Food photography - Behind the Scenes

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I have always loved to see how people set up their shots for all areas of photography. I like to see the food photography behind the scenes and often it is a nice reminder that not everyone has a beautiful natural light studio. I think it helps show that you don’t need a large space or a studio to start with food photography. You just need a little space & some good light. So I have been trying to remember to take a pullback image of how I have set up the food for the image to show the variety of locations you may have never considered before that are right there at your house.

I am going to show one pullback & one final image from a variety of places all around my house. As you will see, I like to experiment with different places and different backgrounds for food photography. I rarely shoot in my actual kitchen and I often set up things on the floor to help get a variety of angles when I shooting.

Food photography – Behind the scenes

As you can see, for these images, I was set up on my dining room buffet for my “table” with an aluminum baking sheet for the background. I chose the baking sheet behind to give the image a darker more moody look overall.

This is one I shot outside in the late afternoon on my patio outside. It was late enough that I wasn’t get a lot of direct sun on the food but I could still use the light to enhance the image. I wanted the light to add to the feeling of it being like the end of a summer day with the ice cream starting to melt. I had a 36″x36″ board that I painted with a stain & some white paint. I added a torn paper bag to add to the story of the image under the ice cream.

Here is another one that I shot in my backyard. In this image, you can see that I was photographing our actual dinner. Sometimes I will set up a food shot just to shoot it, but more often I am planning ahead & I know I want to shoot something before we eat it. In the evening when the sun gets right behind the trees in our yard it leaves a nice soft light which is what I wanted to capture here for this pizza. So I took the photo of it on the table right before we sat down to eat. I knew I wanted a close up shot that showed the detail of the pizza and had the cutting board so I wasn’t too concerned about having already set the table.

The fun part about this lemonade set up is that I was on the floor in my son’s room because it has really great light {you have to find the good light, right?}. In this image, the window was along the wall to the right of the set up. As you can see from the pull back, I was using a set of skinny wood planks as a “table”. The space between the boards was a little more than I liked but I am always up for experimenting to see how things will work as a background for food photography. You just never know unless you try!

This was set up in my garage and as you can see, I got creative with my “tabletop” by using a white headboard we were storing in there. I set up the white foam board to the side & back of the actual food to reflect the light back towards the subject. My light was coming from the garage door which was open behind me.

When I wanted to set up this hummus and chips shot, I headed back out to the patio. The light was nice and even with some clouds on this late afternoon which acted as sort of a softbox for the images. I had everything styled on the baking sheet how I wanted and knew ahead of time that I planned to shoot close in without including the background if possible.

In this shot of raspberry lemonade, I set it up on tiles by a wall of windows. I wanted the images to be backlit to show off the lemonade and create a light and airy image. I had the white foam board to the left to fill in some shadows.

I shot this image on a whim after peeling an orange for snack. I just put the black chalkboard piece down on the ground in front of the sliding glass doors in our kitchen, added the orange slices & a kitchen towel then took the shot. As you can see it wasn’t direct light coming through the window because the sun was already high enough in the sky but it did give a really nice bright even look to the final image.

Allison Jacobs - Contributor

I am a photographer with the goal of capturing the places, people, and things I love with my camera. I shoot with Canon, drink coffee every morning and an obsessed with photography. I am a food lover, runner, and reader but not always in that order. Website | Instagram

Food photography – Behind the scenes

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