How to Shoot Food Photography: Complete Guide for Beginners

1. Class trailer: Do you want to take photos that stand out? You can get noticed or build a brand through stunning photos. The Internet is built on photos nowadays. People scroll through their feed fast, giving you and me literally milliseconds to get their attention. The good news is, with great photos, we can get them to stop scrolling and actually look at our photos. Whether it's for building a brand, building Instagram success, taking your food blog to the next level, starting a food photography business, or just learning a new skill, we have created a course that will help you go from zero to pro in food photography. Did you know that you don't need expensive gears to take great food photos? What do you need to know is the basics of composition, lighting, styling, editing, and a lot of practice and that's what we have for you in this course. We will show you the actual behind the scene of a food photo shoot. We will show you examples and different composition techniques. We will explore color theory and lighting techniques. We will go in depth about camera settings; their actual demos, styling, props, and a lot more. Still wondering if this is the right course for you? Let me share with you students feedback in their projects during and after taking the course. [MUSIC] What are you waiting for? Together, let's get noticed. Build a brand, learn a new skill, and build success through food photography. Head on to the next video to get started. [MUSIC] 2. Introduction - How to get the most out of this course?: [MUSIC] Hello, everyone. Welcome to food photography for beginners. My name is Rose and I will be your instructor for today. First of all, congratulations. You have taken the first step to learning a new skill. I know there is a lot of information out there and it can be confusing and overwhelming. If you think you can't succeed in food photography, I want to put those fears to rest because you can do this. You just need a process or a guide that you can follow, and that's why we're here. We want to help you and be part of your journey. Let's make it happen. At the end of this course, you will learn about the fundamentals of food photography, lighting effects, how to style your food, props, composition, different angles, how to edit or enhance your photos, how to export to match the purpose of your photos, and of course, practice taking your own photos or your own food photos. Photography and videography changed my life. I was able to work with diverse group of people, travel to places for free, and enjoy what I'm doing while getting paid because of this skill. But I did not start as an expert. It was a coincidence for me and my husband, which is now my partner in this business. How we got involved in this industry. We saw ourselves in a nicely edited highlights video and we got inspired to have this skill to make the same kind of videos. It grew to events photography, food photography, and extending the service through the public. You could be here today because you saw a beautiful food photo online and wants to know the science and behind the scenes of that photo. That's the reason why you need to level up your food photography skills as well. The Internet is built on pictures nowadays, this is how we can attract viewers, clients, and get noticed. With food photography, not only is it fun and rewarding to shoot, it is also a valuable skill. Let me ask you a question, what is something that you and I have in common? Or something that we both do every day and almost all the people in the world? We all eat. All of us know food. It's safe to say that everybody loves food. With Instagram and the online world, sharing your photos has never been so easy. Whatever your purpose is, whether you want to capture mouth-watering photos for your food, or you want to build a food photography portfolio, or you want to start a food blog, or if you have a food business and wants to take appetizing photos, or you just want to add to your skill set, you've made the right decision. I'm here to make your food photography journey easier with a curriculum that I specially created for you. But I can't promise you will be able to take stunning photos just by listening to me. You need to do the work just like what Tony Robbins said, "Knowledge is not power, it's just potential power." Real power is in execution. It's applying what you've learned and actually doing it. To get the most out of this course, I encourage you to do activities and assignments and get your hands dirty. Another advice is to set a specific time when you will be taking this course. Make sure you have plenty of time to do the activities as well. Turn off notifications and get rid of distractions. Study shows that it takes 20-30 minutes for us to reach our momentum or get in the zone. Getting distracted by a text every five minutes will hurt your learning process. Finally, you don't have to complete the course in one sitting. You can divide it into 2-3 sessions, but make sure to finish until the end. Because in the last lesson, I will share with you some more tips and guides that will really help in your food photography journey. As well as in the last section, you will have the opportunity to share your food photos after the food photography course. Again, if you're really serious about food photography and learning a new skill, set a schedule, get rid of distractions and practice by applying what you've learned. You are just lessons away to taking beautiful food photos. Let's get started. 3. Behind the scenes: [MUSIC] Welcome to Lesson 1. In this video, I will show you the behind-the-scenes of a food photo shoot. This will give you an idea on what happens behind the camera and what happens before, during, and after food photoshoots. I hope this will excite you and inspire you in your food photography journey. Just a gentle note, don't worry if you find some of the steps too technical or fast pace. Every aspect of the food photoshoot will be discussed in depth in the remaining lessons. For now, just sit back, relax, and enjoy new learnings and discoveries. In this setup have already put the light on the left side of my setup and then I have the background setup as well and I'm just trying to open the product that we will be shooting for today. More of that, the setting of lights, why I chose this background, composition, different shooting angles, all of that inside the course or in the next lesson. This is a milky product of my favorite celebrities, sisters, here in the Philippines. They launch a new product and I want to be the first to get my hands on them and take photos, so I can also tag them and hopefully land a gig or get noticed by them. Apart from I am a fan, they also have million followers, so to land even in their IG stories or Instagram stories is big for me. Here are the products. As you can see in the background, I use this textured white base, so it won't be distracting and the focus of the image will be the products. I am trying several styling and composition as you can see, that's the exciting part of food photography. You can be as creative and innovative. Composition, color theory, and rules are just guide, but really there are no limits. This is how I compose my first scene. Don't forget the white cardboard as reflectors, so the shadows will not need too dark. Because in this shot or in this composition, I actually forgot it, then I start shooting at different angles. While I take shots, I can adjust the props or the product to make it more appealing in photos [MUSIC] For my second scene, I was hoping to do a flat lay so that's why I turn my background like this, so that's the best part with this background. Here's my other props, fake ice cubes to give a feeling of refreshments since we're photographing drinks, table napkin, and from my styling kit I have glycerin with water, or glycerin with water spray to create water droplets effect like that. This milky drink did not come from the refrigerator, so I just made those fake water droplets effect through glycerin and water spray. Same thing I tried several styling and composition as you can see. This time, I did not forget the white cardboard [LAUGHTER] I'll be using Adobe Lightroom to organize and edit my photos. Later on, I will show you the final result. Then I will be exporting my photos as well to match the quality for Instagram because if I will not export it properly, Instagram will degrade the quality of my photos, so it won't be as appealing or as sharp, and the quality will be degraded. Now, here are some of the photos taken during the shoot. These are edited and exported in Adobe Lightroom to keep the quality and resolution. I uploaded it on my Instagram account and tag the company I told you about. That's the good thing with social media, you can use it to your advantage in building your brand, creating your portfolio, reaching out to the people and companies you'd like to work with. You know, the best part for this shoot, a few hours later I got a notification that Alex Gonzaga, one of the celebrity sisters that I told you about here in the Philippines with 10 million followers and one of the owners of the Happy Cup Company liked and commented on my photos. She even shared it in her stories. Imagine, millions of people seeing my photos with my name on it, and that's what you will learn from this course, how to create standing photos that gets people's attention. Well, I hope you're excited as I am. See you in the next lesson. 4. What to prepare?: In this video, my goal is to help you get started. We want to make sure that you get results at the end of this course. First, we need to prepare a couple of things. To participate in the activities , please prepare cookies. You can buy ready-to-eat cookies, like this, or bake your own cookies. Then prepare a plate, a base, or a background. You can use your actual table as your base, a chopping board or a book, anything at home that you can use as props. Next is to prepare white sheets of paper or white cardboard, a Styrofoam or a white cloth to use as your reflector. Don't worry, I will further discuss this in the course. Next, what story you'd like to tell through your photos. Are you eating cookies by yourself or with your friends or with your family? Please write them down so you will have a guide, and at the end of this course, we'll check if we were able to achieve your goals. For this course, my concept is to make a boring instant noodles look appetizing and attractive, so I will be preparing an instant noodles and style it. Are you excited to see the final results? Me too. See you in the next video. 5. Quick activity :): It's time for activity. Remember the cookies I asked for you to prepare earlier? Please get it out now and take a test shot. No need to style it or apply any composition technique. Just take a simple photo of it and upload it using the Create Project tab. Keep it, so at the end, you can also compare it to the photo after food photography course. 