Sunday, November 29, 2015

FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A SMART PHONE - COMPOSITION

LEADING THE EYE

I decided to continue writing about smart phone photography. In my last blog post I went through 6 tips about how you can make your smart phone photography even better. If you haven't read the previous blog post you will find it here. I decided to go through all the tips one by one. Explain it a bit more depth. Today I write about composition.

Last time I wrote shortly about it like this:
 
"This is very important. Rule of thirds, negative space, diagonals, leading the eye...there are plenty of things to consider but most important especially in Instagram is to simplify. You are looking either at someone's single pic or at someone's grid in small size on your phone. You will decide in matter of seconds, will you or will you not follow this feed. Not only one pic has to be good but all those pics have to be good as a grid. It is a good idea to keep things simple. Begin your composition with your main subject. Add or arrange things as long as you find the balance."

ODD NUMBERS 
I guess with this you are very familiar. When building an interesting composition this works very well. Amount of fruits, plates, ingredients etc. 1, 3, 5 looks better than 2, 4, 6 like you see above. 

GROUPING
Make groups from things you are photographing like above. I have group of two (herbs) and group of three (herbs, seeds, mushrooms). All together they are also odd numbers like seed pods are too.

RULE OF THIRDS
I think this one is the hardest for me to explain. Because I don't think about it at all. It is somewhere deep in my brain. But it means "the pic is divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections." (Wikipedia) In pic above my bowl of dried sage is in one intersection like mushrooms too. The linen napkin's edge is also in right upper intersection.

NEGATIVE SPACE
Nothing to look at? Very important area. It shapes forms around the subject. It's as important as the subject. Without it there isn't a rythm or direction in the pic. Above pic there are negative spaces between the two group, inside the frame, between subjects.

LINES AND CIRCLES
You can build your pic with help of thinking of shapes like triangle, circle, square, cylinder, rectangles, polygon etc. For us it is easier to follow familiar shapes. When we are talking about leading the eye the work is done by lines and shapes. In Instagram photography it is better to trust more simple way of buliding pics so they are often very flat and have quite simple composition. You can also lead the eye with technical camera things like depth of field. But when you are photographing with smart phone that is hard to do, that's why it is important to have a good composition to keep the pic interesting.

BREAKING THE RULES
After you know all these - you can forget them. See the pic below. Which rules I broke?


I hope you find this useful and interesting. I'm sure there are plenty of things still untold but I'm sure you will take a nice step ahead with your smart phone photography. These pics are all taken with iPhone and during this time of the year - we don't have so much light so that too makes this kind of photography more challenging.

I hope you have a great week ahead of you!

xoxo
Kreetta 

ps. These tips are useful in general when talking about photography.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

HOW TO MAKE A BEAUTIFUL PHOTOGRAPHY FOR INSTAGRAM FEED?

FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A SMART PHONE

iPhone pic by Kreetta Järvenpää www.gretchengretchen.com
Instagram is more popular than ever before. Are you there already? If not - should you? If you are - what kind of feed you have? If you feel you should do better you might like to read following tips I'm blogging here today. How to get a better looking Instagram feed photographed on your smart phone. I think it is possible, you don't have to have a real camera. 

The bottom line in every media is storytelling. What kind of story you want to tell? This time I'm not telling you how you should tell your story, I'm telling you how should you use your smart phone to take beautiful pics to tell your story.

I have iPhone and I use VSCO app and lately I've tried a bit of Afterlight too. All these pics in this post I've photographed with iPhone.
 
iPhone pic by Kreetta Järvenpää www.gretchengretchen.com
There are few ground rules to remember when working with smart phone.

1. Lighting

Avoid difficult lighting conditions. In other words too dark and too harsh light. I recommend shooting in natural light. Make sure you don't photograph in straight sun light. Smart phone isn't the best in difficult conditions so make them easy - you have a chance to succeed. So find a shadow, photograph on gray day or diffuse the light with white fabric, white paper or block the light with neutral color cardboard (white, grey, black)

Find the direction of light. Easy test is just to look at where the shadow falls from your hand on a surface. Usually I prefer that the shadow in the picture is somewhere else than above the subject but I have seen that done too. I think the rules are meant to be broken. (but before that it is good to know what you are breaking) Avoid the light that makes sharp shadow - we want soft light. We want soft shadow. The hand test tells you if it is a good place to photograph with your phone.

2. Location

Location is very important. If you don't have a good location where the light is good and surroundings are fine then you have to create it. You follow the light. I'm photographing mainly still life and food with my iPhone so the space I need isn't so big. I can build the place where I photograph on the table, on the floor, on the terrace, on the ground where ever I have a good light. Try to find a good place at your home, office, workspace, garden - wherever the light is good. Use that spot. You can make your pic there. I use same places at home and at workspace.

3. Time

Yup. You need time to make photos. You get faster the more you do it. But it also happens to professionals that nothing just happens...if you know what I mean. Well, it is important also to let go and try again later or next day. It might also help if you can work together with someone who is also interested about same subject as you are. Make something together and see what happens.
4. Style
Learning by doing is such a cliché but it is a very good way to get better. Also I recommend you to watch what other people are doing. You can learn a lot only by looking at other people's work. How do they do it? I trust odd numbers. Remember you have to be careful with colors. With styling you can build a certain feeling to your pics. Do you want to go with certain colors, composition, subject, cropping or angle of view.


5. Composition
This is very important. Rule of thirds, negative space, diagonals, leading the eye...there are plenty of things to consider but most important especially in Instagram is to simplify. You are looking either at someone's single pic or at someone's grid in small size on your phone. You will decide in matter of seconds, will you or will you not follow this feed. Not only one pic has to be good but all those pics have to be good as a grid. It is a good idea to keep things simple. Begin your composition with your main subject. Add or arrange things as long as you find the balance.

6. Edit
What do you do to your picture is very important. Cropping happens here. I recommend to try manual photo processing first and if you want to use filters, that should be the last thing to do, and I never use filter 100%. Just enough to make a difference. But as I said rules are meant to be broken - always.


iPhone pic by Kreetta Järvenpää www.gretchengretchen.com
I hope you haven't got too overwhelmed by all these things I've been telling you. One thing at a time. Forcing is never the right answer. Give time to your creative process.   

Here are a few beautiful instafeeds you might like to check.

Our Food Stories
Local Milk 
Fröken Skicklig 
Cannelle et Vanille  
Mimi Brune (only iPhone)


Most of all - have fun!

xoxo
Kreetta 

ps....I notice that all these tips could be worth writing a blog post. Have to think about it.


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