Food Photography online

Aspiring food bloggers & food lovers! This course is for anyone who has a passion for food and would like to improve their photography skills! All the basics of Food Photography. It is comprehensive yet easy to learn!

Hi guys! The first half of my online Food Photography course is soon done. These first 4 days have been very basic but well needed. Even though I have been using my camera and taking photos now for almost a year, I haven't been practicing the basics and really understanding it before. We have only been photographing still life (inanimate objects) up until this point, I've been using fruits, veggies, books, plates etc. But today we'll be starting to make actual food to photograph.

This is how the online courses work... Everyday I log in to my MK profile and each day new lessons and assignments unlock. We learn though text, pictures and videos.

Here's what we've been up to so far...

Use of manual camera functions
How shutter speed can freeze and blur motion
How aperture affects depth of field
Utilizing selective focus
Choosing a lens that compliments the way we would like to frame our shot

Day 1 - Course introduction

We got to "meet" the teacher of this course, Adrian. He's the photographer that is teaching in all the video material throughout the course. The first day of an online course is quite similar to a first day of class in real life. You get to see the overview of the program, get to know the teachers, the classmates and learn how to navigate through the site. We also went through camera functions and settings, file formats & image quality settings.

Day 2 - Lens Choice

Prime Lenses vs. Zoom Lenses. I didn't have a zoom lens to work with here, only 2 prime lenses. One is 50 mm and the other is 24 mm. These two shoots were both shot with aperture setting F2.8, ISO 100 and 1/60 sec shutter speed.

ISO Settings

The first photo is shot at ISO 100 and the second at ISO 400. In order to get the lighting right I had to move the shutter speed from 1/80 to 1/200. Both photos are taken with aperture setting F/1,8. When I zoom in i can see more grains in the higher ISO photo that the lower one.

Aperture F-stop

In this assignment we worked with the F-stop number (focal ratio). I really like the low F-stop numbers that makes the "background" go really blurry. But it depends on the shot, sometimes it's not nice to have it too blurry.

Day 3- Shutter speed, tripod vs. handheld

This was the most exciting assignment so far! This is an ice cube dropped into a glass of water. This exercise was a lot of fun and I will definitely experiment further with this technique!

Effective use of depth of field

This exercise was to use depth of field effectively. An important element to consider when taking photographs of food. A little more or a little less depth of field can make a big impact on how the final image is perceived. I really love a narrow depth of field! How about you? Which one's your favorite?

Selective focus

In this assignment we worked with selective focus. Selective Focus is basically the use of shallow depth of field at a selected point within the image. This is something that is extremely important to know when working with food. Countless times have I taken a bunch of photos and not until much later when I've been working with the photos in Lightroom have I noticed that the focal point wasn't right.

All photos: Natalie Yonan

This what I've been doing so far and I'll be sharing some more with you at the end of this course! If you're interested in taking an online course like this, head over to the website and read more about it.