6. What light to use?: Welcome back. In this video, we are going to answer the question, what light to use? I consider this one of the most important question because without light there is no photography. Light creates mood and gives your food photos depth. You have options of using daylight or natural light and artificial continuous light. Daylight is easiest to work with, and it's free, so it's best for beginners. A small window provides enough light to make great food photos. However, daylight changes almost every hour. You can practice taking photos during different times of the day and study the effects in your photos. From there, you can choose your favorite hour that produces the best results. I don't use daylight that much because my house does not offer a lot of window. In this course, I will be using a continuous artificial light. That way, the intensity and color temperature is consistent throughout the course. Before you choose which light to use, it is important to understand main light and fill light. The main light determines the amount of contrast, type of shadow, and the overall atmosphere in a shot. Fill light supplements the main light, which is used to optimize the lighting. In this course, I will be using artificial lighting as main light and the white side of this illustration board as fill light to reflect the main light. As you can see in the pictures, when you use the main light alone, it is overexposed and create dark shadows. When you add a fill light, you'll notice the shadows disappearing and creating a balance-looking shot. Next is the use of diffuser. A light diffuser is any material that diffuses or scatters light in some manner that transmit soft light. I personally prefer using a diffuser on all of my food photos, soft light makes food more appealing and eliminates hard shadows and edges that can be distracting. Notice when I add diffuser into my setup. Also, it is important to remember to do a white balance when taking photos. Also, make sure to turn off other sources of light apart from the main light so that you are cameras, white balance system will not be confused by mixed sources of light. As you can notice from my setup now, my main light here is the only light source and all other light sources are turned off, plus I covered my window as well, so mainly just one light source, my artificial light. [MUSIC] More about light accessories and light directions in the next video, see you there. [MUSIC] 7. How to set up lights?: In this video, my goal is to teach you the different directions of lights and how to set it up. For beginners, it is best to start with lateral light, where light comes from your three o'clock or nine o'clock. Let me show you a couple of examples. Lateral light gives us that 3D look. It is simple to apply and gives us that homey feel. Diagonal light coming from behind the subject is usually easiest on the eye, and balance looking. When using the diagonal light, remember to always use reflectors. Finally, backlight gives the subject a dramatic and high contrast lighting. It is also best used for drinks and other dishes served in glasses. Again, make sure to use reflectors, flags, and other light shapers. [MUSIC] Now it really depends on how you do your art, how you will tell your story. Use lights to your advantage and don't be afraid to experiment with it. Let's talk more about accessories in the next video. See you there. [MUSIC] 8. What accessories to use?: In this video, we are going to answer, what accessories to use. Seeing what happens behind the scenes of great food photos is all part of the fun. Who would have thought that this amazing looking dish is surrounded by cardboard? I mentioned diffusers in the previous lesson, but in this video, we will get to know them more and their effects. Diffusers are essential food photography tool. It can be a white cloth, a white bedsheet, or a white curtain. Diffuser soften the light falling on the subject. Let me show you an example of the subject with or without a diffuser. [MUSIC] Next is field reflectors. It could be a piece of cardboard, styrofoam, or anything else white can be used as field reflector. Its main job is to reduce the shadows and add brightness to the whole scene. Let me show you an example. Finally, we have the flag. Opposite to reflectors, a flag absorbs light instead of reflecting it. This is used when you want to create a darker look for your photo. For me, I just use the other side of this illustration board. If I need to use a flag, any black sheet of paper or fabric will do. I personally love this illustration board because you can use it as field reflector, flag, and even the background. Next, my favorite topic and probably the most exciting part of food photography, props and styling. See you there. [MUSIC] 9. Styling and plating: Food photography does not end in knowing the right camera settings and serving on an exquisite dish. [MUSIC] You also have to select the right props to give your subject the shine it deserves. It is important because it makes a delicious dish look more delicious. The most boring-looking recipe can become a superb photo because of great styling and composition. How do you do food styling? First is to start with the basic. If you are just starting out and have minimal experience, it is highly recommended that you practice on still life subjects like fruits, raw vegetables, donuts and breads, where in you don't have to cook. Next is to decide what story you want to tell through your photos. You can do this by selecting the right props and carefully arranging the scene to match the composition that you have in mind. Before we jump into the demonstration, what are props anyway? These are objects that are not part of your dish. It can be anything that can already be found in your kitchen or your house. There are no limits in choosing your props. Just make sure to stick to your theme and tell a story through your photo. See where your imagination will take you. Now, let me show you a demonstration of how I style and use props. This is my favorite part because you get to express yourself through your composition and styling. One main main in food photography is adding layers. For example, I have this cork board as base. Basically, this is just a cork board that I bought from a bookstore, but I love using this side to most of my food photos. I use it as base, which will also be my background for a top view angle. I think this is a sushi shaper. I'm using this to add another layer and some color contrast. Our subject will be noodles. It's color yellow. Brown combines well with yellow. I'm using it to add color contrast and to add layer. Then a table napkin, then the plate. Later, the food, of course. Next is the props. For this demo, I will be using this rustic salt and pepper dispenser, this soy sauce and oil dispenser, lemons, and these grapes to add color contrast. Since we have a lot of yellows, it combines well with purple, as well as with brown. That's why I added these props. Of course, this shiny fork. Don't worry. I will be including a color combination guide to help you with styling and creating color contrast. You see here, it's looking more interesting and appealing now. Wait until we add the actual food. [MUSIC] Not only does these props create color contrast, it also creates layers and depth of field. Finally, the food. In styling, make sure to fill the plate with food. Avoid putting little food on a big plate, unless it's part of a creative plating or your storytelling. In here, I am trying to evenly spread dough noodles to achieve an appetizing and inviting look. My herbs are not evenly distributed, so I will add more to make it balanced-looking. You can also use tweezers in adding herbs or adding garnish or adding details to your dish. There I will be adding herbs now to make it balanced-looking. For my garnish, I use two cuts of lemons and a bigger cut of parsley to add color contrast and texture. That's it. When styling, make sure to compose the scene in your head or make a sketch of it before you actually do it and prepare your food. Then make sure to style your scene first before you get the food. You want your scene all set up, as well as the lights and camera, before you actually take out the food or take it out of the fridge. The point of styling is to enhance the visual appeal of the subject. Notice, I say enhance. Meaning, your food actually needs to be as enticing. Please don't overcook the food and use rotten ingredients when styling and photographing food. Another styling tip that I use most of the time is adding herbs to give dish that extra look. Making adjustment to the subject to achieve what is called specular highlights. Finally, don't underestimate including humans to your food photos. [MUSIC] Not only does it help your styling, it helps you tell a story. If you are an aspiring food photographer, I have included a list of must have food photo props and styling kit in this course that you can use as guide. I have included the color combination cheat sheet as well. I hope you have lots of fun in this lesson. I'll see you in the next video. [MUSIC] 10. Another way to plate the food: In this video, I will show you another way of styling the instant noodles that I chose as a subject for this course. You can either fill the plate with the food or in this case, style it differently by following a few basic plating techniques. When plating food, the first thing you need to do is plan ahead. At the end of the day, your styling will depend on the story that you want to tell your viewers. I mentioned in the beginning of this course that my goal is to make these boring instant noodles look appetizing and appealing. That is why I decided to make this kind of fancy plating. Next, make a list of the props and other things that you may be needing for your food plating. Next is to be guided by color schemes and harmony when selecting your props and garnish. I have a color harmonizer app on my phone where I can select the color of my subject. Then select what color scheme I want to achieve. More of the color theory in the coming lessons. But let me just show you how I did it. The cooked instant noodles are colored yellow. When I select, let's say the complimentary, this app will tell me that yellow is complimentary with blue. I don't want blue in my scene. So let's see the analogous color scheme instead. This is better. My noodles are yellow. My props and garnish can be green and orange. When styling and plating your food, you will also need styling tools like tweezers, brush, sauce dispenser, etc. To help achieve the look that you are going for, more styling tools and techniques in the coming lessons. Now I have my food and selected props ready. When starting out, you can stick with white plate so you can use it for almost all dishes. Always have paper towels nearby for spills and to clean up the plate for smudges. Now going back to my fancy plating, let me start with my first layer. This is just the soy sauce, which is the main source of these instant noodles. Next is the noodles. For plating you want to create height. So in this case, I will use a fork to get the noodles and create this nice twirl [MUSIC]. I will discuss more of the composition in the coming lessons, but there is what we call the rule of odds, where we use odd numbers in styling and composing. The rule of odds is the reason why I decided to have these five strips of sauce and the lemon garnish. In plating, you want to mix and match colors and textures, making it look more interesting. You can do this by adding garnish and other elements to your food plating. This is it. Our plated instant fried noodles. I just followed a simple composition to frame this shot, placing the subject at the center. In the next lesson, we will dig deeper to different composition techniques you can experiment, and maximize in food photography. 