These scrumptious batons were a lot of fun to shoot. I knew that I wanted to show off the layers of the puff pastry and the flaked sea salt on top. My style of shooting food is to get close but not too close to where you can’t figure out what it is that I am shooting. Kind of in your face but not. I did shoot this in the studio mainly because I wanted to show a lot of detail and it was a cloudy day so available light wouldn’t have been so good. Below is the setup I used in the studio.
I used two strobe lites with grids attached. On the left one I used a 20° grid and the right was a 30° grid. The purpose of the grids is to diffuse the strobe even more and soften up the light. On my table top studio, I have a diffuse panel on each side and the strobes shoot through those. Both strobes were set to 1/4 power. I didn’t want to have any harsh light on the batons. Guess I was trying to get things to look like the sun was the light source.
Perhaps the hardest thing about food photography is figuring out just how you want the shot to look. Should I put them on a plate, leave them on the baking sheet, etc. Usually what I do is try everything until I get the look I want. So the first shot was with the batons on a rectangular plate. It’s an OK shot but I don’t like the composition.
I like how you can see the cheese a little but it’s hard to figure out just what it is that I’m shooting. The camera settings were 0.4 sec. @ F9.0. ISO was 200. Of course the camera was set on manual and I was using my 100mm macro lens.
For the second shot, I changed this up a little. No plate.
I like the angle of it but shooting it straight on shows too much of the background and gives the picture no interest. Kind of busy. The camera settings for this shot were 2.5 sec. @ F14 and ISO 200. This one is alright but it doesn’t make me want to reach in and grab the baton.
For the third shot, I rearranged things a bit and changed my angle.
Well, I’m getting closer to what I want. You can see the star of the shot and with a little depth of field, you can see another baton behind it. The problem with this shot is the crumbs and stuff on the fabric. Too busy and messy. The camera settings were the same as shot #2.
Finally, for the last shot, I cleaned things up a bit but left a few crumbs and flakes on the fabric.
I left some crumbs there but they look more like the flakes from the pastry. Again the camera settings were the same as #2 and 3. I really like this shot. The light looks natural although it’s not. The shadows are soft and the composition leads your eye around the picture.
So, experiment with the composition, watch the shadows and background. Also make sure your white balance is set correctly. I shoot in RAW so white balance settings aren’t really an issue for me since I can tweak things in Lightroom. The more you can get set right in the camera, the less work you’ll have to do in post. That just frees up more time to eat these tasty little snacks.