Expert: John Oliverio - 1/8/2006

Question
Hi,
I would like to take my own shots in order to print them off from my large format printer. I am making signs, graphics and etc. I have a customer which requires me to take about 600 shots of images, and clean them over photoshop. I have not took any shots before. If you click on this website www.c4c.co.uk and see their images on Food Image Library, than you will understand what i am trying to say. Their images are taken with some good camera, and the lighting is so good. Please give me advice of what can i do in order to shot some nice pictures like c4c's. Thank you very much.  

Answer
Murtaza,

 Sorry my friend.  This is not something I can just give "tips" on.  People practice for years, and even go to school to learn to do product photography properly.  A lot of people don't know this, but most of the food you see in "food" shots isn't even real.  There are so many tricks to make it look right I could never explain here.  For example, ice cubes are usually made of glass or plastic and milk is usually elmers glue.  Not only would I have to explain all that for each type of food you want to shoot, I'd have to give you a whole course on studio lighting.  And I'm guessing you don't have the lights or you wouldn't be asking this question.

 If this is very important for your customer, and you have no idea how to do it I would suggest that you pass on the project and educate yourself for the future....  because you don't want to do it badly and get a poor reputation.

John