11. Composition guide and techniques: When [MUSIC] I started food photography, one of my biggest challenge was composition. I got stuck in rule of thirds, and I reached a stage when I got bored with my photos and lost motivation. That is why I'm so excited to share with you this section. This is going to be a game changer in your food photography journey because in this entire section you are going to be exposed to different composition techniques and rules, but first what is composition anyway? Composition refers to the way the various elements in a scene are arranged within the frame. In visual arts including photography, a composition is about the arrangement of visual elements. The term composition literally means putting together. Basically putting together the food props and background to create that stunning photo. I have studied different composition techniques and applied all of them into food photography, and with that I was able to level up my food photos and come up with this curriculum. Make sure to get rid of distractions, turn off phone notifications, enjoy learning, and make sure to apply them too. Number 1, layering. It is giving you food photos, debt, and they mentioned by building up layers. By using different props, we can bring plenty of textures to the layers for that extra component. You can also apply this layering in food photography by dividing your scene to foreground, middle ground, and background. Let me show you an example. First is setting up the light source and our reflector boards. Again, you can get this cheap cardboard for your flags and reflector. Next I have this beautiful red paper as maybe is background and first layer. Next is this plain table napkin as second layer, then this book for my third layer, and plate for fourth layer. The layers are excluding the food. For demonstration purposes I'm adding chocolate syrup to add another layer. This is our fifth layer, so you can use chocolate syrup, nuts, other ingredients in your recipe to add layers to your food photos as well, and finally, candy sprinkles for another layer. Then I just make final changes to my scene and I start taking photos. I shot multiple images, but I will show you which one is my favorite. Here's the final photo, this is my favorite. Next is using foreground and background to add layers. We have the Christmas light setup for my background lights, this chopping board as my base, the three cookies in ribbon as my subject, then this extra cookie as my foreground. Here's the final photo. This is achieved using higher aperture which will be discussed in the technical section. Again foreground, for my first layer, middle ground, and background. Basically you're taking advantage of using layers to make your photos interesting and not flat. Now don't be afraid if you can do it with 3-4 layers right away, maybe you can start with just one or two just like this example. Then slowly play around with your props and add some more when you are comfortable. Next, number 2, contrast. Another exciting compositional technique is contrast or using contrast in composing your photos. This can be applied in different elements such as: color, tone, texture, and the subject. Color contrast means using the other end of the color spectrum versus the other end. It's using blue in contrast to red, green in contrast to red to make your subjects stand out. I have attached a color combination guide in this course for you to use in case you chose this type of composition technique. The same way applies to tone contract. You can use vibrant versus muted colors in your photos to add interest and help in your composition. Next is using texture contrast as well as subject contrast such as all the new jagged and straight. To better illustrate that, let me show you examples. Next is the golden ratio, also known as the golden section. Golden mean divine proportion. In mathematics this is equivalent to approximately 1.618. I know know sounds and looks so confusing. Basically, this square helped to position elements in the scene, and the spiral gives us an idea of how the scene should flow. It's a little like an invisible leading line, so you can use this; the one shown in the screen, the Fibonacci spiral as guide when you are composing. Let me show you quickly how I set my scene to follow the golden ratio composition technique. I've chosen props that I found in the house and extra cookie ingredients to style my scene. As you can see I'm now following that invisible curve that leads to the main subject. Yes, for this course I'm using my Android phone and crop sensor camera to shoot. After a couple of shot, here's our final result. Next compositional technique is the rule of thirds. It's one of the most popular compositional techniques. The rule of thirds divides your scene into a 3 by 3 grid with equal-sized rectangles. To follow this rule compose your subject in 1/3 of the frame or on the line. This creates a more dynamic and pleasing composition since it gives more emphasis to your subject and their environment. When you are shooting using either DSLR camera or your phone, there is an option for you to have a grid. Using my DSLR I can have it shown by pressing the Display button. I will show more of how to do it when shooting in smartphone on a separate section. Next is the rule of odd. This composition technique involves using odd numbers in styling the subject and the props. An odd number of element is seen as more natural and easier on the eyes. Odd numbers create a sense of balance and harmony, and for us it also provides a resting point for our eyes. An even number of objects can divide our attention and compete with each other. In food photography the aim is to have three or five props, but of course you can have more than five items but the result will be different and that bringing the same compositional effect. Let me show you an example. In this setup I have another pink felt paper to use as background, then this textured pink paper, a white plate. So basically three layers. Then five cookies, three pieces of chocolate chips in the middle and on one side and one each of the other sides. Again, if you will count my layers, number of cookies and chocolate, they are all odd numbers. I took a bite to break the pattern and tell a story to make it more interesting. Here's our final photo shot and edited using Adobe Lightroom on an Android phone. Next, out-of-focus, debt, and foreground. In this composition technique we use aperture to focus on the subject, and make them stand out by narrowing in on the contrast between the subject and the background. The more contrast, the more dramatic your shots, and the more prominent your subject will be. A winning photo composition also remains the one where the main subject is isolated due to the contrast solution. Including some foreground interest in a scene is a great way of adding a sense of debt to the scene. Photos are 2D or two-dimensional by nature. Including foreground interests in the frame is one of a number of techniques to give this in a more 3D feel or look. Next is the golden triangle. Instead of a grid of rectangles we divided the frame with a diagonal line going from one corner to another with an additional two more lines from the other corners to the diagonal line. The rule of golden triangle can seem like complex way of arranging a photo, but it can result in some really striking compositions. For my setup, I'm using my favorite red felt paper again, then green textured paper to add another layer, then the plate with our cookies. Here's where I compose the golden triangle. I position the sprinkles and the chocolate chips to follow the rule of triangle. Here's our final edited result, and one more look at the golden triangle composition guide. Next is symmetry and patterns. This compositional technique is best with flat lays. There is a reason why we loved patterns. They are aesthetically pleasing to the eye and the same goes for a slight variation of the style. Asymmetrical shots that include empty space and breaking of fat patterns are also interesting to look at. Human beings are naturally attracted to patterns and they are visually attractive and suggest harmony. Next is the use of lines and shapes. You can take advantage of the lines and shapes in your photos or in your food. Use them in proportion to your subject to leave the eye into the main subject. Leading lines, they necessarily have to be straight as illustrated in this example. In fact, curved lines can be very attractive compositional features. There you have it. Those are composition techniques and rules that you can use as a guide when you take food photos. You can mix and match them as well. These are just rules and guides, so don't feel limited. If you continue to practice, I'm sure you will discover more ways beyond this list to compose your photos. Enjoy. 12. Color Theory: If you ever find yourself losing inspiration and creativity in food photography, you are not alone. There are moments when I felt uninspired and unmotivated because I feel like I have tried all the composition techniques and I bought all the props that I like and I'm still not satisfied with my food photos. It took me some time to discover that color theory plays a big role in food photography as well. What is color theory? Color theory is both the science and art of using color. It explains how humans perceive color and the visual effects of how colors mix, match, or contrast with each other. Color theory also involves the messages colors communicate, and the methods used to replicate color. From the definition itself, it involves the message colors communicate. It helps tell a story and that's what winning food photography is made of, a story. How can we practically apply it in food photography? We can use color as one of our tools. Understanding color theory, the way artists of all traits do, a photographer can utilize color to their benefit too. We can use color theory when planning and choosing our props. Choosing our hero, which is the food or the subject, as well as in choosing our background. This will greatly help in composing and styling our food. Another reason and aspect to get creative. First, let's review the order of colors. There are three orders of colors. We have the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. When working in the RYB color, the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. They are the three pure colors from which all other colors are derived. If we take two primary colors and combine them equally, we get a secondary color. Finally, a tertiary color is one which is combination of primary and secondary color. By knowing the three orders, it can help us decide which color we want to use in our photos. Next, the three variables of color. We have hue, saturation, and luminance. Hue simply is the shade or name of the color. Let me show you an example of how hue affects a photo. I selected hue. Now, observe the tomato as I move the slider to maximum and minimum. Next is the bread and the chopping board. They're color brown, and that's equivalent to orange in HSL. You'll see the drastic change as I move the slider. The same thing goes for the letters which is colored green. Saturation is the amount of color or its intensity. Let me show you an example. Under saturation, I will adjust per color. Observe again what happens to the tomato as I adjust the slider for red. Then the bread and the chopping board, when I adjust the orange. Again the letters, when I move the slider for saturation of the green color. Luminance is the brightness of the color. This helps us bring out bright colors, recovers skin tones, and many other techniques. Let me show you an example. Under luminance, I will adjust the same colors, red, orange, and green. Observe how the brightness and appearance will change when I move the sliders. [MUSIC] Finally, color schemes. These are complementary, analogous, and monochromatic. Complimentary colors are the ones which sit completely opposite one another on the color wheel and complement one another. For example, red and green will make you feel or think of Christmas. Black and orange make you think of Halloween. There's a reason these combinations creates such strong emotions in us. They just look good together. Analogous colors sit next to each other on the color wheel and share similar colors. They will have one dominant color in common, most often a primary color, but can also be a secondary or tertiary. Analogous colors are often found in nature. Last but definitely not the least, monochromatic. Monochromatic are not simply black and white, it actually refers to anything which uses solely one color value. Let me show you examples. Having a good understanding of color theory can help you compose and manipulate a scene to create the mood and story you're going for. The best way to apply this knowledge is through practice. Let's have an activity. I will show you more examples of food photos. Just put which color order, variable, or scheme were used in that photo. 