All language subtitles for 143982-04 - Shooting Top Down Food Shots - Summer Lifestyle Photography Shoot, Edit, and Sell Your Images Online Learn with Snapwire.en-US

So, this is looking like a pretty good tablescape or a preparation table save.

A lot of unprepared,

uncooked meats and vegetables here just waiting to turn into stock photos.

Use a fairly wide lens,

close down the aperture, 7.1.

Make sure you get everything sharp.

Sometimes, in a case like this,

if the table was higher and I couldn't stand on it,

I would get a monopod or a tripod and

sort of connect it to the camera and kind of hold it up

above here almost like a selfie stick but in this case, probably not necessary.

I could just stand on it. Put on auto focus, of course.

Always shoot raw if you intend to edit.

Raw files have a lot more flexibility than jpeg,

although they do take up a lot of space on your computer. Something to be aware of.

Shooting on aperture priority but everyone has their preference.

What I'm doing is I'm using a single point focus

and then recomposing the frame to include as much of the table as possible.

Straight down is my preference.

I see a lot more photos sawing straight down in that angles.

Not in every case, but it's kind of a kitschy look,

especially when you have a lot of color popping off the table.

I might change lenses in a little bit and get something with

a bit more of a narrow frame.

It's a blur at the background,

but for now this wider lens is going to do pretty well.

I'd even get some feet in there, some white Converse.

A lot of times, what you can do,

shots like this, even though I'm hanging off the table a little,

I will just copy and paste essentially the table in Photoshop,

so that the entire frame is filled with

the slate table and it will emphasize

the food and it will give it more of a symmetrical look,

which I find that symmetry, generally,

lends itself well to tablescapes or really anything stock.

Make sure when shooting with products in the frame,

to keep those labels out as much as possible.

So fortunately, somebody took the time to turn all the labels away from me,

the center of the table for me and I can just focus on

the rest of the stuff here and if I need to later,

if it's like a really tight shot,

I can just Photoshop out the actual logo from

the top of the bottle and I generally try to shoot at a lower ISO.

That grants you more flexibility in post-production and better color reproduction,

which was something like this.

It's kind of ideal because everything is so colorful.

You won't have to spend as much time pushing up

the colors in Lightroom or Photoshop or whatever your software choice is.

If you can just capture them all now.

Maybe move the flowers out of here for a couple of shots.

This is honestly a perfect combination of

food items because everything is a different sort of color.

A lot of it is very summery

and with this nice flat lighting that we have because of the shade of this umbrella.

We have the perfect tablescape.

The most bang for your buck is just going to be to keep shooting,

assuming the setup is to your liking,

which is very much is and you definitely want to

check the frame every once in a while and see if it's missing,

maybe this area over here could use a cup and

some garnish and we have the perfect summer layout here.

But the detail shots,

these are the kind of shots that are great on stock websites.

Colorful, detail oriented, garnishes,

the texture of the meat and the artichokes,

and later, depending on what sort of photography you want to do,

these are even good portfolio shots.

All right. I think we have enough shots of the tablescape.

I think I'm going to let my friends start to actually cook

this stuff that they bought and I will get some shots of them cooking.