Food Styling Master Class
Custer, who has worked as a food stylist (and instructor) since 1978, uses her nearly 400 pages of text to share trade secrets about how to make food look good in a photo or on film. She reviews everything from prepping dishes to invoicing clients to overcoming "challenging" foods. She drills down into both the business and creative sides of the field, and still has room left over to share her own war stories. (What would you do if Paul Newman decided at the last minute he needed two 5-pound lobsters for a shoot, and there was nothing bigger than a 2-pound lobster to be found?) In the school of all-natural food shots versus gorgeous but inedible products, she falls on both sides, willing to use glues and sprays as needed, but also providing plenty of tips for those who expect their subjects to serve double-duty as dinner.
The tome is an investment ($75 list, but currently $47.25 on Amazon), but I've paid more for a single food photography class, and I think it's worth it. Here's a random sampling of five tips from the many that struck me throughout the book. And Seattleites will be tickled to know the author is also the mom of one of our star chefs, Danielle Custer.
1. When photographing blueberries, look for berries that have a lot of white bloom on them, so they won't appear black when photographed. Are you tearing a muffin in half? Run a wooden skewer several times through the bottom along the area you want to split, then tear it open from bottom to top. Milk and cookies? Use whole milk or half-and-half; lower-fat milks don't look creamy and sometimes have a bluish cast.
2. The 34 "typical" items Custer details in her styling kit include Joyce Chen scissors, which she says "are strong enough to cut through chicken bones, but they will also do very fine work, such as snipping off one little leaf of dill that is too long."
3. The color of the fruit or vegetable in a shoot can suggest a complementary side dish or garnish. Custer's chart of suggestions includes, among the "red foods," apples, cherries, crabs, Edam cheese rinds, pomegranates, radishes, red lentils, and rhubarb.
4. "Watch for strong contrasts in dark and light foods or props. The camera has trouble exposing for both. A white item will look bigger and bolder on film. Think about softening it, reducing it, or breaking it up." With whipped cream on a dark chocolate cake, for instance, soften it by dusting the cream with cocoa powder or cinnamon, reduce it by making the dollop of cream smaller, or break it up by garnishing it with a raspberry or mint sprig.
5. Think of the edge of the plate as a picture frame. A common mistake is to have too much food overlapping the edge.
-- Rebekah Denn
drawing caricature on June 03, 2010 at 07:07 PM
I like food, but that is too hard
Dr Alice on June 11, 2010 at 02:20 PM
That sounds like a fun read. I am reminded of a comment I read in one of Peg Bracken's cookbooks years ago. She happened to be in the studio of a food photographer and was wondering how they'd gotten their beef stew to look so good. She asked and was told that the gravy had been dyed and the onions had been propped up on toothpicks.