13. Color Theory Activity: I don't have the time and space. All right. 14. Props: First of all, you may notice that my hair is longer in this video and on some of the videos. To adjust that, I recently just created this video to revise the props and styling tips lesson for this course. [MUSIC] One of the feedback that I got from other students is that they wish there were more props and plating lessons. [MUSIC] I am constantly improving this course because I want you and other students to get a lot of valuable information. This is me sharing with you more props and plating tips and techniques that I have learned over the past couple of months. You may ask why I did not include some of the techniques that I will be sharing with you now when I originally created this course? The answer is, you learn by doing. Some of the things I know and discovered now are unknown to me when I started food photography. Over the past year, I challenged myself and accepted more food photoshoot gigs. I shot different dishes, I studied more advanced techniques, and went outside of the box or my comfort zone. I ended up owning more props than my husband can tolerate. Top tip with props, don't go crazy and spend all your money because it can be addicting. But seriously, I honestly wished I already knew what I know now before I went crazy [NOISE] buying props for my food photography business. Here are three tips when buying and deciding on what props to use. First, going back to what are props. Props support your food or the subject, Let's say you are photographing pasta, the plate, fork, table napkin and other things in your scene are props. The first [NOISE] prop tip that I had to learn the hard way is that props do not have to be gigantic. [NOISE] It should not overpower or distract from your main subject or the hero. Be settled in using props. Props can be [NOISE] just the plate, spoon and fork, and a table napkin. The goal is for your props to help tell the story. [NOISE] There's another important tool that you can maximize when selecting [NOISE] props, and that is number 2, using color harmony. My mistake in buying prop is buying gazillion props without having a clear intention of why I am buying them. When I see something cute and interesting, I just buy it. Now I learned that I really need to plan ahead and decide in the planning stage, the color harmony in my scene before deciding which props to use. If I will be photographing food that is color green like salad, I can use a pink plate to follow a complementary color scheme. Majority of my props are wood because I like to stay with safe and neutral colors that can go well with a lot of dishes. [MUSIC] If you are just starting out, think of the businesses and brands that you would want to work with. Check out their products, and the color of their brand, and you can start building your portfolio from that. Again, decide what food or dish you will photographs first, then decide what color scheme you want to follow. Only then should you buy props like plates, bowls, table napkins, backdrops, etc. Start with simple, then go from there. Finally, number 3, your unique creative style. Buy props depending on the dishes that you will mostly shoot and photograph, but most importantly, buy props depending on your creative style. For example, if you like dark and moody photos and you will be photographing mostly chocolates, you might want to check the color scheme for dark brown, which is the color of chocolates. Dark brown compliments with dark blue so you may want to get a dark blue plate or backdrop. If you like photos that are bright and airy then investing on white and light backdrops and props will really help in styling your scene. [MUSIC] Just remember that with props it has to be intentional and purposeful. [MUSIC] Again, number 1, always plan before doing a food photoshoot or buying props. Use props that are smaller to support the main subject, not overpower or distract. Number 2, be guided by color. [MUSIC] When buying props, choose colors that will compliment your food. [MUSIC] It's practical to start with neutral colors, then just add colorful ones in the future. [MUSIC] Be intentional when choosing and buying props, decide what is the majority of food photos you will be shooting, and collect props based on that. [MUSIC] Before we move on to styling and plating tools and tips, I just want to quickly go over backdrops and backgrounds. If you have a nice table, you can definitely use that as background. If not, you may start with the one that I'm currently using. [MUSIC] These are waterproof, double-sided background paper. I use this in almost all of my food photoshoots. You can order in Amazon or other online shopping stores in your country. [MUSIC] But of course you can also DIY backgrounds or just use the ones that you can find at home, like chopping boards, fabric, table cloth, books, etc. [MUSIC] Absolutely, anything that can support and add texture to your scene. In the next lesson, I will share with you more styling and plating tools and tips. 15. More Plating tips: Have you heard the saying, we eat with our eyes first? This is why more and more food businesses hire professional photographers to photograph their products or their food products. Imagine you are sitting in a restaurant and you are presented with these two dishes. Which one will you choose? Letter B, right? But guess what? They're the same dish but presented to you differently. That is why styling and plating is important in food photography. No matter how advanced your camera is, I don't think it'll compensate for a crappy looking dish. In this lesson, let me share with you how I styled this dish. First, the things that you will need in styling and plating your food you need a plate. When starting out, you can start with a round white plate and over time expand with other shapes and colors. Next you need your styling tools. These can be tweezers so as dispensers, brushes, etc. Then you want to have your paper towel at all times for spills and smudges. Now, here are six very basic plating tips to help your dish stand out and look appetizing. First is to start at the center and build around it. Once you are more comfortable you can start at the side and leave empty spaces, then next is to create hype. Food with hype looks more beautiful and interesting. Next is color harmony. Use colors to create a pleasant looking dish. Again, you can use the color wheel or color harmonizer app for this. The nice thing with this app is it can show you accurate colors. If you have a lighter shade of red it can show you the exact color value that will best compliment or combine with it. This is a really powerful and helpful food photography tool. Next is to mix and match textures, shapes, and colors. In this example, observe the shape of carrots and potatoes and also follow the analogous color scheme for this plating. Next is to make sure to use fresh food and ingredients. Soggy and mushy food does not look good on camera. For this shoot, I bought a separate set of raw ingredients and cooked it the same day of shooting to give me that or to give me those vibrant and fresh colors or fresh looking colors. Finally, use garnish for that extra look. You can use parsley, dill, mint, etc, and experiment with it. Checkout cookbooks and chefs' Instagram for inspirations. [MUSIC] 16. What are the shooting angles?: Now that we know the basic camera's settings, we have the proper lighting, we have set up the scene through styling, it's time to take photos. Let us unpack the different angles that are commonly used in food photography. Number 1, eye level or hero shot. This angle provides you an intimate view of the subject. Positioning the camera on the same level as the subject. This is ideal for drinks, burgers, sandwiches, wraps, cakes, stack pancakes, ice cream, other layer desert, and it's important to carefully arrange the background and props for this shot because the surface behind and beneath the subject are visible. Number 2, bird's eye or a top view, it's the most popular angle in Instagram. Shot from above gives you a more graphic look, so make sure to arrange the subject carefully. This is ADL for soups, pizza, cookies, and pies. Number 3, 45 degrees or general view. This is probably the most generally used angle in food photography because this represent the angle of which we see food when we are sitting down to eat or to dine. This is best for salads and main dishes. Number 4, details are what I like to call artistic. This is the angle that feels closest to your subject when you want to show off more details of the food-like oozing feelings, cheese, or the details of the food. There is no right or wrong angle. It will always depend on number 1, your preference, number 2 your subject. For example, a pizza is best photographed at bird's eye view, while a stack of pancake is best shot at eye level. My tip is to take multiple shots from different angles. Take as many as you like, and in post for sure you will be able to select the best image. 17. Best camera to use?: Welcome back. In this video, my goal is to help you decide which camera to use for food photography. But before we jump into details and technicalities, the best answer to what camera to use is the one that you have right now. May it be an iPhone, the SLR, Android, mirrorless camera, whatever you have access to. There are different factors that can make a great photo. Factors such as lighting effects, props, styling, composition in the actual food, and especially your creativity. If you are just starting out, it is best to practice with the one that you have right now to discover your style and find your rhythm. But really, what a camera must-have features for food photography. Let's jump into it. Number 1, a camera that has the ability to change lens. The lens you use will have a bigger impact on the quality of the image, which will control your ability to use stylistic choices, like a blurry background. Number 2, a camera that will allow you to manually set the aperture, ISO, and exposure time or the shutter speed. A lot of cameras offer automatic settings, and honestly, this is handy for beginners and I use it a lot to speed up my workflow. But as you go along and discover your creativity, immerse in food photography, and if you are getting paid to take food photos, it is still best to have access to manual settings. Number 3, a camera that is lightweight or something you can tolerate when shooting. Remember that you will be preparing the food as well as style and compose the scene. It is best to go for cameras that are not too heavy. Number 4, a camera that is user-friendly. A camera that you know how to use. This is important since you are just starting out. We don't want you to be overwhelmed with advanced camera settings and end up not shooting because you don't know how to operate your camera. Number 5, a camera that has the ability to give greater flexibility when it comes to depth of field. This is possible with full-frame cameras, but can also be achieved with a crop sensor camera, together with a great lens. Throughout this course, I will be using a Panasonic Lumix G85 with prime lens 50 millimeter equivalent. This is a lightweight and easy-to-operate camera. A lot of cameras will have the same feature. My final note is that choose the one that feels like the extension of you. You will be using it for a long time so make sure to get a feel of it. Check the location of the buttons. Hold it as if you are taking photos. Whatever camera you decide to use, remember that there are still other factors that will greatly affect your food photos and I can't wait to unpack them in the next lessons. Hope to see you there. [MUSIC] 18. What camera settings to use?: In this video, we're going to answer the question, what camera settings to use. As mentioned in the previous lessons, light is the most important factor in photography because photography is all about light. It can be a bit boring and confusing, but it is important to understand these camera settings because this determines the right amount of light that enters the lens and reaches the sensor. Aperture's exposure time and ISO. The aperture determines depth of field, the exposure time determines the degree of sharpness or blur, and the ISO value determines the sensitivity of the sensor. All digital cameras have an auto mode or an automatic mode that enables you to press the shutter button without having to concentrate on your settings at all. In principle, this is really practical, but because it gives you no control over the aperture or exposure time, automatic mode rarely produces genuinely satisfactory results. Take time to get to know the other exposure modes of your camera or the ones that your camera offers. Most camera have the following built-in modes. We have the M or manual, AV or A, which is aperture priority, TV or S, which means shutter priority, and finally, P or Program AE. In the next lesson, we're going to study each built-in mode. See you there. 