POSTS TAGGED : Food Photography

Winter Recipe Roundup

Winter Recipe Roundup
Crustcrumbs

What happens when you give drunk people fire and tell them to spell.

Judging by my Facebook feed, everyone wants this winter to die a fiery death and never return.  Well, suck it up, because I have more winter photos to share, as well as a reminder of the winter recipes we posted.  Hopefully soon this winter will be a distant memory, and you can look back on this post fondly in October when you’ve forgotten that time when it was technically spring but still -14 degrees Celsius and snowing outside.

Also, we busted our asses in a snowstorm to take these photos “in the name of Crustcrumbs!“, so you are going to look at them, okay?  Okay.

Actual snowstorm.

Our shooting conditions.

Winter Recipe Roundup

1. Ice Fishing & Perch Soup

For this recipe, we trekked over to Minet’s Point Park in Barrie to visit the cool ice fishing tepees.  We pretended to go ice fishing to the amusement of the locals while John cooked fish on a portable grill and served it up in a soup.  In a glorious display of grace and finesse, I slipped on the ice and injured my hip like a 90 year old woman.

Perch Soup

2. Hickory Smoked Venison Shoulder

The venison was smoked on the BBQ.  I made John go outside in the snowstorm to check on the meat while I took pictures through the window “for artistic purposes”.  This was also my first time trying venison and it was tasty, but not as tasty as the wild rice salad John made as a side dish, which I am still obsessed with to this day.

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3. Gluten-Free Sticky Toffee Pudding

We baked a cake in a wooden wine crate in a campfire (sort of).  Spoiler alert: the wood crate caught on fire.  The cake was still tasty, because John says it’s impossible to screw up sticky toffee pudding.  Even when it’s gluten free.  I didn’t take a good photo of the final product because cider.

Sticky Toffee Pudding

More Pictures

Ice fishing huts

Cooking Outdoors

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Sticky Toffee Pudding

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Sticky Toffee Pudding

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Enjoy spring!

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Gluten Free Sticky Toffee Pudding Hickory Smoked Venison Shoulder Halloween Dessert Cart Roundup Cheesecake with a Coconut Crumb Crust

Behind-the-Scenes: Christmas Cocktail Party

Behind-the-Scenes: Christmas Cocktail Party

Merry Christmas!  As the Santa Claus of Crustcrumbs (oh wait, no, that’s John), I’m here to bring you the greatest gift of all: behind-the-scenes pictures from our Mad Men themed office cocktail photoshoot.

Crustcrumbs

The worst part about doing a big photoshoot like the one we did for our Christmas cocktail series is that I can’t post all of the images from the shoot.

Whether it’s Sara Hennessey getting weird with a nutcracker…

Sara Hennessey

Crustcrumbs Behind-the-Scenes

… or creating a cheesy conga line solely because John said “NO CHEESY CONGA LINES”, and he should probably learn by now that I’m going to think everything on his forbidden shot list is a good idea…

Crustcrumbs Conga Line

Crustcrumbs Behind-the-Scenes

… or just general “pretending to be drunk” shenanigans…

Crustcrumbs Behind-the-Scenes

Crustcrumbs Behind-the-Scenes

… we obviously had a lot of fun doing this shoot.  It was also sometimes difficult to remember that it was supposed to be about the drinks.

Crustcrumbs Behind-the-Scenes

Because I was having so much fun, I forgot to take a behind-the-scenes photo of my lighting setup.  Luckily I’m also clumsy, and I took this picture by accident:

Crustcrumbs Behind-the-Scenes

Shooting in an office is difficult.  First of all, when you’re dealing with multiple light sources, it can be a pain to balance the colour between the window light (blue) and gross fluorescent office lighting (orange).  Since I knew I wanted to desaturate the images and give them a bit of a “vintage” look, I didn’t worry too much about colour balancing.

Secondly, there is stuff everywhere.  Stuff casts a shadow.  Since I didn’t want to spend all day setting up multiple lights everywhere, I set up just one as seen in the photo above – an ABR800 ring flash in a moon unit pointed down at the girls over the cubicle wall camera right.  For a secondary light source, to fill some of the shadows and make them less harsh, I used a shoe mount flash (speedlite) attached to my camera and pointed it at the ceiling.  You can read more about bounce lighting here.

The end result:

The Ladies of Crustcrumbs

A big thank you to all five of our models and to Eagle for letting us use their office on a Sunday afternoon!

Related posts:

Christmas Cocktail Roundup Behind-the-Scenes: Halloween Dessert Cart 5 Days of Cocktails – Day 5: Bijou 5 Days of Cocktails – Day 3: Widow’s Kiss

5 Gift Ideas for Amateur Food Photographers

5 Gift Ideas for Amateur Food Photographers

Happy Black Friday, American friends of Crustcrumbs.  Any amateur food photographers in your life?  A wife who wants to start a food blog?  A friend who takes pictures of all his meals?  Here are 5 Christmas gift ideas that any new foodie photographer will love.

1. A reflector!

I will write about this in another post very soon, but I think a reflector is one of the most important tools in a photographer’s kit.  A 5-in-1 reflector (gold, silver, white, black, and translucent) is very useful, especially when shooting with natural window light, when you want to bounce some of the light back onto the other side of your food.  You can get one for under $30, and you can use it to bounce light, block light, and filter harsh light.  You can also get a stand and arm, or you can do what I do and make John hold it for you.

Using a reflector in food photography

They come in all sizes.  Some collapse for easy storage.  Photojojo even sells a miniature reflector for $15 that can fit into your pocket, so you can bring it to restaurants and really annoy the waitstaff.

