Valentine’s Day + BTS + A Grey Salt Collective Prompt

We just wrapped up the last Grey Salt Collective food photography prompt – Valentine’s Day Inspired – with no other parameters other than creating images that inspired Valentine’s Day.

I love creating these mini collages showing off the beautiful images created for the challenge! Thank you to everyone who joined in, posted, inspired others and shared thoughts and comments!

If you are subscribed to my newsletter, and are hungry for ways to keep working on your skills, but haven’t yet joined the facebook group, please do!

I send a new prompt or challenge out every two weeks directly to your inbox, and encourage you to tweak them in anyway that makes sense for your particular business, or to work on specific areas of your food photography that you want to up your skills on.

I also like to talk all things food photography.
One of the things I’m asked to share often are behind the scenes shots of my set ups.
Below are a few images that I created in my studio for this prompt, with bts shots showing how they were lit.

The first bts shot below shows my lighting set up for the cupcake shot on the left in the diptych below it.

The next bts shot shows my lighting set up for the top down shot on the right of the diptych above and the next two images in the diptych below.

Note: Normally when you use a fill card, it would be positioned more directly to the area it’s affecting, as seen in the bts shot above.
In the wide top down shot of the cupcakes below, it’s positioned up and away from the cupcakes because I only wanted a slight fill on the shadow side of the cupcakes.
In essence, it’s there, but not really.

Finally, here is a bts shot of the brownie set.

Tech Notes:

Camera + Lenses – Canon 5dMark3 . Canon 100mm f/2.8 L IS Macro . Canon EF 24‑70mm f/2.8L

My main light for all 3 shots was one Prophoto D-1 strobe head with a frosted glass plate (not a bare bulb) inside of a softbox.
I utilizing side lighting, with a bounce card on the opposite side to fill in shadows.

Food Photo Tip:

Even if you are tethered and working from a tripod, c-stand or camera stand, don’t get stuck using the same vantage point for all of your shots.

Move around your set, rework your scene, change up your camera angles, and camera lenses.
Be sure to have a mix of close ups, medium shots and wider shots.

You will need a variety of all of these kinds of shots to tell an interesting visual story.

Food Styling Tips:

Use the ingredients/toppings/garnishes from your recipe as not only separate ingredient shots, but as ‘food props’ as well.

If you’d like more information about GSC, just go HERE, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at hello@ginaweathersby.com
I hope to see you in the group!