The
emergence of mobile photography allows people to bring home and immortalize
almost every moment. Birthday celebration, getting drunk on new years eve, baby
born, first date to first kiss, marriage, to daily events like a boring Math
class and what my lunch was can be the subjects of mobile photography. It opens
up broader possibility to capture every moments in your life through the lens
of your mobile phone then and smartphone now.
For
me, my love for mobile photography started when I bought Nokia N8 due to its
unique design (love the camera hump). I remember my first shot was a box of
donut. At that time, I thought, 12 MP would make my shots instantly looks like
professional photographers. Yes, I was wrong. The box of donut looked terrible
and then I started to learn how to make it better. Started from that box of
donut, I begin to take a lot of food pictures, documented my lunch and dinner,
my love for dessert, and joining the stream of people who sees beauty of
creation on what is served in front of them.
When
we are taking food photography there are two important things to be considered.
The first one is the LIGHTING. Consider the position of the light source, make
sure your picture snapped won’t look dark because you pointed your lens towards
the light source. Make sure the light source is behind you to well illuminate
the object –in this case your chocolate pudding perhaps-. While you are ahead
the light source, beware that your body, your hands, or your smartphone could
create shadows on your food object.
After
getting proper light source, now you might want to adjust your white balance. Some
restaurants may use yellow tinted lightbulb to create romantic mood but it
could make your food appeared “sick.” My heuristic approach is, when the light
source is too yellow, I would fiddle with preset White Balance setting
(Tungsten or Lightbulb). When the light source is too white, I would change it
into “Sunny” (usually appears with “Sun” icon) to make the food appears warmer.
Second
important thing is ANGLE. I usually capture several times of the same food to
make sure I got the right angle. Some photographers love to take the angle from
straight above while I prefer more on the side-level. The vertical angle or
from higher up could create the food as it appears to our eyes. It could also
create an effect of two dimensional thus make the food all in focus. The side
angle would make the food appear larger and you might want to consider what to
focus on the foreground (or in the background). To accentuate the bokeh, it is
good to consider to arrange your food in staggered position so there will be blurred
effect.
Other
than LIGHTING and trying out various ANGLE, there are other several things to
note down such as learning your camera focal length, how close can you get to
your object/food, is there a preset Macro Mode that will help you focus
better, is it appropriate to take picture (I avoid to take picture on a formal
dining atmosphere), is there a hot steam pour out of your food, and most
importantly you have to love FOOD to deliver the message you want to convey on
your picture.
I
guess that’s all I want to share my “heuristic” so far on taking food
photography using smartphone. I am open to any of your suggestion to learn and
grow better.
Article originally written by Lukas Oh. All photos are captured by Lukas Oh using his Lumia 1020. You can follow him on Twitter here. We appreciate his work for the whole Windows Phone photographers community!
Do you have some great photography tips to share? or do u have your Lumia story to share? Just write to us - nluc@windowshive.com
Please share this