19. What is ISO?: [MUSIC] ISO sensitivity is a measure of the camera's ability to capture light. The lower the number, the less sensitive your camera is to light so the picture will look darker, and a higher ISO indicates that your camera is more sensitive to light so the picture will look paler. Set your ISO depending on the availability of light. The lower you can set your ISO, the better. Anything over 1600 will result in a very grainy or noisy image, so avoid higher ISO even your camera offers them. If you are shooting in daylight, ISO 100-200 is recommended. Around 400 if you are indoors and you're using an artificial light. Observe the sample images to see the effects of ISO sensitivity. [MUSIC] In P mode, you can only alter the ISO value. The camera selects all of the other settings automatically. Important to note that in this mode, you have no control over depth of field and blur due to camera shakes. 20. What is aperture?: What is aperture? This is the opening of a lens' diaphragm through which light passes. The aperture can be dilated like the pupil of your eye, to allow more or less light into the camera. Each time you move the aperture settings up, the amount of light entering the camera doubles. Aperture values are given in terms of the ratio of the focal length of the lens to the effective diameter of the aperture. The aperture's scale goes. [MUSIC] A higher aperture means less light is entering the camera. On the other hand, a lower aperture means more light is entering the camera, which creates a nice depth of field, making the background blurry. The aperture you use is a crucial factor in the design of food photos. The use of blur enables you to direct your viewer's eye towards the most important part of the subject and give emphasis to certain details. When selecting the aperture value or aperture priority mode of your camera, you set the aperture and ISO yourself, leaving the camera to set the shutter speed automatically allowing you to control the depth of field. [MUSIC] 21. What is M (Manual) mode?: [MUSIC] Next, what is M mode or a manual mode? This allows you to adjust all three basic shooting parameters all at once. Careful selection of the aperture and exposure time not only enables you to create correctly exposed photos, but it also gives you ultimate creative control over the look of your photos. If you are just starting out, my recommendation is to start with automatic exposure mode so your camera will select the settings for you to achieve an optimal overall exposure in your photo. When you are more comfortable shooting this way, you can move on to semi-automatic modes, like the AV or aperture priority, shutter speed priority, and P mode. Once you have a solid understanding of these light exposure settings, you can move on to M mode or manual and allow your creativity to run wild. How do you shoot in M mode? First, check the exposure of your shot with a light meter visible through your viewfinder. Next is to pick an aperture, then adjust the shutter speed. Finally, pick an ISO setting. That's it. Then you can take your shot. [MUSIC] 22. Raw and JPEG: Which format to use?: When I was just starting out as a photographer, I did not know much about RAW and JPEG file formats. I was just using JPEG because it's easiest and allowed me to shoot and upload. In events photography, you're always on the move and have no time to adjust the camera settings depending on the light source so using JPEG can be problematic. In this video, you will learn more about the difference of JPEG and RAW and when to use them. First, let us define each file formats. First, we want to define RAW or a RAW image file. It contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of a digital camera. RAW files are named so because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be uploaded or printed. Similar to raw food ingredients that need to be prepared and cooked before consumption, a RAW image also needs to be post-processed in software before it's ready to be printed, shared, or shown on a display device. The purpose of raw image formats is to save, to minimize loss of information, to obtain data from the sensor. It does not look appealing at first because it captures it in raw, but it has enormous potential in what you can achieve with it. Next is the JPEG format. JPEG images are fully processed in camera, and all the settings are just white balance, color saturation, sharpening and color space are already baked in, or applied to the image. You do not need to spend any time on post-processing the image. It is basically ready to use. It's like buying a cooked food ready for consumption. The camera made all the adjustments for you. JPEG is also not well suited to files that will undergo multiple edits. Some some image quality is lost, each time the image is recompressed, particularly if the image is cropped or shifted. Although, our eyes and our brain without a doubt can do better when it comes to deciding how to process an image, most cameras nowadays have advanced image processing mechanism that could make our JPEG images as beautiful. When do I use each file format when taking photos? For RAW, one of the main benefits of capturing a photo as a RAW file, is that the additional tonal and color data in the file offers more options, especially if exposure changes are needed. Next, it is best if you prefer to post-process your photos for color correction, color grading, sharpness, white balance, and exposures. It is also best if you are shooting for a client, so you have more control in post-processing in case you made a mistake and need to recover exposure, color, and other settings. Now, JPEG is best used for immediate display, for shooting for lower-quality uses, if you have limited space on your memory card and computer, for personal use images. To conclude, the JPEG processing applied by the camera is designed to produce a good-looking image right out the camera. This processing cannot be undone. A RAW file on the other hand, is processed by you. You can decide how the image will look. One of the main benefits of capturing a photo as a RAW file is that the additional tonal and color data in the file offers more options, especially if exposure changes are needed. To conclude this lesson, how you decide on which format to use will depend on first, what is the purpose of your photos, and finally, who is your audience? Who are your photos for? I hope this will help you decide which format to use the next time you take photos. See you in the next video. [MUSIC] 23. Camera settings conclusion: [MUSIC] If you are just starting out, my recommendation is to start with automatic exposure mode, so your camera will select the settings for you to achieve an optimal overall exposure in your photo. When you are more comfortable shooting this way, you can move on to semi-automatic modes like aperture priority, shutter speed priority, and P mode. Once you have a solid understanding of these light exposure settings, you can move on to M mode or manual and allow your creativity to run wild. A quick recap. There are three settings on your camera that affect the amount of light coming in and hitting the sensor. The amount of light hitting the camera's sensor is also referred to as the exposure. [MUSIC] ISO determines the sensitivity of the sensor to light. Aperture determines depth of field. Shutter speed determines the degree of sharpness or blur. If your image is too dark and you can't control the light source, adjust the ISO. Try raising it to 400-800. If you want precise focus on your subject and a blurry background, adjust the aperture to 1.7 or 2.8 to create that beautiful depth of field. If you want to freeze movement, like a water splash or falling sugar, adjust the shutter speed to 400 or higher. Now that you know about more lighting, styling, composition, framing and, camera settings, it's your turn to put it on to action. [MUSIC] 24. How to edit your photos: Welcome back. In this photo, we are finally editing the final result of our food photoshoot. As you can see here, our photo or our final photo is looking a bit yellow. Good news is, in post-edit, we can manipulate the color, we can adjust the exposure, we can adjust the crop, and a lot of software have the ability to do all of this. It doesn't matter if you're using a paid or a free photo editing software. Most of the settings that I have here, most of them should be available in the photo editing software that you're using. But in this video, I will be using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic. We have our final photo here, so like I said, it's looking a bit yellow. So what we can do is to first adjust the white balance. We just use this eyedropper right here. This is for white balance. Let's just choose a gray or a white part of the photo to correct the white balance. As you can see here on the right side, it's looking more natural and the colors are correct. Let's go back. We're using the develop module here in Lightroom. The develop module is where you edit your photos, you use the basic panel to make adjustment to white balance, exposure, contrast, and other tone controls to your liking. Next, it's still looking a bit yellow for me, so I'm going to adjust the temperature. It's getting a bit bluish, so we can move it to 16. Oh, 15. Fifteen is good. That's looking more natural. Now we want to go down to exposure. So I'm going to show you the effects of moving it all the way up to the highest or to the maximum and lowering it down. If you have a dark photo, you can definitely increase the exposure, or if you have a washed-out or an overexposed photo, you can definitely adjust the exposure here. As you can see, like my highlights, for me, they're a bit washed out. So we can just adjust the exposure down a little bit. Maybe to 10. You can move the, I think this is navigator here, or you can just set the number. Oops, sorry, that's the contrast. I want to adjust it to, yeah, that's good for me. Then we just add contrast to it, but not too much. Because if we move it all the way up, this is not a nice-looking photo. This is not appetizing at all. Actually, that's one main tip when editing your photos, don't go all crazy with all the settings. You can just add a little bit and you can adjust it in. In time, you will develop that eye that can see the perfect-looking photo for you. The one that will satisfy your liking. But don't go all crazy with the settings. You can just adjust it a little bit at a time. For the contrast, we can just add it. Well, let's give it a plus 10. That's looking more popped out and crisp, so that's good. We can already see the before and after here. As you can see, it's