Food of Thought

Like I said in my last post, I am starting to work on better, new to me, and advanced techniques for photographing products.  For now though my focus will be zoomed onto food.  Why food?  It's not like I can sell food, I don't own a restaurant, I don't have a food handler's licence that is current anymore, so why?  Because with food, no one will want it if it doesn't look appetizing. So it's the perfect product to test out what I'm learning about photography.

For example, here is a simple grilled cheese sandwich.  My family LOVES grilled cheese.  And no matter how hard I try to get them to try grilled cheese with tomato, avocado, lettuce, bell peppers or anything aside from bacon or deli sliced turkey, they only want to eat classic grilled cheese.  So how can I photograph a grilled cheese sandwich so that even a classic (plain) can look super duper yummy and inviting?  With awesome photography techniques!

I watch a lot of Food Network TV shows with my kids; they love watching Bobby Flay, Cake Boss Buddy, Cup Cake Wars, Cut Throat Kitchen, Worst Cooks in America, Chef Anne, and of course Iron Chef America is their favorite.  So from those shows I have learned about plating techniques when it comes to food.  How you put the food on a plate will determine how high end and aesthetically pleasing it will look.  

Above I have 3 different images of grilled cheese sandwiches.  The one on the left shows a great looking toasted bread with gooey cheese in the middle, but it doesn't WOW you.  The middle image has the sandwich sliced in half at the corners, and stacked on top of each other so you can get a good look at that yummy thick cheese in the middle.  That WOWs you, but looks a bit over done.  The one on the right is also cut in half at the corners, stacked well, and has some of the cheese oozing out showing you how yummy it will be.  Of the 3 images which would you choose to eat?

(Disclaimer: only the middle picture is mine, the others were found on google and only being used as examples)

I personally would choose the 3rd image, the oozy cheese one, it truly makes my mouth water just looking at it.  So even though I tried to make a good looking picture of grilled cheese, my cheese was too dry, not oozy enough, and my bread was over done.  If you can see these types of corrections with your own work, then you'll be able to move forwards and get out of that slump with small business issues.

How did I take my image?  I used a cell phone, then sent it through picmonkey.com for editing.  I used color saturation just to bring the colors to life, I used the clarity to make it more focused, and I cropped it for a great focal image.  It's that simple!  If I can make my images look this good with what I have then so can you.  Good luck!