Food Photography - Burgers - How to: #1

Our San Diego spies say the billboards are back! We thought we'd take a moment to show a few others from the shoot. (previous photo by Jay S.) All others ©ramsayphotography.

This is a version of the original. Metadata says originally shot at f4, 1/1000sec, ISO 160 from a canon 5D with the lens (24 -105 f4) at 105. The original file (4368 x 2912) was cropped to 3058 x 2912 which makes a 25 megabyte file. For Steemit, I scaled it down to 1600 pixels wide then used the photoshop "save for web" feature to compress it for real. Set currently for XHTML with iso 8859-1. My goal was a 300kb file so I dialed the feature to medium, or jpeg-60.

The photograph above was lit by the sun, looks like it was about 120 degrees to the left. Then, with a reflector over the camera's right shoulder, about 4 feet back, the fill light was added.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/279427-REG/Westcott_1032_Illuminator_Reflector_Kit_6_in_1.html

The product above is probably the most important part of food photography (works for models too). Far more important than camera body or lens construction is the ability to wait for warm light then reflect it back on the subject. Also notice nothing in the shot is blown out. This is really really important for printing.

Here the camera has a much higher depth of field (aperture f16, 1/40sec, iso 50), was certainly on a tripod, and the camera body was levelled before the shot.

Also, notice that the color of the light is much whiter in this photo. We use Norman strobes with daylight balanced bulbs. Its pretty over the top, but you can see how it changes the subject material. Also, the restaurant chain seems to prefer the sunlit images because despite multiple photoshoots with a bunch of different burgers, these couple images keep coming back around.

Dean says its all about the color of the cheese. This time he had been able to find a genuinely orange looking cheese. Also, notice the food is all ripping hot. These were all shot within a minute of the patty leaving the grill.

For those that know BurgerLounge's marketing program, this is the original. From Dean's balcony, and it was definitely Melissa's hand.

Jim was the head chef who designed the whole product line. To gain the height for the photos, he cut these giant onions, and while Dean was super sensitive to the image on the billboard being identical to what is delivered at every counter, he was okay with the onion mod. So Jim took this giant bite with the giant onion, then spit it out. In real life, I don't think they ever used the giant wedge, or this shot.

Love what they did here with our photos. Dean could hire the best and chose us anyway.
:)