Food Styling for Photographers

VEGGIE PERFECT

Well, almost perfect, because technically some of the

vegetables we refer to as vegetables are actually fruit.

According to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary a fruit

is “a product of plant growth” that is the “edible and

sweet reproductive body of a seed plant.” If you give

some thought to the defi nition, it means many of things

we call vegetables are actually fruits. However, for our

food styling purposes, they will be called vegetables.

Shopping for Vegetables

A good beginning point for this discussion is to mention

the standards and techniques used during the shopping

phase for the hero shot at the opening of this chapter.

I shopped for produce items the morning of fi nal pho-

tography. To select hero produce, always look for fresh,

blemish-free examples of each item you purchase. You’ll

need to check each item carefully, looking at the entire

exterior. Each item you select for your food styling

project should be free of blemishes, fi rm, and uniform

in color specifi c to each variety.

As I shopped, I chose several hero specimens of each type

of vegetable. I also selected a wide variety of colors, tex-

tures, and shapes in the overall scheme of vegetables

purchased. I did not actually use everything I purchased

when I built the hero shot. However, having the wide

variety of items available gave me options during the

build and thus provided more opportunities to compose

a visually pleasing image.

Th e diff erences in color, texture, and shape among vege-

tables lend visual interest to the overall presentation and

contribute to better visual separation of the vegetables

within the build. For instance, if all of the vegetables were

round or oval with fairly smooth skins—for example,

potatoes, eggplants, and onions—the shot would probably

not be very interesting. So, mixing textures and growth

patterns or shapes is important to consider when shop-

ping for, and constructing, a produce shot. When building

the shot and placing items adjacent to each other, keep

the colors, textures, and growth patterns in mind. You can

off er more visual interest by placing vegetables with dif-

ferent characteristics adjacent to each other.

Vegetables off er a vast range of color and texture to a

photo arrangement whether they are pictured in all of

their raw bounty as in the chapter-opening shot or cooked

and arranged on a plate to accent a featured piece of

meat. You may recall from the color wheel discussion in

Chapter 2 that the vegetable group off ers choices for

complementary and contrasting colors that can be used

to excite and enhance the colors of a featured item on a

plate for photography. Th ese color enhancements should

be positioned near the featured item to achieve the pop

factor.