Recently I participated in a food composition challenge on Instagram. Food composition is all about how you present food to be photographed to enhance its beauty and appeal in order to entice people to buy it, cook it, eat it.
Composing a scene to photograph is one of the most exciting things about being a photographer.
Food photographer Rachel Korinek hosted the composition challenge. She is an Aussie food photographer based in Vancouver, Canada specialising in editorial food & styling. I just love her bright, clean and uplifting imagery that emphasises the beauty of real food. She led participants to look at some essential composition techniques aimed at getting us closer to understanding the tools we have available in the journey to finding and evolving our own style and training our artistic eye.
I chose to style galettes - something I have never cooked before! Rachel encouraged us to focus on the styling and composition and not worry too much about the cooking aspect. But, I’m always up for a challenge. So, I decided to make pear and blue cheese galettes and I’m happy to admit, they were DELICIOUS!
We looked at four themes:
1. concepting
This is where you start your planning. Ideating and planning are important steps to take before composition. Firstly I had to decide on my subject and then create a mood board for my shoot. I used Canva to create my mood board.
2. technique
This is where Rachel focussed on the important techniques that are part of the planning phase.
Colour
Colour theory helps shape and enhance your food stories (look up the colour wheel here). Monochromatic colours – shades and tones of the same colour. Complementary colours – colours on opposite sides of the colour wheel. Analogous colours – colours next to each other on the colour wheel. I chose complementary colours - these are colours found on opposite ends of a colour wheel. I chose my props and background to match this colour palette.
Texture
Food is all about texture; highlighting texture is definitely something you should do in food photography. Ingredients have different textures—raw, cooked, frozen, baked can change how the texture shows up. Did you know that shadows help reveal texture in food? I used side light to highlight the shadows in my food - the pears, pastry, walnuts and cheese.
Layering
Layers help create interest in the composition, within and around the food subjects. They can be either props or food — even both. Rachel recommends using 3–4 layers of both food and props (not including the hero subject).
3. styling
This step is one of the most fun. Rachel encouraged us to use the S-curve for styling the food. The S-curve is a placement technique that helps position, organise, and unite subjects in the image. It looks like an ‘S’ and is a graceful way to lead a viewer through an image and past important elements. The most important subjects or elements should be on the curve. It’s important to note, that not every subject has to fall into this curved line.
4. presenting
The final step is to take the photographs and present the photos as a diptych. A diptych is the presentation of two images together that, when combined, tell a larger food story We’re going to combine our ‘wider scene’ shot with our up-close or macro shot of texture to tell our food story.