looking a lot better than the original photo. That's good. I want to decrease the highlights. Highlights are the whites here. If I adjust it all the way down, as you can see, I'm losing all the highlights. If I adjust it all the way up, I'm getting real strong highlights right there. I just want to tone it down a bit to make it more 3D and more beautiful. Yeah, to 10. Ten is good. As you can see, it's giving us a more appetizing, a more natural-looking dish. What else do we have here? The saturation. When you adjust the saturation here, like let's say all the way up, it's making the whole photo saturated. What if I just want my greens to be saturated? You can't do that here because it will adjust the color of the entire photo. Good news is we also have the color options here or HSL in Lightroom. Let's say you just want to adjust the greens here. Because as you can see, for me, it's looking a bit sad. What if I want to make it more vibrant? We can select the greens here. Then we can adjust the hue. We can add more hue, and then we can add more saturation. That's looking better, and then luminance to make it look fresh. Let's see. As you can see, from here, it's sad, it doesn't look correct. See the greens here, it looks more green and it looks fresh and it's luminated. I like the luminance functionality here. It adds highlight to that one color only. That's perfect. I adjusted the greens, but it did not affect the entire photo. But as you can see, the greens are popping out now. That's perfect. I like that setting. Next, how about the yellows? Do we want to adjust the yellows? Add saturation to it? Let's see. Well, yeah, that's perfect. I like that one. Let's just tone it down a bit. Looking better. You see the grapes there. I added those grapes at the top because we have a lot of yellows and browns in our photo, and it combines well with purple, as you can see in our color contrast guide for composition. So I want to luminate that as well. Let's just go to purple here, and let's adjust the luminance. As you can see here, there are specular highlights. But if you want to make that stronger, you can just adjust the luminance here. See? If you decrease it, it's gone. If you want to create more specular highlights, you can definitely use luminance. I like that better. By the way, we've adjusted the exposure and color. We want to adjust the cropping as well of this photo. Because sometimes when you take photos, you don't always get the perfect crop, the perfect rule of thirds, or the perfect center of the subject. Good news is in your post-edit, you can definitely adjust that. Here we have the crop option here. As you can see, we have a rule of thirds here, but the parsley is not perfectly in the third line and I feel like we can adjust it more. Let's adjust it here to put it perfectly in the third line. So there. As you can see, the parsley is now sitting perfectly in the third line and closest to the third intersection, creating that perfect rule of thirds. That's done. Basically, that's it. You have your crop, you have your color, and you have your exposure adjusted. Let's see the before and after. See? Before and after. Our final photo here is looking more natural, the colors are more vibrant. For me, it's more appetizing, more appealing, and it can give your viewers that excitement to eat their noodles. As you can see, when we zoom in, the greens are more green, the color is correct, it looks more fresh, it looks more vibrant and alive. Yeah, see? It's popping out. It looks 3D. It definitely looks a lot better with our post-edit. As you can see, the purple, even though it's blurry, it looks perfect, it looks sad in here. In here, it looks a lot better. Oops, sorry. Here's our final photo. In the next video, I'm going to teach you how to export your photos so the quality will not decrease when you upload it in Facebook and Instagram or your blog, or if you just want to make sure that you export it in the highest quality. All of that in the next video. See you there. 25. How to Export Food Photos for different platforms: [MUSIC] Welcome back. In the previous lesson, we learned about how to edit and enhance our food photos. Now, we will learn how to properly export them so we can maximize and optimize the picture quality to whatever platform we intend to use our food photos. First, if we just want a high-quality photo, let's say we will be sending it to a friend who has a food business we're in we want to help him or her with great food photos. Maybe he'll be using it for a menu or for whatever purpose. If we just want a high-quality food photo or a high-quality file, what we can do is to export it. We go to File, so we go to Export. In here, you want to go to File Settings. We want to make the image format JPEG. Whether you've taken the photo raw or JPEG, we want to export it as a JPEG so we can upload it, we can do whatever we want with the file. For the color space, we want to select sRGB and we want to adjust the quality to 100. [MUSIC] Then you can just leave that. Basically, what is most important with exporting high-quality is adjusting the quality to 100, making sure that the color space is sRGB and the image format is JPEG. Just before we continue with exporting it and saving it, I just want to touch base on export location and file naming. If you will be dealing with a lot of files, it is important to organize them and organize the file naming. We want to make sure that you export to a specific folder or same as the original photo. Then make sure to create a sub folder or to put in a sub folder. For this instance, I created a sub-folder named Instant noodles. Then with existing files, I want to make sure that I will be asked what to do. Let's say a filename has been saved already in the past, I want to make sure that I choose "Ask what to do" instead of just keeping it or overwrite without warning because I will be losing this file. In the file naming, we want to select "Custom Name" and the one with the numbers, just like this one. For the custom texts, I put here Instant noodles. Then you'll see here Instant Noodles, 1 of 1. Let's say in this example I have another photo here. When I save it, it will be Instant noodles, one of 2. That's good or actually, sorry, let's do sequence. If I save this second photo here, it will be Instant noodles Number 2, so there. Make sure that your files are organized and for high-quality, make sure to select 100 here, JPEG, and then you can export. That's it for the high-quality export. Next, what if you want to upload it in Instagram? First, we go to File again, and then we go to Export. For Instagram, we want to save it in the same location, but we can change the file naming to Instant noodles - Instagram. That's good, now we go down to the file settings. Image format is the same, color space is the same. For the quality, in order for Instagram not to adjust the size and quality of our photo, we want to set it down to 72, and then we want to adjust the image sizing. We need to select "Resize to fit". Then we need to select "Long Edge" and then for the pixels to retain the quality when uploading to Instagram, we need to adjust it to 1080 pixels. We can just leave the resolution at that. That's it. We can now export that and that will be ready to upload in Instagram. What if I want to upload it in Facebook? Same, we go to File and then Export. Now we want to adjust the file, or change the file name to Instant noodles - Facebook. Then we want to go down to File Settings. The image format will be the same JPEG, color space is sRGB. For Facebook quality, we want to adjust this to 85. You can still get that crisp, contrasty looking food but not too much file size. Same with image sizing we want to resize to Fit Long Edge. For Facebook, we will be adjusting this to 2048 pixels. We can just leave the resolution at that. We're done so we click on "Export". Finally, if you're like me, I like uploading my food photos in my Instagram stories as well as Facebook stories. There is also a suggested or recommended settings for that. We went to crop it to 16 by 9 and we can just adjust it a little bit like that. Then we're done [MUSIC] now we want to go to File, and then we want to go to Export, same expert location. We want to change the file naming to IG story. Then we go down to File Settings for IG story. Actually for the quality, we need to adjust it to 72 and then Resize to Fit Long Edge. Then we just need to change the pixels to 1920. Then that's it. We click on "Export". All right, now that you have adjusted or exported different versions of your food photos, we want to go to the sub folder or the folder where we save them or we've exported them. For me here I have the Instant noodles sub-folder. As you can see, we have the Instant noodles for Facebook upload. We have the Instant noodles for Instagram, that should be Instagram not Instafram. Then we have the one with the highest quality we're in we can send to a client or we want to send to a friend. We have, of course, the Instant noodles for our Instagram story. I hope you had fun and learned a lot from this lesson, and I hope to see you in the next videos. 26. Final activity: [MUSIC] The best way to learn is by doing. It's activity time. No one ever became an expert without practice. Let's get right into it. Number 1, make sure you are relaxed and have plenty of time to do this activity. Number 2, remember the first photo that you took, it's time to create the photo after food photography course. Number 3, for us to be uniform and to remove the burden of you deciding what to photograph, let's stick with the chocolate chip cookies as our subject. Again, you can use the ready to eat cookies or bake your own. For props, grab anything applicable from your house and kitchen. It could be napkins, cloth, plates, a book, chopping board, a glass of milk, baking tools, etc. Number 4, if you're shooting in daylight, that's great. If not, you may use any artificial light as your main light such as stable lamp and position it either lateral or diagonal. Get a fabric or white bedsheet to diffuse the main light. Next is to get a white sheet of paper or anything that has a white surface that can serve as your fill light or reflector. Number 5, compose your shots by deciding what story you want to tell through your photos. Are you eating cookies alone, or are you with friends and family? Please use the compositional rules and techniques that you learned from the previous lesson. Number 6, prepare your background, scene and style it. Number 7, grab either your SLR, mirrorless camera or a smartphone, set it to auto in the meantime, but make sure to explore the manual options in the future. Then take two angle shots, top view and 45 degrees angle shot. Number 8, pick your favorite and edit by following the steps in the how to edit your photos section. If you will be editing on your phone, please follow the section below food photography using smart phone. Number 9, export it at 85 percent quality, resize to fit long edge then 2,048 pixels. Number 10, now you have your photo before the course and photo after the food photography course. You may now upload it in our exclusive Facebook group, creative masterminds, or you can upload your photos using the Create Project button in this course. [MUSIC] 27. How to use smart phone in Food Photography?: In most of the photos, I use the mirrorless camera because I have one available, and I am used to shooting with it. But the good news is most of the principles in this course can be applied if you are using a smartphone. I created this separate section to avoid confusion and so that it is more organized and easier for you to follow if you are using a smartphone. When you are using your smartphone, you can download Adobe Lightroom. This is available for both iOS and Android. Kindly pause this video so we can explore the software together while you download Adobe Lightroom. Once you have it