How to shoot the Spring Festival food?

Spring Festival is the most important traditional festival in China. When I was a child, the most anticipated day was Chinese New Year. Besides lucky money and new clothes, there are all kinds of mouth-watering foods. Although people's living standards have improved now, big fish and big meat are no longer only available on holidays, but those traditional foods with full flavor of the year are still indispensable protagonists on the table. If you don't eat these delicious foods during the Spring Festival, you always feel that something is missing. So how do you shoot the food during the Spring Festival? Come and have a look with me.

First, the main ideas of food shooting

1. Food materials

Personally, I think this is the most important. Different foods have different textures, such as soft, crisp, tender, fat, oil, etc ... If you want to use different light for different materials (most people are not interested in the studio), there will be a special food style list to "shape" the food and make it more delicious through some "makeup": polishing the luster of the ingredients and reflecting the ingredients. What we ordinary people can do every day is to cook better.

Step 2 Taste the environment/atmosphere

Common shooting methods are overall bright and slightly warm (such as fried food, baked flour products, etc. ), but it should be noted that shooting food mostly pursues the normal restoration of color, especially shooting cold dishes, western snacks and fast food, avoiding heavy PS. The common layout means is to highlight the feeling that food is in front of you. For example, the feeling of hot freshly baked in the picture below.

3. Cooking skills

Fresh (spray some water on vegetables), delicious, hygienic and beautiful. This is also part of fashion.

When these three basic points are done, it is a good photo.

Second, the technical points of shooting food

1. Don't use wide angle.

This is the first thing I want to say, and it is also the most basic, direct and effective advice for beginners. Because most dishes are small in size, the wide-angle shooting of food is often close, which leads to the deepening of wide-angle distortion. This distortion will destroy the first two points mentioned above: material and environment. Tableware (especially dishes) with obvious perspective distortion will greatly reduce the feeling of being there, or it will appear unfriendly and unfamiliar.

If you have to use a wide angle, try not to take the whole plate in-that is, take a close-up. This can reduce wide-angle distortion. However, being too close will affect the depth of field mentioned later, depending on the situation. The same is true of ingredients. Close to the human eye, the original presentation is what I appreciate.

2. Control the depth of field

Many people estimate that shooting food is a brainless big aperture. In fact, whether portrait or still life photography, depth of field is often an important reference to distinguish high-end photography from low-end photography. For the task of food, which is small in size and easy to be photographed with shallow depth of field, the control of depth of field is more important. The less vague the theme, the clearer the material, and a large number of details of ingredients are the key to arousing appetite.

It is normal for high-end photography not to see any blur. The pictures in Zhihu are relatively small, so it's very cool to actually print them on a large menu. High-end restaurants should always reflect the overall luxury, and multiple dishes should be presented together, which requires a small aperture. At the same time, it is even more difficult to use wide angle.

Emphasize ingredients

Some foods can be cut open to highlight the ingredients used, which can well arouse people's appetite.

Shoot from above

The two points mentioned at the beginning are actually a headache for the average user. Fools/mobile phones are generally wide-angle, and the depth of field is difficult to control. In order to solve these problems, aerial photography is a very useful technology. In stagram, there is a Japanese keiyamazaki who specializes in shooting breakfast, almost all of them with his head. Overlooking can kill two birds with one stone:

1) weakens wide-angle distortion.

2) By putting a variety of foods on a plane, make full use of the depth of field and reduce blur.

3) A little arrangement can highlight the sense of exquisiteness.

4) It conforms to our perspective when eating.

5) If it is in the window, the large-area photometry of the window can also better highlight the material of the food (in fact, only the side light and the top light will be blocked by the camera).

6) Deep bowls are often used in Chinese food, and a bird's eye view can show the complete posture of cooking better than other angles.

So this can be seen even in high-end photography. This is a good method that is tried and tested.