Tips
by Allison Gibson Posted in Articles, Blog, Features, Tips
all images © Nicole Franzen
Thanks to photo apps like Instagram, and to our current culture of capture-and-overshare enthusiasm, I can no longer sit down to a meal without snapping a photo of the food. If you take a look at the various tags on Instagram related to the things that people consume throughout the day (#food #eats #noms) you’ll see that I am not alone in the habitual photographing of my meals.
But outside of the realm of iPhonography, there is also a thriving professional food photography world. Yes, this is an actual job that many fortunate (and talented!) folks have managed to carve out for themselves. While some great cooking glossies have gone by the wayside (RIP Gourmet), there is no shortage of outlets for professional photographers to showcase (and cash in on) their work online and in print.
Culinary Composition
Professional food photographers may make their deliciously-staged shots look simple, but the craft of capturing food is no easy feat. Even someone well versed in the other genres of photography will have to relearn the rules when shooting subjects as fickle as couscous or cheeseburgers. And reflective subjects like glasses full of bubbly can offer significant challenges in improper lighting.
So with those sorts of challenges in mind, I’ve asked Brooklyn-based food photographer, Nicole Franzen, to share her tips for shooting food, including advice on equipment, lighting, styling and composition. Nicole runs the gorgeous food and lifestyle blog, La Buena Vida, and her photo clients include Bon Appétit, Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn Magazines, and Gramercy Tavern, among many others.
Below are Nicole’s tips on the craft of photographing food. Grab a fork and dig in!
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by Allison Gibson Posted in Blog, News, Tips
Flickr has just announced a new privacy feature for geotagged photos, called Geofences. Over 300 million photos and videos have been geotagged by Flickr members so far, and the engineers wanted to make managing privacy of these geotagged shots easier for the community. Instances in which you might want to conceal your photo’s location include: shots taken at home or at the private residence of someone else whose exact location you don’t feel comfortable broadcasting to the world at large. According to one Flickr engineer, who helped develop the new feature, “Geofences are special locations that deserve their own geo privacy settings. Simply draw a circle on a map, choose a geo privacy setting for that area, and you’re done. Existing photos in that location are updated with your new setting, and any time you geotag a photo in that area, it gets that setting too.” This saves the photographer the hassle of tweaking default geo settings every time she uploads media taken in a location she has deemed private.
Read all about Geofences, from the inception of the idea to the technical details on the Code: Flickr Developer Blog.
(via Flickr)
by Allison Gibson Posted in Blog, Tips
Chances are, if you have young children, you’ve experienced the odd gadget drop at the hands of your well-meaning but not entirely coordinated little one. Chances are also very good that the gadget in question was a digital camera—because cameras are fun and you love to encourage your budding shutterbugs in their behind the lens talents. Well, the geniuses over at Instructables have come up with an easy and fun preemptive measure for this very situation: the awesome bouncy kids camera made with sugru. Go ahead, DIY to your heart’s desire and let the kids keep snapping away!
(via ohdeedoh, via Instructables)
by Allison Gibson Posted in Blog, News, Tips
It’s every professional photographer’s worst nightmare to have his/her camera and gear stolen. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to pro shutterbug John Heller while on assignment for Getty Images at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, when $9,000 worth of gear was stolen from him— including his Nikon D3 DSLR. After filing a police report and all but resigning himself to the loss, Heller decided a few months ago to do a search for his camera on GadgetTrak’s Camera Serial Search (which is a free service). According to GadgetTrak, “Heller entered the serial number of his stolen camera and found an exact match with several images that were recently posted to Flickr.” Through a pretty fascinating series of events thanks to the embedded serial number in the uploaded images, the stolen property was ultimately recovered.
(via GadgetTrak)
by Allison Gibson Posted in Blog, Tips
image via The Blue Hour
If you are looking to make money off your photography, I suggest you read this recent success story, which was written by London-based photographer, Brian Ferry—creator of the gorgeous photo blog, The Blue Hour. After reading, you will be inspired—if you haven’t already—to make a focused effort of creating an online brand and identity for yourself as a photographer.
The success starts, of course, with great images. But in order for those images to be noticed, the photographer has to come out from behind the viewfinder and show off a little. The thing about Brian’s blog is that it is stacked with great captures but it is also somewhat personal—tracking the photographer’s travels and daily life in London. He presents an inviting persona through his photo essays, and clearly Starbucks took notice. Congrats to Brian. Here’s hoping the same kind of story is in your own future! If something similar has happened to you, let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear of your successes.
