Task 1A - photographers and technical research

Food photography

Food photography specializes in still life, commercial photography. The aim is to present the product in the best possible way. Food photography have changed a lot for the past few years. For a very long time in food photography, photographers used to take pictures of the food on plates from above, just like people are used to see it when they eat it, from the point of view of the eater, which I think was very clever thing to do. Through the year, food photography like any other photography have changed, photographers tried to make the food visually more interesting. They tried to make it look more interesting by adding some props, taking photos from different angles, doing really close close ups. They still had to remember to keep the food as naturally looking, simple and clean with the props as possible. In food photography there are also some food stylist which composition the food before photographer starts his photo shoot to make them look really good. 

Contemporary photographers

David Loftus. David brings a unique twist to food photography. He catches the lifestyle as well as the food itself. For over 20 years David has photographed 100 different books. He has taken a lot of food photopgraphy to books like Jamie Oliver which was internationally best selling cooking book or Gennaro Contaldo which really helped to bring food to life to the readers. He has also directed TV commercials including UK supermarket Sainsbury's, one of the most successful food advertisements. In 2012 David has published his first book, under his own name. It is a recipe collection, with his amazing photos. I think Davids work in really interesting and stands out from the rest of food photography because of the creativity and really interesting ideas as well. In most of his photos he uses natural lightning, as well as very thoughtful depth of field in his photos. He shows really small details in his photo which make them look really interesting because he doesn't just pay attention to aspect of the photo but to every single detail. Even if the background in blurry he still matched the colours to the main objeect which is in focus, which really inspires me and I will definately think about this in my own work.

Beatrice Petter. Photography food of Betrice has a natural and fresh look about it, both in terms of her choice in home made food but also about the creative styling of the food. Beatrice uses bold colours and nice shapes of raw ingredients in her photos. She also uses quite a few very interesting props with her food photography. She was born in France, she's a really good food photographer as well as food stylist, now she lives in Boston, where she writes and photographs food as well as people and lifestyle stories. Her work has been featured in many international newspapers as well as on TV. I really like Beatice's food photography because it's different and even though sometime there is a lot of mess on her photos, she still knows how to style the food and the props so that it looks really interesting. She also uses natural lightning which is really good while doing food photography because the food look really fresh.

Francesco Tonelli. Francesco Tonelli born in Italy, and raised in Milan. Francesco is a photographer whose style was born from his deep passion of food. First of all he was a professional chef and a teacher. He has worked in kitchens across Europe, before starting to explore the food photography. Francesco photographs for a lot of well know campaigns like Knorr and may more.  Overall he has worked in the food industry for over 20 years in different countries like Italy, Switzerland, France or even Canada and USA. He has found his talent in the kitchen as a Pastry Chef while styling his food for La Cucina Italiana in Milan from 1990 to 1997. From 1997 to 2005, Francesco worked as professor in culinary at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. In 2004, Tonelli combined hiss chef skills with photography, developing his own unique photographic style. By looking at Francesco's work we can see that he's a professional photographer, because of the quality of his work.

Carl Warner. Carl makes lovely landscape food photographs, called simply foodscape, creating cartoon-like scenes forest of broccoli or sea of smoked salmon. His imaginative work had been used widely in a lot of advertisements both in magazines and television.

Carl in an English photographer who creates food landscapes. From his studio which is based in London, he gathers together different kind of ingredients to compose very creative and interesting as well as eye catching photographs. Each of his photographs is constructed of fresh ingredients, as we can clearly see this in all of his photos. To make them look fresh, Carl has to not only pick the best ingredient but also work very fast on each photo. Each ingredient is also picked thoughtfully as it need to be in the best shape and have the best colour. I really enjoy looking through Carl's photographs. They are very unique and it's really interesting how he has his own style. His photographs are perfect for different kinds of food advertisements, they attract the viewers and it makes us want to look deep into the photo to see what kind of ingredients we can see in the photo as well as what does the image tell us in general. His images take us to our own little world.

Historical photographers

First ever food photography, was taken in 1832 by Joseph Nicephore Niepce. Because this is one of the first still life (food) photographs, we can't clearly see what is happening in the background of the photo, but we can see what in on the table. I really like the composition of the photo, and the fact that this is the first food photographs, everything is neat and very well composed in terms of the subjects on the table.

