Havelock Place Bungalow - Food Photography

Bread & Butter

This post is a bit different from the usual. I took a few shots of the Food at the Havelock Place Bungalow in December and in this post I will describe how each of the five shots were taken and lit. All the shots were taken with a Canon 50mm f1.8 lens mounted on a 7D More info after the jump.

The shot above was taken with an aperture of 3.5 at 1/50th of a second. I wanted to give the shot some depth and therefore didn't use the flash on camera. Instead, I used a canon 430EX fired at around 1/32 from camera left. This gave the image the desired depth as it created shadows. It also created a few highlights on the glasses which also added to the image.

Coconut and Crab Risotto

An aperture of 3.2 and a shutter speed of 1/125th were used to capture this image. This one was a bit trickier to light due to the shape of the coconut and the fact that I had only one flash. The flash was fired from camera right at about 1/32. I feel there are too many dark areas in this image. In hindsight I should have either left the shutter opened for a bit longer for the ambient light to brighten up the image or used a white serviette from the left of the camera to reflect the flash and lighten up the left hand side of the image.

Seafood Laksa

I positioned the flash behind the subject for this image as I wanted to go for a slightly different look. Firing the flash from behind the bowl helped define the rim of the bowl. It also defined the surface of the Laksa by creating shadows. The flash almost caused the highlights of this image to be blown but in my opinion this makes the viewer focus on the Laksa itself rather than get distracted by the other plates which are visible.

Jaggery Ice Cream

The glass which the Ice Cream was served in was chilled and drops of water had formed on the outside. I wanted to try and use the flash to accentuate these drops. In order to do this I shot the flash at around 1/16th through a white cloth serviette to even out the light. The flash was shot from Camera right and slightly behind the subject.  The aperture used was around f 9.0 and the shutter speed was 1/15. I used this combination to reduce the effect of the flash and bring up the background with the ambient.

Lemon Tart and Vanilla Ice Cream

An aperture of f 6.3 and a shutter speed of 1/80th of a second were used to capture this image. The flash was shot at 1/64 from camera left. I had to bring the aperture down to 6.3 in order to control the highlights on the Ice Cream. I wanted to use the flash to define the edges of the Lemon Tart and the Ice Cream. To do this I needed hard light.