Lighting Food Photography – Metal and Reflective Surfaces

This is something a little different in the lighting food photography department. It is a photograph of a piece of carrot cake but shot in top of our oven. The oven is one of those with the burners under a translucent black material, presumable some type of fire resistant plastic. The background is an aluminum splash panel that was attached to the wall to make cleaning easier.

Over the past several months I have been experimenting with various brushed metal finishes and reflective surfaces as I think that they work well when lighting food photography. The soft abstract reflections and the neutral grays work well to show off the main subject. I think that the reflection of the plate in the stove top adds a strong compositional element.

I often work with the over sized  white plate as this gives the image a more airy, less cramped feel than using a smaller one. For some reason these particular plates always seem to add their own interesting reflections to the image, never too much but enough to draw the viewer into the photo. Possibly gives the image a little more complexity than is first apparent. The problem with food photography is that everything can start to look a bit like stock photography unless a conscious effort is made not to fall into that particular trap.

The carrot cake was cooked by my wife and is the most moist, tasty carrot cake to be found anywhere and the camera is my trusty Nikon d40x with sb600 dedicated flash mounted on the hotshoe and pointed at the subject (not bounced) and with a diffuser. Camera was set to sync with flash. The flash actually behaved itself this time out. The sb600 is notorious for treating settings as an idea by the user that it can feel free to modify.

A side note, my wife, Megan Wolfe, owns the blog minimalist cook and if you sign up for her newsletter you’ll get a free recipe ebook. This is a genuine freebie honest! This photograph is one of a series for the cookbook.

I would be interested to know what others think, is the image a little too minimal or is this slightly different approach worth working on? Any suggestions for lighting food photography in more interesting ways also always welcome as of course are general photography tips.