downloaded and open, first thing I'd like to show you is the camera option at the lower right-hand corner. When you click on it and go to the left-hand corner, you have the option to select pro for professional, and auto for automatic. The pro option gives you most of the settings available on a DSLR camera. First, you have the shutter speed, which measures the length of time that an image is captured in seconds. Then the ISO, which adjust the camera sensitivity to light. If your scene is well lit, you can have it at the minimum. Increasing ISO will give you a lighter image, and can become noisy or grainy. Next is the white balance. Choose the option that closely matches your light source. Is it daylight, is it cloudy, or are you using a fluorescent light? Finally, you have the manual focus. You can use the slider to manually set where the camera is focusing. Finally, you have the reset button, if you would like to disregard your settings and start from scratch. What's great with Adobe Lightroom is you have the option to shoot in RAW and JPEG. Here, DNG is the RAW format to shoot and JPEG for JPEG. Now that you know all of that, let's go and take photos. In here I am using my favorite pink felt paper. I already explained this in the rule of odds section. As you can see, I'm using three layers, then five cookies, three pieces of chocolate chips in the middle, and one in each other sides. Again, if you will count my layers, number of cookies and chocolates, they're all odd numbers. I also took a bite to break the pattern and tell a different story. Here's where I shot using my Android phone and using the Adobe Lightroom software as well. When using a smartphone, I like to shoot using overhead or the top view angle, as well as the 45 degrees angle. If your composition guide or technique is the golden ratio, patterns, or symmetry, you can start by shooting overhead or top view to really showcase your composition. Once you have your photos and you selected the ones that you will share with the world, you can proceed to edit using the same software, Adobe Lightroom. First step is to select all photos. Then choose your favorite photo or the photo you'd like to edit. [MUSIC] Once open, at the bottom, you have almost the same tools that you have or that you can see in Adobe Lightroom for computers. First is the crop. Depending on the purpose, we can set the crop. In this example, I will select four by five for Facebook and Instagram upload, then I will adjust the subject to align properly. Then press the check icon. Next we move on to light or the exposure. In here you can adjust the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks. [MUSIC] Key tip in photography is to make sure that white looks white. That is why we have the white balance. Next in here, we can address the colors. In here you can adjust the temperature, if it's too yellow for the tint, the vibrance, and saturation. In here we also have the mix which is equivalent to HSL in Adobe Lightroom for computers. My favorite part in here, we can manipulate each of the color in the photo. If you want to saturate just the greens, you can do that here. You can also adjust the hue and luminance of each color, and just click done. You also have the effects option where you can adjust the texture, clarity, dehaze, vignette, and green amount. Not only that, you can also adjust the detail and optics. Of course, you also have the option to select a preset, an option to undo your edits using previews and reset. You can view your before and after photos by pressing and holding. See that, so cool. You can also use this to view your before and after photos. Finally, you can also apply the export settings that we learned from the previous lesson. Just click the share icon, then export as, and just follow the guides that we had in the exporting. Let me just show you, and put it on the screen. There you have it. You were able to go through the whole process of food photography using your smartphone. Not having expensive gears is never an excuse. Please have your own exploration in this software, or you can use other free or paid software that has the same functions, and experiment with your photos. 28. Food photography Demo: SOUP: Congratulations, you're almost at the end of the course. We have learned all of the basic and fundamental elements of food photography. Just like other skills, food photography requires a lot of practice. In this video, I will show you a complete demonstration applying all the lesson that we learned from start to finish, from setup to editing and exporting. In this demo, I will be photographing soup. Applying what we learned in section 1. First, you need to plan the shoot, choose a location, decide what light to use, will it be day light, natural light or artificial light? Compose a scene and make a sketch in your mind or actually write it down. For this demo, I chose my favorite spot, which is our dining area, because this is the only place where I can freely move and work in my entire food photography process. Since this location has no access to a window, I will be using my artificial light. I'm thinking of two outcomes in mind. First is a top view shot showing a symmetry or showing shapes. Because as we know in composition, shapes are very important because it guides our viewers eye. I might go with symmetry or repeating shapes. I'm also thinking of a 45 degrees angle showing rule of thirds, or a landscape angle showing all the details of the styling. We'll get into that later. Next, we set up the lights. That includes our main light and our diffuser, as well as our fill light or our reflector. I'll be using the white side of this illustration board as my fill light. As we've discussed in our previous lesson, fill light is used to bounce back-light so that our scene will look more balanced looking and will have less harsh shadows. After I setup my background and the lights, we proceed with styling. We want to make sure that we style first or we decide how we style our scene, we experiment before we put out the actual food. In the previous lesson we discussed about adding layers or layering to create that texture and depth of field. I have my favorite background, the wooden background that I have here. Then I always use table napkin to add layer and color contrast. In here since we will be photographing soup, we will be using a bowl, so I want to use repeating shapes. As you can see, I already have three repeating shapes here. I'm thinking of adding this garlic and these two eggs in my scene. As you can see, I'm following a diagonal line. As you can see from the table napkin and where I'm placing my props. In food photography, make use of lines and shapes to guide your composition. As you can see, I am moving my props a lot. That's why it is important to finalize your styling and your composition just before you put out the food. This is important, especially when you're photographing dessert, food that could look stale for a long period of time. I'm using a table napkin in replacement to my food because I will be taking test shots. Now that I'm satisfied with my setup, next is to set my camera settings. First we want to adjust or set the white balance. I'm selecting the white balance. I'm using the white side of the fill light or the reflector as my white balance cards sorry. Next I'm adjusting the aperture to 2.8, my shutter speed to one over 50th, and my ISO to 200. [NOISE] Now that we're done with the test shots, let me just show you the results. Those are my test shot and because of that, I have decided that I did not like my styling and my composition, so I will be changing it to a totally different setup. As you can see there. It is very important to have a composition in styling in mind, also to do it just before you prepare your food. You'll have plenty of time and you won't be pressured to style it because the food will have a different appearance for a longer period of time. Take your time when it comes to styling, especially when you're just starting out. It's okay after you've styled and you feel like you're not satisfied with the end result, you can definitely redo it and experiment further. The goal is for the photo or your test shot to look balanced, to look appealing. Not to make your viewers uncomfortable. As you can see, I think this is a better looking setup. Hopefully. As you can see, I am making a lot of tweaks and adjustments. This is the reality behind the scenes of great food photos. [MUSIC] As you can see, I added the salt and pepper dispenser there because I can see that it's lacking or it has a negative space and I'm using my artificial eyes or I call it blocks, to mark the position of this small bowl. This is one of our styling hacks. As you can see, when I get the food, I can place it back to where it was. There you go. Blocks or anything. You can use any object to mark your plates. You can apply this in other because I have my plates here so I don't have to use blocks. I can just get the bowl and put the soup. Now carefully arrange the bowl, make sure it's at the center and of course, my favorite styling technique is adding garnish for that extra look. As you can see, adding those basil leaves, sorry, gives a different look to the soup. Let's start taking photos. As you can see, as I take photos, I also adjust my props. I make final adjustments. As you change angles and you take photos, you'll definitely see what else you need to change. For silver wares you can actually place them wherever you want. You can follow the diagonal, you can put it at the side of the dish. There's no right or wrong answering. placing the silverware. Oh, and I had to change my garnish because I ran out of parsley. I'm supposed to be using parsley, but I use basil leaves. Unfortunately it changes color when exposed to heat. I'm sorry, I did not know that. I was supposed to use parsley as my garnish. I ran out of it so it's my alternative. I didn't know it will change color. So that's one of the things you can avoid when doing food photography. Things to look out for. Each time, you will definitely learn something, yes you will make mistakes, but then you will definitely learn something. The good thing with making mistake is to take advantage of it by learning from it. That's how we succeed. We make mistakes, we learn from it, we use it, and then we get better. I'm done with the top view or the flat lay shots. I'm now going for my 45 degrees angle shot. I changed my styling again since I'll have the other props in the background in blur, so I styled it this way. As you can see, my silverware is also following the diagonal line. [MUSIC] Next step is to edit the photos. Once you're done shooting, you're done enjoying the food. Of course, after you've shot your food, you may want to enjoy it while it's still hot. But if you don't like that, you can also set it aside, clean up your workspace, and proceed with importing your photos to your computer or to your phone. Then proceed with editing it. Now, it doesn't matter what editing software you use. You can use a free editing software. You can use a paid one. For this demo, I will be using Adobe Lightroom to edit the photos that I took earlier. I'm done editing a couple of photos, so I've imported four. But this is my favorite. First, we want to make sure that our crop is correct. As you can see, the leaves here or garnish is not in the middle. I will be adjusting the crop to, as you can see here, four by five. This is the recommended crop size for Facebook and Instagram. My purpose for this shot is to upload it to my Instagram and Facebook account. What I'll do is set it to four by five, and then adjust to make sure that our subject is in the middle. That's actually another styling and composition technique. You might be worried that the other props are at the edge of the frame and they're not totally seen. That actually creates an illusion that there's a whole other world outside of