chow down pt1 [lighting]

I have expressed my love for food photography to you multiple times, but after a while I thought, "hey, I'm telling them how much I love it, why don't I give them tips to love it?" So, here is the first of several  tips to photograph food better:

1. Lighting
Lighting is super important in food photography. If you don't have good lighting, you don't have a good food photo, its as simple as that.
Compare this:

To this:

Relatively the same subject, totally different lighting conditions.
In the first photo, the salad was on the kitchen table. All the lights were on in the kitchen and the camera was on the no-flash setting.
Poor artificial lighting+auto/no-flash=bad photo.

Now look at the second photo. Totally natural lighting, shot in manual (sorry, I don't know what settings).
Natural lighting+a photographer who knows how to and is shooting in manual=good photo.

Natural lighting is on of the keys to a good food shot.

What I do to achieve natural lighting is to a) place your food near a window or b) take it outside. Either of these options are good just make sure if you're doing them, do it before the sunsets...

Taken after the sun went down :P

Now go crazy! Practice, practice, practice, and soon in no time you will have mastered the skill of perfectly lighting your food photos!

-hannah
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