Playing with my Food

Like most kids, I can remember being told to stop playing with my food and just eat it.  However, I recently got to spend a whole day playing with food – and wasn’t shouted at once!

Award winning food writer and photographer Joan Ransley ran a photography day based from The School of Artisan Food and I went along to pick up some much needed inspiration.

The school is a not-for-profit company based from Welbeck Estate in the middle of Sherwood Forest.  The beautiful buildings date back to 1870 and with old stone floors and oak interiors it provided the perfect backdrop for the day.

image by Deb Fletcher

image by Deb Fletcher

 

As well as being an inventive cook, Joan also takes her own shots to use on her blog and in her articles and generously shared her insights on how to get the best out of photographing food.

I prefer to eat food rather than spend hours preparing and cooking it so faced with crusty bread made that morning, rustic cheeses and an array of other temptations my first instinct was to make a sandwich and scoff it – not photograph it.  This was my first hurdle, don’t eat the model!!

image by Deb Fletcher

image by Deb Fletcher

Bonus – a pasta making class was also taking place the same day at the school so we felt it only fair that they should share in our enthusiasm to shoot all things edible.  They looked to be having a great time ..

image by Deb Fletcher

image by Deb Fletcher

image by Deb Fletcher

You soon learn that light plays a major part in food photography. Get it wrong and you can make the yummiest food look very unappetising.  I did get rather fixated on the bread but I think it was the aroma that kept bringing me back to it!  Now if we could incorporate smell in to a photo ..

Moving swiftly on, I went for the chocolates –

image by Deb Fletcher

The afternoon was taken up with a new challenge, I wanted to capture movement.  Here was my set up –

image by Deb Fletcher

The aim was for icing sugar to gently fall on to the fruit and be able to catch it on camera.  Here’s what happened –

image by Deb Fletcher

image by Deb Fletcher

image by Deb Fletcher

I had to set the timer on the camera, dash over to the fruit and try and judge how long it would take icing sugar to fall so it would appear in time for the shot.  As you can see, I had limited success.  In the last shot I just went for it so it’s a bit like a blizzard rather than the ‘light dusting’ I was hoping for ..  practice needed I think!!

It was a fabulous day which ended with me covered in icing sugar and leaving a trail back to the car park.  I was very popular with bees for some reason.

Now, who had that cheese ..

image by Deb Fletcher