this frame. It will look like there's a bigger table, but when in reality, this is just a corkboard. That's the power of putting props and other details in the edge of the frame. I'm happy with this crop, so I'll click "Done". Then for this photo, to me, it looks a bit yellow. By the way, a lot of editing software has the white balance function wherein, if you just click this eyedropper here and then you point it to something gray or white, I don't think that's correct, it will change the white balance or it will correct the white balance. As you can see, the white is more white. It's more natural-looking. Then I want to adjust the exposure just a little bit. Maybe 10, not 15. That's good. As I mentioned in the previous lesson, don't go overboard with all the adjustment. All my photos, especially for this course, I use the JPEG format. So it won't take up my camera's space and it will be faster for my workflow. But as mentioned in the previous lesson, depending on what purpose you intend to use your food photos, that's how you can decide whether to use JPEG or RAW and all the other factors, especially the camera settings. Will you be using manual, auto? It depends. Whatever purpose you intend to use your food photos, you can match your preference and everything else to that. I want to adjust the exposure as well just a little bit. Fifteen? Let's see. Fifteen is good. Then this is my favorite part, the HSL or the color settings wherein I can adjust the colors manually. Because in the previous lesson, you learned that if we just adjust the saturation all the way up, it will saturate the entire photo or the entire scene, so we don't want that. I just want to change or I just want to adjust the greens and the oranges of this photo. I go to Color, I go to Green, then I just adjust the hue a little bit, as well as the saturation, and the luminance to add that fresh so my greens will look fresh. See, the leaves looks more vibrant, it looks more fresh, and the whole scene looks balanced and more pleasing to the eye. I'm happy with that. I just want to adjust the oranges as well. That's it. Basically, I've just adjusted the crop, the light exposure. I did not adjust the shadows because I'm happy with the shadows. I feel like it's added depth and that 3D effect, so I did not adjust the shadows. I just adjusted the color because I wanted the green to look more vibrant too, my leaves to look more fresh. I'm happy with that. I'm happy with the crop. For me, it's customized for Facebook and Instagram uploads. I can just export this. We go to Export. As mentioned in the previous lesson, we want to organize our files so we can easily access them. For me, I export it to my desktop, put it in the subfolder. Actually, let's check here. Desktop, subfolder, soup. Then soup for Facebook. File settings, image format is JPEG, so it will be compatible for all online platforms. Color space is sRGB. This is best when your photos are being viewed online or in their screens, on the web. Quality, I'm going to adjust this to 85 for Facebook. Now for the image sizing, resize to fit, long edge. For Facebook, we want to adjust the pixels to 2048. We can just leave the resolution at that since we are not printing it. That's it. I don't use watermarks, so I'm leaving that, and remove the check in the location info so you don't want your location to be in your metadata information, and just click on "Export". For example, you want to apply all the settings that we've applied here on this photo to all the other photos of the same shoot, you can just create a preset. You just go here on this side. I'm not sure with other editing software, but if there is an option to create a preset, you can actually maximize that option. You go to Presets. You click on the plus sign, Create Preset. Then you just change it to soup preset. Then those are all the settings. Then you click on "Create". Let's say you go to this other photo, when you go down to the soup preset, and all the settings are immediately applied. When you click on that, and you click on the before and after, you can already see that this photo looks more natural, more balanced looking. The colors are correct. You can do the same with other photos. You apply the soup preset and as you can see, the white looks more white and the other colors are correct. Let's go back to our favorite photo, our folder. You'll see our finished image here ready for Facebook upload. Basically, that's it for our entire demo. I hope you have fun and I hope you'll put it into action. You will continue to practice, you will experiment. If you have other questions, feel free to ask. I'm always on the lookout for my students' messages. Don't forget to enjoy the food that you have cooked or you've prepared. Thank you. Bye. [MUSIC] 29. Food Photography Demo: Fried Rice and Dimsum: Hi. In this video, I will show you the demonstration of how I shot this fried rice with dim sum. As you can see, I follow the diagonal guide when styling in composition. I have all my props setup here already. Now I'm setting up my diffuser to cover my main light so that my light is softer and I won't have harsh shadows. Of course, our field light or our reflector, which is my favorite, the white side of this illustration board. Now I'm just setting up the white balance and other camera settings. As you can see how I place those two balls. Right now, I'm not using white plates. I want to go for a native-looking setup. [MUSIC] I'm just making final adjustment to my styling and setup later. Everything will make sense once you see the final result. It's time to take photos. My most important part, of course, the results. We have the eye-level shot. We have a 45-degrees angle shot. As you can see, all the other details are in blur, creating that nice depth of fields. So these are our details or what I call artistic. I had to put the spoon there to add a different feel and to tell a different story. [MUSIC] Next, I'm not very happy with the color of the final photos, so I went to make a couple of adjustments to the color and be able to export it so that I can optimize the image quality for different platforms such as Facebook, my blog, Instagram, or if I just want to export a high-quality image. I am done importing my photos, so I just go to Develop. Again, I'm editing in Adobe Lightroom. First, we want to adjust the crop. I'm selecting four by five for the crop. I have my subject in the center, so this is good for me. That's done. Then I use the white balance. I'm looking for somehow a gray. I don't have any grays. I think this one looks correct. Not really. How about this one? That's better. [MUSIC] Then I just want to adjust the exposure a little bit. Maybe to negative 10. Then my favorite settings will be the colors. I want my greens to be vibrant. [MUSIC] That's good. Of course, my orange really pop just a little bit. Maybe it can just adjust the vibrance just a little bit. A bit of contrast. [BACKGROUND] Let's see. Color looks more natural to me. This one looks more appetizing. The colors are correct. Now what if I want to apply the same settings with the other photos that I have here. I just create a preset for this one. So create preset. I'll just name it fried rice preset. [MUSIC] Then when I go to my other photos, I just select ''Fried rice preset''. As you can see, it will apply all the changes that I made to all of the photos. You can already see the huge difference in fried rice preset. I'm happy with that. This photo, I would like to upload it in my Instagram stories. I will go to Crop. For Instagram stories, it is recommended to have the 16 by 9. For Instagram, it is recommended to have the 16 by 9 crop. So I am selecting that. That's done. It's looking really beautiful, ready for my Instagram story. I'll go to File and then Export. Then I go to a specific folder, Food Photography, I'll have a subfolder named fried rice, and then fried rice IG story. For my file settings, image format is JPEG, color space is sRGB. I will adjust the quality to 72. That's most recommended for Instagram stories. Long edge is our image sizing. Click on "Resize to Fit". For the pixels, this is what you need to take note of. For Instagram stories, recommended is 1920. That's it and we click on ''Export''. Now, if you go to the folder, so if you go to fried rice, it's there ready to be uploaded to your Instagram story. Of course, you do the same things with the other photos. Let's say this one you want to upload in Facebook. We've already adjusted the crop. Sorry, we haven't. We want to adjust it to four by five for Facebook, and then put our subject in the rule of thirds. That's done. I love the crop, we're following the diagonal. It's beautiful. Now we want to export it to a specific folder, fried rice. We just change this one, the custom text to Facebook. Then this is the important part for file settings. For Facebook, we can set it up up to 85. For image sizing, same. Resize to fit, long edge. Then we just change this to 2048. We'll leave everything else alone. Then we click on ''Export''. When we go to our folder, we have one for IG story, we have one for Facebook. Now what if we want just a high quality for our client? Let's say this one. Let's say you're photographing this to be used for their Instagram page or their website. For that, I think the crop is already perfect, so we can leave it at that. We go to File, we go to Export. Same file location, but we changed the custom name to, let's say fried rice, let's say website. [MUSIC] Same image format, JPEG, color space is sRGB. Now for the quality, we wanted to lower it down to 80 because we don't want for our website or blogs to load up really huge images that it will take time. Our viewers only have five seconds attention span, so we don't want our big images to be creating so much lag and so much loading time. So we can tone down the quality to 80. Then for the pixel, so same, long edge resize to fit. We just change the pixels to 1000. It will be smaller and it will still be crisp and contrasty, but it will be also fast when our viewers check it on our blogs or on our website. That's done. This is our setting for food photos, export settings when using in blogs or website. We just click on ''Export'' and we go back to our subfolder, and there you have it. You have one that you can use for website, one you can use for your IG story, and one for your Facebook upload. There you have it. I hope you had fun in this video and see you in the next. [MUSIC] 30. Congratulations! What's Next?: Congratulations. Now that you have learned about the important elements of foods photography, I'm sure you will start by photographing anything that looks beautiful and attractive, or maybe start with a dish that you've been wanting to cook and practice taking photos. Whatever it is, I'm sure you will discover which technique and style works for you best. I'm also sure you will want more and my final advice is once you have discovered your style and found your rhythm, give yourself a specific task. It can be small or a big project. It could be creating a food photography portfolio, a cookbook, an exhibition, or just simply designing your Instagram feed with mouth-watering dishes. Just to make sure that you have a goal so you will continue learning and will always be excited for the next project. Don't be afraid to experiment or even model photos you see online or from a magazine. Just like any other skills, to become an expert we need to practice by doing it. Practice, practice, and practice. Again, don't worry about making mistakes. It's all part of the fun. I hope you learned a lot from this course and I can't wait to see your before and after food photos. If you have other questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I would love to get a feedback as well so I can improve and keep this course up-to-date. Thank you for choosing me as your instructor and good luck on your food photography journey.