Outdoor Photography

58 Outdoor Photography February 2018

Changing tack

OPINION

For years, I scratched my head as to

why so many recreational nature

photographers seemed content to create

their own versions of well-known

images rather than strike out and make

something new. Free of commercial

pressure and the need to satisfy anyone

other than themselves, this struck

me as a failure of imagination. But

since I have recast myself as a pupil

once more, I have a much clearer idea

why this happens and sympathy for

photographers stuck in the loop. I think

I might also know how to escape it.

I fi rst started shooting food when my

wife Charlotte launched a chocolate

business a number of years ago and we

needed photography to promote it. Other

work meant that I had little time to refi ne

my techniques and ideas until more

recently, when the need to up my game

in this sphere increased sharply. It’s easy

to assume that when you have acquired

a degree of competence in one fi eld of

photography you can quickly pick up the

skills in another, but that is not a given!

When I am fi guring out how to

style and light a dish, the knowledge

I bring from working in nature with

natural light, diff users and refl ectors

only goes so far, and the ‘set’ I am used

to photographing comes ready styled.

Consequently, I end up referencing some

of the best practitioners in the food

photography business, such as Simon

Bajada, Laura Edwards and Marte Marie

Forsberg. I’ll spend hours analysing the

images in their books to understand

why a shot is styled a particular way,

Learning another photographic discipline is a great way

to refresh the one you normally work in, claims Niall Benvie

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