Food Styling and Photography For Dummies [Paperback]

Alison Parks-Whitfield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 27, 2012

Discover how to style and photograph food like the pros

Whether you're taking shots for a foodie blog, advertisements, packaging, menus, or cookbooks, Food Styling & Photography For Dummies shows you how to take the next step in your passion for food and photography. This attractive, informative, and fun guide to the fundamentals of food styling provides information on the tools and techniques used by some of the most successful industry professionals.

Food Styling & Photography For Dummies provides you with the fundamentals of food styling and gives you the inside scoop on the tools and techniques used by some of the most successful industry professionals.

• Shows you how to translate taste, aroma, and appeal through color, texture, and portion
• Includes techniques such as extreme close-ups, selective focus, and unique angles to create dramatic effect
• Detailed coverage on lighting and composition
• Tips for choosing the proper equipment and mastering the use of camera settings, lenses, and post-production software
• Advice for creating a professional personality and getting your food photography business off the ground

Whether you're an amateur or professional food photographer, Food Styling & Photography For Dummies is a fun and informative guide to photographing and arranging culinary subject matter.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Discover how to style and shoot delicious food photos

Whether you're an amateur taking shots for a food blog or a professional who captures culinary creations, Food Styling & Photography For Dummies shows you how to take the next step in your passion for food and photography. This attractive, informative, and fun guide gives you the inside scoop on the tools and tricks to style and create scrumptious photos.

• Before you say cheese — find out how to make food look appetizing and interesting for the camera, from selecting dishes and linens to adding garnishes and accents

• Get technical — discover all the photography equipment and know-how needed to take mouth-watering photos

• It's a piece of cake — explore image composition and camera angles to use for capturing cool stuff like drips and textures

• And for dessert — get the scoop on what to do after you put the camera down, including saving, backing up, and editing your photos

Open the book and find:

• Full-color examples

• Food styling tips and tricks

• How to set up your lighting to achieve the perfect look

• Tools and techniques specific to food photography

• How to get started in the food styling and photography business

• Info on editing and archiving photos

• Postproduction tools and processes

• Advice on creating an online and traditional print portfolio

Learn to:

• Make food look attractive and camera-ready

• Use lighting and composition to get the best shot

• Choose the right equipment

• Get your food photography business off the ground

IN FULL COLOR!

About the Author

Alison Parks-Whitfield is a successful technical writer and food photographer in the San Francisco Bay area. Her tasty images have been published in books, magazines, newspapers, and on packaging, as well as in many online venues.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 1 edition (March 27, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 111809719X
• ISBN-13: 978-1118097199
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.7 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #485,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alison Parks-Whitfield is a California writer and food photographer with a well-honed passion for shooting a good cupcake. She was born in the San Francisco Bay Area back in the good old days of TV dinners and Space Food Sticks.

Her father worked for Pan Am, and she traveled the world from an early age. Being exposed to so many different cultures and their foods eventually sparked an enormous passion for food photography.

Today, Alison is back in the Bay Area, where she is both a photographer and a writer. In her spare time, she still travels the globe in search of the perfect light to photograph her beloved cupcakes.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive May 23, 2012

By Paul M. Provencher VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This book covers all aspects of making images of food.

It makes suggestions about camera equipment, lighting gear, reflectors, etc. It is suggested to use normal lenses and short telephoto lenses. Various lighting approaches are explored - strobes, continuous lighting (photofloods), and other approaches.

A very good suggestion is getting plates and background items to use in the photographs. By shopping at used stores you can find interesting pieces of silverware, plates and linens that will complement your work.

There is a good section about stock houses, how to approach them, what they want, prices they pay. It gives you a pretty good understanding of how you might be able to make money through these outlets.

There's a lot of good advice about how to shoot food. Tools to have handy when "styling" the food. Where and how to focus on the item before your lens.

It goes into how to handle different foods to maximize the outcome of the images - some foods wilt right away, others melt, some lose their appetite factor - tips on how to make the best of these situations.

The book tells about what you need to go on location, how to pack light so you don't take the whole studio with you...

This book pretty much covers everything you're going to want to know about shooting food. It talks about blogs, web sites, participating in online communities, and so on - a great way to get your message out there and attract new clients.

Overall I learned a bunch of new things, most of them common-sense, and useful for my future food photography!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Food Styling Anyone Can Do June 3, 2012

By KarinS

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Being a recipe writer and cook it is often necessary to get some difficult shots of food. But sometimes the beans are not as green as you want them, or the potatoes are not as crispy or browned. The gravy congeals and dries on the edges under the lights. This book shows you so many ways that you can create mouth watering photos with or without the tricks employed by profeshional food stylists. Even if you do not have the space to create a small studio for the photos there is a way around it. This book is well written and easy to understand. It is a must have on the shelf if you are even thinking of taken photos of food. I recomend it to everyone and anyone. You would be amazed what the professionals use to make the photos look as good as they do. If you knew you would not want to eat it.
Food Styling and Photography For Dummies (For Dummies (Sports & Hobbies))

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book About Food Photography May 6, 2012

By Ronald Hammond VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

If you're a photographer and want to branch out into food photography then this would be an excellent book for you. If you want to write your own cookbook, say for the Kindle, then this book will show you how to take mouthwatering excellent photos of your culinary creations.

In short this book is both for the professional and amateur and beginning photographer as well. It's a book about taking pictures of food, not how to operate you camera. However, it does explain things like selective focus for the beginner.