Sunday, September 21, 2014

Styling & Photography of Food


Food is one of the hardest things to take pictures of. This means a food photographer must create the best lighting to show off the colors and depths of the food. As well as a food photographer, there is a food stylist. The food stylist is in charge of arranging the food perfectly, and keeping the appearance of the food fresh, so it is appealing to the people who see it. Because of all these tedious steps, food stylists usually replace real food with fake food.

You might think you are looking at a glass of milk, when in reality you are looking at a glass of white glue. Or a bowl of ice cream might actually be a bowl of frosting made out of shortening, corn syrup, and powdered sugar. This prevents the “ice cream” from melting while under hot lights.

So why do salads in magazines look one hundred times better than the flat, dull salad you made at home? They actually place a smaller bowl upside down in the bigger bowl and, cover that with the leafy greens. They go on to add the colorful toppings but, they don’t use dressing because the weight and slipperiness makes it hard to arrange the leaves. Instead they might use olive oil and seasonings on the salad to create a shiny yet weightless finish.

Food stylists even use fake ice cubes made out of acrylic. They use this strong, clear plastic because it doesn’t melt under the hot studio lights. This makes it much easier to photograph than real ice.

Some soup ads don’t even use real soup. There might be a picture of a bowl of steaming soup on a cold day but, it’s fake steam. The food stylists use cool air nebulizers or a mixture of chemicals to give off smoke that looks like steam.

They also use this steam technique on burgers to make them appear hot. The photography of a burger takes a dozen or more steps to get just right. The hamburger meat is cooked with a torch so the stylists can add the right amount of brownness, the middle of tomatoes are cut out so they don’t get everything soggy and discolored, and all the ingredients in the burger are held together with toothpicks. The final touch is applying the condiments with an applicator bottle to ensure that there is not a single drop of mustard in the wrong place.

 

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