Muscat Food Photographers Unite!
Well, it’s 7:35 and the two muscat food photographers are back, I hope you haven’t left because, thinair.com was already taken so I guess we’ll have to stick to We Eat Together. I’m sure many of you are completely depressed, but we hope to entertain you here. Well I got the first post out of my system and now that you know a little more about us I thought it was time to say what this new blog will be about. I have lots of high hopes for this food photography blog. We have always been taken back by the lack of solid information around the web on the topic of food photography. Just with a usual search I wasn’t able to find much information on the subject other than a few self serving means of gaining more traffic. Although, some of the “5 tips to better…” and “Easily Improve your….” post that you find are helpful, it is just not the kind of comprehensive information I was looking for when we were starting down this rabbit hole.
I always felt like there was some major bit of information missing.
A secret no one was willing to share.
So, We Eat Together aims to fill that void. It’s not a photography school (no student loans required), and we’re not in it to sell advertisement. What we want to do is help all those who are interested in improving their still life photography skills. We hope this will be a major source of information on food photography from the basic to the advanced and not just lighting or what lens to buy(although there will be plenty of that here) but styling, cooking, story telling, retouching, marketing, and the industry. The whole sha-bang! Those are our goals, will it be possible? Honestly, who knows, but lets get this train rolling and see where it takes us!
So we are a couple of Muscat food photographers, and I’d wouldn’t be the first one to say that Muscat is an interesting city. There are 3 main malls, or hubs, which all life in the city seems to be centered around. I find ourselves, running from our house to the car (before we melt in the 50˚C temperature) throwing our daughter in the car seat and blasting the AC while driving over to the mall at least once a day. “TO THE MALL ONCE A DAY!!!!” I know, just unthinkable in our life back in the States, but here the malls are where the majority of the groceries and whatnots can be found. We wish there was another alternative, but for the most part its just the way of life here in Oman. Unlike being food photographers in other cities, Muscat doesn’t have a plethora of organic shops, or farmers markets to find our food at. No real antique stores filled with interesting props for our photography. It’s like they didn’t even consider someone might want to create food photographs. Well Oman’s inconsideration for our art aside, we don’t have too much trouble getting by. Scouring the shops at the malls, looking through the piles of debris at construction sites and hunting through the old souks to piece together an idea for a shot we want, isn’t too bad. Alongside having limited shopping selections, living in Muscat for past 3 years, we’ve pretty much dined at every restaurant this small town has to offer. When a new restaurant comes to Muscat, we’re the first to know. We’re there opening day! So when the mall next to our house got a Paul’s Bakery & Cafe we were so excited. Something else I could never imagine back in the States, but when I saw those freshly baked breads on display my Chillies bottomless chips and salsa almost fell straight out of my wide open mouth. I know all the French people out there are rolling their eyes right about now, and having never been to France I would like to imagine that Paul’s is their version of McDonalds. Let me tell you, breads were just screaming to be photographed! Heather and I like to work on a series of images, sometimes one image can’t tell the whole story. I think a lot of photographers are the same. Seeing those breads I immediately started thinking of different ways to tell the story of bread. I would love to learn how to bake bread someday but for now I’ll leave that to the pros. I went back to the Cave (what I call our studio and office and yes I’m a Batman fan) to research other photographers and their take on bread to get some inspiration.
One of the best ways I use to improve my photography skills no matter what my interest, is to look at what others have done.
It’s a ritual I do before each shot, part of the planing process. I like to keep a folder of inspiration like a mood board. When I want to improve my photography skills this is something I can sift through on a rainy day. Another way I improve my photography skills are to buy some cookbooks based on the photographer, some of which we’ll be posting about later. We also keep a lot of bookmarks of photographers websites or pics I find interesting around the web. I make mental notes of lines, color combinations, style of props, lighting or whatever I find useful, before I buy any food or things I need for my shoot. This shoot was going to be a set of diptychs. I chose to use natural light from two large window in the studio. Taking pictures as I alternated white cards and black cards, knowing I would combine different exposures in Photoshop using layer masks. In later posts I’ll do some tutorials on this technique. Knowing how to blend multiple exposures using Photoshop is extremely helpful in all areas of photography. Although, I strongly believe everything that can be done in camera, should be done, so all you traditionalists out there can unclench your teeth. Don’t worry, just for you I wont go to far down the rabbit hole of post processing. I hope you enjoy the pictures and let me know what your think.
