This week’s photo of the week is from a shoot I recently did with Chef Mark Ladner of Del Posto in NYC. As with all my shoots with him, this was done in the restaurant. I have been shooting with Mark for a couple of years now, and it is always a fun time full of good food, good conversation, good laughs, and ultimately good photographs.
During my last shoot with him we were photographing a variety of food items, but he wanted to isolate them to show them off on their own. There were going to be a range of items from pasta, to sauces, to proteins and vegetables. So we had to come up with an idea that could be consistent from item to item, and due to time restraints, allowed us to work quickly. Together, we came up with the idea to shoot the food items so they looked like they were floating.
Now that you know the concept, here is how I did it.
Because I was shooting on location and had to transport everything I needed, I wanted to keep the shoot equipment as simple as possible. However, as simple as this shot looks, it does require a fair amount of gear to make it work. As I have mentioned in other posts, when I shoot tethered it is into Lightroom 2 via Camera Control Pro 2. Although a bit outdated, it works until I upgrade my version of Lightroom. If anyone wants to send me a copy, or Adobe, if you are reading this, if you want to send me a copy, I will greatly appreciate it. Back to how I did the shot.
The first thing I did was to place a 36″ square piece of plexi (I used plexi as it is safer to transport) between two tables. Anything would work for this part. Since the tables were there I used them. I then placed diffusion material on the plexi and a smaller piece of glass on top of that. In hindsight, I would have used a piece of frosted Plexiglass and not had to worry about diffusion material.
Next I placed a white surface on the ground to reflect the light. In this situation I simply used a white tablecloth from the restaurant and taped it down. Of course you could use white seamless, foam core, a bed sheet, or any other white surface large enough.
I placed two profoto heads on c-stand arms and with umbrellas I bounced the light off of the white surface. The heads and umbrellas were under the glass and off to the side. I had those powered about 2 stops brighter than the main light on the bacon. To light the bacon I used a Nikon SB 900 with a softbox above and slightly camera left triggered with a pocket wizard. Because shutter speed is not important in a shot like this I arbitrarily chose 1/160 of a second. To be certain that I achieved the right balance of light I was looking for I placed a silver reflector close to the bacon on camera right and to give some extra highlights I used a small mirror (one of my favorite tools – and retrieved on bulky trash night from someone’s garbage) near the reflector.
Once this double smoked bacon was done being cooked, I placed it on the top piece of glass, took a few test shots to check the styling, and then shot the final image. My camera was mounted on a side arm onto my tripod and placed directly over the bacon. To avoid any flare from the lights below, and to avoid losing contrast, I placed black paper around the bacon leaving enough room to allow enough white to show through and give the illusion of floating.
After the image was captured, I made some adjustments in Lightroom to complete the vision I had for the shot. The adjustments included, blacks, lights, darks, and color temperature.
Shooting Data
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon 24 – 70 f/2.8 set at 65 mm
ISO: 500
Exposure: f/11 @ 1/160 second – remember in this application, shutter speed is irrelevant. It just needs to be fast enough so the ambient light does not have any effect.
Final camera height: approximately 3 feet above bacon
White Balance : 5600K and a -8 green
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