Inspiration changes things. It moves you to do great things and embraced further, it motivates you to do greater things.
Today, inspire yourself.
Get Inspired
Inspiration comes in many shapes and forms. A walk to farmers market inspires some. For some its a photo they saw in a food magazine. For others its just a food blogger who constantly creates amazing art work on her blog.
Sounds familiar?
Subject Based Inspiration
At times when you were trying to create a photograph for that pasta dish and you just couldn’t find something to inspire you what did you do?
Subject based inspiration is simply a way to inspire yourself by looking some outstanding images of the subject. This helps you generate some ideas when you have a “photographer’s block”(Why should only writers get a block named after them?).
Here are some examples that we have posted at LFP before:
General Inspiration
As a food photographer who wants to get better, I hope that you visit portfolios of some famous food photographers and stylists to get inspired. If you are not, you should.
To get started you can start with our interview guest list. We have had great pleasure to interview many well known food photographers and stylists. You can find all of them at the food photography interviews.
Inspiration versus Copying
One suggestion that many well-known food photographers have given is to look at portfolios of food photographers and try to recreate those photos to learn and improve your skills. This is different than saying that you should copy the photos in your professional work.
Inspiration here relates to just that – getting inspired and not copying someone else’s work.
Don’t Just Look…Read
This is the whole point of visiting these portfolio. Don’t look at the photos and let the drool flow… The important lesson here is to start reading a photograph. Look at the direction of light and the placement of the subjects. See how the elements of art are used. Study the photo.
Look at the camera angle. See all the props that we have used.
Your Assignment
Today’s assignment is very simple. Choose a food photographer’s portfolio or two. Visit these portfolios and just read the photos as we discussed on Day 6. Ask all the questions that help tell you how to read a photograph.
Do Us a Favor
Once you have completed the assignment, answer these two questions in the comments:
- Which photographer’s portfolio you studied?
- Which photos you studied and what did you observe/read?
Photo by photosteve101
I regularly visit Helene Dujardin’s Tartelette blog and Ditte Isager’s portfolio (she is my favorite).
I love Helene’s shot of an aubergine (8th down in this post: http://www.tarteletteblog.com/2011/06/recipe-gluten-free-honey-apricot-with.html). The subject is center-framed, shot about three-quarters, camera front, wide aperture. It appears the light is coming from the left (9 or 10 o’clock) with some bouncing to fill in the shadows on the right. The lines of the wood table allow your eye to move up; I also like how the surface and texture (with the nail head in the frame) give a rustic feel which are appropriate for the subject.
As far as Ditte’s work, I am constantly studying her photographs but am never quite sure how she does it! How she achieves the atmosphere in her photos is something I’d like to learn. I think she is a master of manipulating light and shadow that give her work that signature moody and dramatic look, whether it be food or interiors.
http://www.ditteisager.dk/?p=828 (I currently have this book and am applying the tips on how to read for many of the photos)
I looked at Nicole Young’s blog(http://nicolesyblog.com/) again (I regularly read it). I like her food photography and also her tips on setting up shots. Often that helps seeing that with very little technical equipment great food photos can be created. I loked at her image “eggs benedict” (http://nicolesyblog.com/2011/04/16/eggs-benedict/ ) which is a more unusual image for her, since it is taken from a 90 degree angle with the light coming from 1 or 2 o’clock- What seems more typical of her food photography, is that she uses a lot of white probs – white surface, white napkin to put the white plates on it. there’s also a cup on the left upper corner and a fork on the left side of the image, the plate with the dish is placed in the center. Since all is white, it enhances the focus onto the food – two pieces eggs benedict on the plate and some green asparagus, which is a good use of contrary colors (redish/yellow eggs benedict and green aparagus). Overall, the image has a clean, minimalist feel, very light and most importantly a very timeless look – not too elegant, not too rustic.
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Such cool clean imagery.