This project was an exploration of how I would handle adapting my photography abilities to a different form. I realized that while I am great with portrait work, outdoor, and abstract photography, I had no clue how to photograph food.

You would think that food would be easy to photography. As long as it’s plated correctly and you have a good background, everything will be fine. Well not only did I not know how to plate food or have a decent background, the nature of photographing food directly contradicted the way I approach photography. First of all, my lighting setup was not remotely good enough for what I needed, but my unique photography methods proved to be an interesting roadblock for me.

With abstract photography I really only use lights to highlight certain shapes, finding whatever I can that looks interesting to me. With outdoor photography, the principle is fairly the same but with more of an emphasis on the subject. The same can be said about food, but with outdoor photography, their is so much lighting that I only need to focus on composition.

When photographing food, I found that my abilities to light a subject outside of the portrait environment, are severely limited. I didn’t know how to properly portray whatever I was photographing in whole, without focusing on a specific detail in the composition. Eventually I was able to learn what to change to fix that issue, but in the end I was still held back back my poor choice of background.

That being said, I am still proud of the result I obtained from this exploration, as I was able to learn so much after only four days of shooting. In my opinion, being able to learn is far more valuable than passing natural talent; though the latter couldn’t hurt.