be featured on your blog.
Overexposure was one of the toughest challenges I faced when I started out taking pictures of food, because I loved the idea of bathing everything in background light, so I practised a lot until I got it the way I wanted it.
Having said that, I’m still practising =)
Mowie,
The pleasure is mine. I love your photos with bright background and backlit photos… I think in most cases, it makes photos look very elegant. What do you think?
Thanks for this post. I just started my blog and I realized that the photos im shooting are over exposed (not in a good way).
Problem #14
By the time I get the food ready for that fantastic shot, I’m so darn hungry I eat it, often before the shot even!
@Bruce Evans
Ha – quite the sense of humour there. However I can see it happening, as great food shots look really, really appealing don’t they?
Oh! How I love to reading this post?! I learned a lot! I’m an aspiring food photographer. I encounter the problems you’ve mentioned and I am thankful that you shared tips to resolve the issue. Great!
Those pics as example is great.We can figure out what are you talking about.That is a great post.