We think that fruit photography is a genre of food photography. As we tell you on our Food Photography: Challenging yet Fun! articles, the treatment for fruit photography isn’t too much different from food photography. It has to combine delicacy and creativity to to be able showing maximum freshness from the fruit.
In this article, Dropicts will give some tips and ideas for your fruit photography reference. Here it come!
What is Fruit Photography
Before we jump into how to photograph fruit better, it is better for you to understand what fruit photography is. Fruit photography is a specific genre of food photography which is included in still life photography genre.
What is still life photography? Simply put, still life photography is the art of taking pictures of inanimate objects, typically in group. Taking a still life image makes photographers, in this case food photographers, more freedom in deciding composition through the arrangement of fresh fruit, lighting, and framing, when shooting fruits.
In short, fruit photography is the art of turning a boring bowl filled with fruit into a mouth watering food photography in a fun way.
Now, once you understand what fruit photography means, it is time to jump straight into the how-to.
How To Photograph Fruit To Make It More Dazzling
Food and fruit photography is one example of still life photography, one of the photography genres that used for the depiction of inanimate subject matter, usually a small group of objects like fruits and vegetables, or watch, tablewares, and any kind of object.
If you want to make a dazzling photography collection on your own, maybe you can try some of this tips below. These tips for photographing fruits can be used by fruit photographers, fruit businesses, food stylists, or amateurs
1. Combination of Simplicity is Interesting!
Keeping your fruit in good shape and creating a good composition will help you to achieve interesting and unique shots. When you got the best composition of your fruits and combining with some other ingredient, then take a shot! As we can see in the photo above, is it interesting, right? One or two other ingredients will add a bit of context but not detract from your subject. Make sure you don’t use many other ingredients or any props to get the best composition.
2. Playing with The Fruit Shape
There are so many different ways when you want to shoot fruits. Slicing the fruit is one of them. It gives the image look more interesting in your fruits. It will become easier when you cut the hard fruits like orange, apple, watermelon, etc. You can also apply some food styling techniques to make the fruits more stand out.
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Some fruits will give the maximum level of freshness when they are wet, you can spray your fruits with 50:50 of water and glycerin to make them look fresher. And some other fruits look better when it looks neat and clean. Give it a try!
Read also: Mouth Watering Food
3. Choosing the Right Background
In every image that we take, background always becomes an important part. Adding some sliced fruits or other ingredients will help you to make your images looks fresher!
Using a wooden table or dark background usually looks good. You also can experiment with the direction of the light source to get the best result. Set up your lighting equipment properly, or maybe experimenting with using the natural light resource (it comes best when you shoot near a window) to get your fruits illuminated from the side as well.
Place your object properly near a window. Select a small aperture to get a decent depth of field from foreground to background. Set slow shutter speed and don’t raise the ISO value. Your pictures will look better.
4. Set Proper Fruit Photography Lighting
Since fruits generally have a rounded surface, the light will bounce of it you does not set it properly. If you want to take a spectacular fruits images, it is better to go shoot in the studio.
In the studio, you will have full control of how you want to direct your light. One thing you want to make sure is to never light your fruits from the front. Why? Because front light will produce a flat and dull light. Instead, you can go with the side lighting. With a side light, you can highlight the texture, and with the little bit of help of back-lighting you can create a nice atmosphere around the fruits. For less bright and less diffused light, it is recommended the application of a opaque curtain covering the window.
5. Use a good lens
Fixed Lenses with a focal length about 50 mm for cameras using APS-C matrix and about 85 mm for full-frame cameras. Popular lenses such as the AF-S NIKKOR 150mm/5.6L f/2.8g and Adaptive Reconfiguration 50mm meet. Fixed lenses have a relatively wide aperture which controls depth of field and ensures flexibility in their operation while shooting. Can you list the most interesting lenses I can find? Look at my review of the best lenses for product photography you can use for taking amazing fruit photographs.
6. Add interest with pattern and repetition
How you organize fruits and vegetables will have very big effects on your finished result. You can draw interest on photographs through pattern and repetition. If using these principles, take care not to leave any negative space.
7. Experiment With Angles
When taking still life images, you have all the freedom that you need to create a good composition. Not only that, you also have the freedom to explore all the possible angle to capture your fruits or vegetable.
Do not be afraid to experiment is the general rule of photography. So whether you are doing fruit or vegetable photography and you find yourself that you can do better, you can always try slightly different angles in such a way that makes the fruits’ composition shine for you.
Those are some fruit photography tips that you can apply to capture your fruits in a creative and fun way. Fruit photography, or still life photography in general, allows you to be bold and experiment in order to capture the best possible images. This freedom can be scary, however, especially if you are unsure of what you need to do.
Practice makes Perfect! Don’t be easily satisfied with your photos. Take a lot of practice, both for technically operating the camera and playing around with composition.
If your business needs a good fruit, or vegetable, or product photography for advertisement, we recommend creating one by yourself rather than using stock photos. It will give a nice little touch to your vision and create more natural photograph. And, if you need any assistance with image editing, you can easily contact us here for getting your images edited by our professional image retouching team.
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