I have been thinking more about the shoot I would like to carry out for the Saturday Supplement. I had it narrowed down to either the Profile Portrait supplement or the Food supplement.
I have decided to challenge myself this time, and shoot food for the first time (it looks as though Feast Magazine is about to become my bible for the next few weeks.)
As I have already mentioned, the images in Feast Magazine are shot almost entirely by commissioned photographers, with just one being credited to a stock agency. 
From Issue 38 (October 6, 2018), eight photographers were credited, with two names (Louise Hagger and Yuki Siguara) being credited twice, alongside their various food stylists and photographic assistants.
Initial research lead me to YouTube, and a short BTS video uploaded by The Guardian from 2013. The photographer here is Yuki Sugiara, so it appears The Guardian have been a regular client for her for quite some time.
Though this video focuses more on the cooking and the recipes and ingredience themselves, there are brief glimpses of the workflow and setup being used here.
The shoot set up seems to be very assistance-light – in this case, the photographer and the food stylist are featured most predominantly – with the assistant appearing very brifly . In terms of equipment set-up, there is a camera tethered to a laptop, placed over the food with a tripod.
The final result, as with the majority of all of the images shot for Feast, was shot from a top-down perspective. There are only a few exceptions where this isn’t the case, often occuring with beverages and some cakes with layers which wouldn’t be visible if shot from a top down perspective.
In terms of the equipment I have currently, I can’t see shooting from the top-down being much of an issue, and I can add in some variety by shoowing image from a side or slightly elevated position.
In terms of lighting, it didn’t look as though there were any lights used at all, as the studio space used was naturally very well lit anyway. White boards seemed to be used to bounce the natural light back onto the food, which gave this cover very natural and subtle shadows. A lot of light seems to be coming through that jar of honey too, with the warmer colour appearing to the right, suggesting the light source is to the left.
I need too shoot nine images (four 1×1 smaller images, three portaits and two landscape images) for this supplement, so I need to come up with a theme that will cover all of these spaces; however I am still unsure if I want to focus on one particular food (as if it were a celebration of one thing), one particular season, or fill it with a variety which has no flow, yet is all still related.
As it is the most well known supplement for food, and the only one which I am aware of which focusses soley on food, I will shoot this body of work as if it were for Feast Magazine.
From here I need to:
- Research and reach our food photographers (Yuki Siguara or Louise Hagger).
- Research and find agencies and food stylists
- Research and contact catering colleges to find a home economist.
- Decide on the theme of food I wish to shoot.
I found some old images I shot during college of ‘food photography’ and it’s needless to say that I am going to have to do a lot better than this now…
Ryan Trower 