Food Styling for Photographers

PASTA AND SAUCES

● Long-handled wooden spoon

● Hero spoon and apparatus to support the spoon on

set

● Hero bowl was also the stand-in bowl

● Henckels kitchen and herb scissors

● Bounty paper towels

● STRETCH-TITE plastic food wrap

● Windex glass cleaner

● Hand-painted surface by Brad G. Rogers

PHOTOGRAPHER’S COMMENT—Notes on Pasta Set

Darker, richer, moody set. One medium Chimera lightbank at the

back of the set angled in gives me the effect I need for the shot. The

light hits the bowl and spoon with fall-off in the front of the spoon.

The selective focus tells the story. The spoon is actually more than a

foot away from the bowl. No fi ll cards or refl ectors were needed

because of the broad light source. When using a C-stand and knuckle

to clamp the spoon into position, be sure to protect the prop spoon

with a cloth, paper towel, or tape.

Potato, Pasta, and Vegetable Salads

If you are building a potato, pasta, or vegetable salad

that does not contain salad greens, the techniques used

for pasta sauces and building a pasta hero are more

appropriate than the salad techniques. Refer to Chapter

8 for prep techniques for the vegetables in your salad

and follow the sauce techniques in this chapter for cre-

ating the look of dressing on less fragile ingredients in

your salad. During the prep of the potato salad shot

featured with this chapter, I used my hands, rather than

tools, to mix the ingredients with dressing in order to