Research-Photographing food

Types of Images Shown in a Food magazine

When I looked at physical magazines I broke the two types of phots showcased within the food into two categories which were, the dish and the setting

Within in this spread of Bon Appetit, it shows the contrast of both a dish shot and a setting shot.

Dish-  the subject is the food and is in a close up where it takes up the entire shot, I think this is a good shot to appeal for the senses and showcase the food in a desiring atmosphere but the excess of it in a magazine is repetitive and boring.

Dish part 2- Another shot where food is the major subject, is a mid shot where the food is plated and presented on a table. But the props on the table and color scheme to the shot as a whole is made to build a cohesive feeling.

Within this example there is two plates of food put on a table with chairs ate the end, these props are building a story through visual aspects and the story's main subject is food.

Setting- Circling back towards to the example shown in the Bon Appetit magazine, the image on the right hand side shows a man working within a meat style butchery or restaurant. Photographing the environment where the average reader will obtain different and diverse foods help builds an atmosphere of said foods. I think this is a creative take when it comes to incorporating pictures within a magazine.

I don't believe that the method of using one type of image is the best method to use throughout the whole entire magazine because of the pattern can get repetitive and boring towards audiences 

How to photograph

Things to consider while photographing food is timeliness, quality, type of shot, props

Timeliness it an important aspect to consider while photographing food because the particles emitted by a dish of drastic temperatures can have an negative effect on photograph,

Example: steam from a hot dish can add steam towards the camera lens and fog it up

Quality of any camera shot is integral, I must consider if the the stability of the camera to make sure nothing is blurry of shaky for the shot to be as clear as possible.

The type of shots I went over were very vague, with dish and setting. But the technical choices of these shots would be labeled close up, mid shot, and establishing shot.

When doing a mid shot of photographing the dish on the table then its a photographers obligation to selectively choose themed props that cohesively work with the subject if they want a good photograph.

Bad versus Good examples

As I read food magazines I realized some of the photographs better than others

  

As I read a issue of the food magazine "Taste of Home" all the pictures followed the same format of a mid shot with flat lighting, making all the photos repetitive and boring to look at. These images themselves aren't creative and it is not the approach I want to take during production of my brief.

These were examples taken from multiple food magazine issues were the creative direction in each image tells a story by using the elements of photography creatively, this would be the type of mentality I would want to have when producing my brief.

links: https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/photography/discover/food-photography.html