1832

Irviry Penn. Irviry, born in 1917 is an American photographer, mostly known for fashion photography, portraits as well as still life, including food photography. His work was exhibited internationally. One of the most still life successful one was in 1982: ''Irviry Penn: Recent Still Life: Negatives 1979-1980, Prints in Platinum Metals 1980-1982, Marlborough Gallery'' in New York. In his carrier, he experimented with a lot of different printing techniques including very interesting prints made on aluminium sheets. Penn's photography, especially still life, are composed with a very great attention to all small details in the photo. All of his black and white prints are noticed for their very deep and interesting contrast, giving them a very clean and professional look. He's photos are very interesting and they really inspire me in term of creativity. Penn, don't usually use fresh food to make it look nice. He usually uses frozen food in different kinds of shapes, which I think look really interesting and he also uses very old and moldy food, which I think looks interesting and it's different from everything else. In my opinion he's trying to show how people waste food or what they do to it by freezing it, and that it just looks fake and plastic which might be not as tasteful as before. He has also shows nice texture, colours and shapes in the photo where he has frozen some food.

1977

1985

Roger Fenton. Roger Fenton who was one of the first photographers during War, really inspired me through his own work. During war he decided to photograph different things, including still life (food), to develop his skills. Roger did a lot of close up's regarding food photography but mostly shot at eye level angle. I really like the idea of how he was using relevant props, which made the photos look more interesting.

Nickolas Muray. Nickolas Muray was mostly known for his portraiture photographs of celebrities mainly from America. He was also a great food photographer. In some of his photographs the composition of the photo might seem a little bit weird, but that was because he did a lot of them for advertisement or different kinds of food book and he would usually leave a bit of space in the image for the text, which is really important. He has also used colour carbro process of food for  different kinds of magazines and a lot of other advertisements during 1950's. He has used a lot of models in his food photography, to show emotions, for example, a child eating a cake, we can clearly see that the child is happy and can't wait to eat the cake which also gives us the emotions and it makes us want to eat the cake as well. He has also used a lot hand in his photos, for example, a lady pouring tea in a cup or someone reaching for something to eat at a table. I really like this idea and it really inspired me to try something like this, but develop it in a more creative way. I really like the fact that Nickolas made everything neat and tidy in his photos, therefore the food looks delicious and really tasty. 

Technical research

Still life photography is one of the first types of photography. Whereas a lot of year back to take a photo it was necessary for exposure to be quite long, therefore photographers used to place some object which was an ideal subject matter. We can gain a lot of inspiration from the still life photography because there are so many photos we can explore and have a look at. Still life photography is very important because a lot of businesses, as magazines or catalogues and websites all require different kinds of still life photography products . 

In still life photography, the very important thing to remember is the composition. The camera can be placed on a tripod which will allow you to take some nice photos at an eye level angle, but we should also remember about different compositions, but we also need to remember to be careful not to cast any shadows on our subjects that we don't want while moving the camera. You have be also very creative, whereas in other types of photography like landscape or fashion the creative subject is in front of you, but in still life its you that have to be creative because there are less variables, and we, as the photographers have a complete control over that we're doing, including positioning the subject in the right place. We have to be very creative in order to capture the subject in an interesting way. It is also very important to choose the right subject that you want to photograph, remembering about the extra props that you can use to capture a photo in a better way.  We might start of with single objects and then as we get into taking the photos we might way to try and mix more objects in combine objects of contrasting shapes, colour, maybe even texture and see what we come up with.

It's good that we don't need professional studios while working with still life photography, we can simply use a space at home, such as table placed by a window, along with simple backdrops. In still life photography most of the photographers agree that the lightning is the biggest challenge they face. It doesn't mean that you have to spend fortune on buying a lot of professional equipment just to do still life photography. We can also use simple window natural light as well as desk lamp or even a pocket torch to create some really nice effects. Desk lamps are very useful because we can move they and direct the light ideally on our subject, or whenever we need to point it at. Small torch is also nice and easy to use because we can easily manipulate the light and we have a great control over it. We might sometimes need some extra things like some fabric or paper foe the backdrop as well as reflector for creating a more even lighting for close up photos. While using the table laps or torches we should remember about different composition of the lightning as well. We can try and place they in front of the subject, as well as at the side to create some interesting shadows or maybe even at the back, remembering that we have the full control over it. 

We have to remember that day light will always look really nice, most of photographers agree that food photography will always look million times better in natural, day light. Day light, doesn't mean we have to take photos outdoor, it can also be indoor near a big window where there's a lot of natural light coming through is a really good start. In m opinion photos at night time look as good. At night time we can experiment with light. We can be using just lamps or candles to create a romantic effect in our photos. We can really play around with shadows during the night time and sometimes we can get more creative and interesting photos that using natural day light.