Just pasta

Just pasta

Still Pasta

I really enjoy styling the food, it may look randomly put there, but it actually isn't. I sometimes use tweezers to arrange the food on the plate, a trick I learned from food styling tutorials on youtube. If you look at the picture above you can see here and there some dry oregano and basil flakes, well I arranged them in order to be visible, using  tweezers. 

In the photo below I added some pieces of tomato to make the pasta more colorful, they weren't in the original recipe, but adding them did not change the dish much overall.  Pasta and tomatoes are always a good match :)

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Pasta & Bulgur

Some more pasta

Another thing I have noticed is that I like to take vertical photos, holding the camera sideways. I guess I like to be able to put things in the background and blur them out. I like better the last photo in this post. I guess it looks more natural than the other two, the colors are not so saturated and it is not overexposed, plus the pasta looks somehow more organized, perfectly styled. 

Hope you like it! Click Click Guten Appetit!

Pasta...again

Well, I guess I like to photograph pasta dishes as mush as I like to eat them, namely a lot! :)

I used the same pasta on two different backgrounds, one white and the other dark. I like them both. 

I realized that I have the tendency to shoot from a 45 degree angle, I will have to try out also different angles. Casseroles topped with melted cheese, pizzas or cute skillet frittatas look better photographed top down/overhead shot. I just have to find a support for my camera for the overhead shots, in order to avoid shaken photos.

The pasta was so nicely shaped, in a spiral form, that I had to take a straight on pic too, and it looks delicious :)

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More Pasta

These are actually leftover pasta from the other day, I wasn't really satisfied with the pics I have taken a day earlier so I gave it another shot, and I don't regret it. I really love this picture, the one from above!  I have a habit of overexposing my photos and lately I tried to avoid that.

This time I used Aperture Priority mode. I find it is easier to shoot using AP, you don't have to focus on exposure anymore, the camera is doing that for you, while you can choose your preferred focal depth.

Camera settings for the above pic:

Exposure: 1/100s at f/3.5
Exposure mode: Auto
Exposure program: Aperture Priority
ISO:100

Ok, I am not really fond of the picture below, it is taken top down and I have used my 18-55mm lens, the one that came with the camera kit. I cannot use my macro lens for top down pictures, because it has no image stabilizer and if I don't use a tripod the photos get blurry and shaken, that is why you wont see many of my pictures taken from this angle.  I am gonna have to improvise some kind of support for my camera, to be able to shoot photos of food top down. 

Camera settings:

Exposure: 1/30s at f/4.5
Exposure mode: Auto
Exposure program: Aperture Priority
ISO: 100

Click Click Guten Appetit! 

Pasta

I am just in the learning process of food photography, trying out different backgrounds, white vs black, colorful vs grey, discovering new tricks everyday and hoping that some day my food pics are gonna look professional, just like those in fancy shmancy  culinary magazines. I love to cook, I also have a food blog where I share my recipes: kitchen drama, but I thought it might be a good idea to create a blog dedicated solely for food photography, where I can share my everyday learning experience while taking delicious pics.  

So here it is, my first post on this blog, shooting garlic&basil pasta.

I found a "behind the scenes pic" I have taken with my phone, while shooting this pasta dish.

I was aiming for a more dramatic photo, somehow darker, accentuating the color of the food. As you can see I improvise a lot, being an amateur photographer I try to do my best with what I have at hand, hence the books and the black towel I used to stop reflecting the light. 

The manual camera settings I used are as follows: 

Exposure: 1/20s

Aperture: f/3.2

ISO:400

... and the lens I usually use for food photography is a Canon 50mm f 2.5 Macro Lens.

Click Click Guten Appetit !