I’ve done a lot of food photography in my day, and I can tell you one of my most dreaded subjects is also a four letter word: S-O-U-P. It’s flat, often the color of throwup, and is basically about as uninteresting a subject in the food world as you could ask for. So when Edible Monterey Bay magazine asked me to do a recipe shoot at Persephone Restaurant in Aptos, I was excited for the work but meh for the subject.
Chef Cori was a pleasure to work with (she didn’t kick me out of the kitchen for food prep) and was able to add some visual interest to my subject, the SOUP.
So how did I make it a little more interesting? Using a sofboxed Profoto B1 above and behind the subject, I placed the soup under the lightsource to feather the light and make it appear to come out of the shadows. Because the shot was top-down, but slightly shooting toward the light source, we got some nice spectral highlights on the oil drizzled on the surface of the soup, giving it texture and visual interest.
Normally I’d use a dedicated macro lens for food photos, but the Nikon Z system has yet to release an actual macro lens. Luckily the 24-70 2.8 S lens can focus pretty close, and on the hi-res Z7 body we have plenty of detail to allow for cropping in closer, if needed.