My own reflector is from Paul C. Buff.

2. A lens!

Nifty Fifty

If someone you know is just starting out in photography, you’ve probably heard them complaining that their camera + kit lens takes crappy pictures in low light.  One of the best bang-for-your-buck lenses you can buy is a 50mm 1.8 lens.  Nikon and Canon both have versions for around $100-125. This is the Nikon version. This is the Canon version.  You really can’t go wrong with this lens, and I think everyone should buy one when they are starting out in photography.  It’s not so great for taking pictures of groups of people indoors (unless you have a very large room), but for food it’s excellent.  It will give your photographer friend great bokeh (the blurry part of the image) and let in a lot more light than a standard kit lens.  With this lens, your happy gift receiver can put away their pop-up flash so they stop taking photos like Martha Stewart’s.

If you want to spend about 4-8 times more money, a macro lens is also a good idea (Canon) (Nikon).

3. A tripod!

tripod

This is really boring, but a good idea for food photography.  You can get a tripod for 20 bucks, and it will do an okay job, especially if you buy a remote trigger (to fit the camera model) or shutter release cable, which will reduce camera shake. Or, if you really love the gift receiver, you’ll buy them a good Manfrotto (don’t forget to buy a ball head to go with the tripod legs if you aren’t buying a complete tripod).

4. A camera bag!

epiphanie sydney epiphanie ginger epiphanie charlotte epiphanie lola epiphanie lyric

Great for bringing your camera around so you can take food photos everywhere you go!

I have 4 camera bags from Epiphanie, because I am an addict. They are awesome bags, and I don’t feel silly lugging a huge backpack everywhere that screams “THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF GEAR IN HERE!”  They also have men’s bags.  I have the London, and I get complimented on it every time I leave the house.  Some ladies also like Kelly Moore bags.

5. A copy of Lightroom!

lightrom screenshot

Bold statement here: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the best tool for editing photos.  Every digital photographer needs a copy of Lightroom.  If your photographer friend already has Lightroom, maybe buy them some editing presets (to make their photos look pretty), like VSCO or Pretty Presets.

Happy shopping!

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Behind-the-Scenes: Halloween Dessert Cart Using People in Food Photography

Behind-the-Scenes: Halloween Dessert Cart

Behind-the-Scenes: Halloween Dessert Cart

Happy Halloween!

When John asked me if I wanted to start a food blog with him, I was sold as soon as he mentioned doing a Ghostbusters-themed recipe series for Halloween.  It ended up being a huge undertaking for our first Crustrcumbs food photography shoot, but it was a lot of fun. John wanted to set up a slimed dessert cart as an homage to the scene with Slimer in the Sedgewick Hotel.

Slimer

We contacted several different properties about shooting on location, but it ended up being too complicated and prohibitively expensive, so we decided to shoot at my photography studio.  We borrowed a cart from our friend Jordan (thanks Jordan!), got a cheap white sheet from Wal-Mart to cover it, and convinced Home Depot to sell us a sample roll of hotel-esque wallpaper.  Overall, it cost us less than $20.   This is what our backdrop looked like:

Behind-the-scenes food photography

I taped the wallpaper to the studio wall with gaffer’s tape.  I thought about buying a piece of plywood and gluing the wallpaper down, because it was really annoying trying to keep the pieces lined up while minimizing seams, but it was nothing a shallow depth of field and Photoshop couldn’t fix.

John prepping the fruit salad Bernardin Fruit Fresh

John made most of the food beforehand, and assembled it at the studio.  The fruit sculpture took the longest amount of time.  Food photography tip: use Bernardin Fruit Fresh to keep the fruits from browning!

John toasting Stay Puft Marshmallows John toasting Stay Puft Marshmallows

John brought his torch to toast the Stay Puft marshmallows, which made our photoshoot smell like camping.  After John had everything plated, we realized only about half of the food fit onto the cart.  It took some time to shuffle everything around.

Profiteroles

The profiteroles were balanced on a light stand.  By the power of Zuul, they never fell down.

We wanted the lighting to look like crappy hotel hallway lighting to keep it on theme, but still highlight the food.  Believe me, “make my slime-covered food look like it’s in a hallway with crappy lighting, but also make it not look too gross” is more difficult than it sounds.

Most of the time when doing food photography, I use natural lighting or a bounce flash, but for this I set up some strobes. I use Paul C. Buff’s Alien Bees for lighting, which are reliable, easy to use, and relatively cheap.  You can also find cheap accessories and modifiers on eBay or Amazon. I ended up with the following setup:

Lighting Diagram

The main light was a big softbox on the right side.  I decided to light from the side to reduce reflections on the dishes, metal, fruit, and marshmallows, while cursing John for using so many shiny things in our first photoshoot.  I used a gold reflector to bounce light back onto the profiteroles and cheesecake.  This achieved the “crappy hallway” look, but the fruit was too dark, so I added a spotlight on the fruit plate.  I did this by using a 20 degree honeycomb grid in a standard 7″ reflector.

This was taken after we already started cleaning up, but it shows the lighting setup:

Behind-the-scenes food photography

When we were finally happy with the lighting on the food, John decided to add more reflections by covering everything in slime.  Fun!

Slimer visiting our photoshoot

This is the final image we ended up with:

Halloween dessert cart covered in edible lime slime

Still life isn’t my area of expertise, but this shoot was a lot of fun.  Tomorrow we have a photoshoot with an actor from Second City, so stay tuned for something sniffly next week.  (Sniffly?  What?)

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