For my stepdaughter's graduation present, I made for her a recipe book with some of her favorite foods and family recipes. One of the things I wanted to add were photographs of the food I was including along with family photos of everyone enjoying food. I realized the challenge of taking photos of food.
There is a lot that goes into taking a simple photo of your favorite dinner; setting, lighting, background distractions, styling, color schemes. I have been learning more about visual storytelling and food photography. I watched a class called Lifestyle Photography: Capturing Inspiring Visual Stories by Marte Marie Forsberg to learn a bit about food photography. She makes it look easy. I was inspired to try.
When I was growing up, we always had some kind of baked good. If you ask my friends from high school, they would agree. On any given day, the island of our kitchen would have some kind of treat waiting. At first, my mother was the instigator but as my sugar addiction became more grand, I felt the need to feed. My mom's poundcake recipe, rice krispy treats and chocolate chip cookies were on the top of the list. Even after I went off to college, my high school friends and I would reunite and spend late December nights in the kitchen listening to carols and decorating cookies for Santa.
This summer, we took a trip out to my favorite blueberry farm on Sauvie's Island, The Croft Farm. It is a small farm that has the perfect size field of blueberries and a beautiful barn. So, after filling three large bowls with blueberries, I cleaned them and readied them for the pie and set off on a food photography exploration.
As you can see, not all photos were successful. I played around with background, composition, lighting, and props. The photographs improved as time went on. It was a fun experiment in the summer time light. The payoff of fresh blueberry pie was not bad either. I have found something that combines some of my favorite things; baking, photography and eating sweets!
