Food Photography & Styling | March Assignment | “Splash” | Longboat Key Photographer

If you are new to my blog or recent posts, I joined a group of fellow photographers in early January who were all interested in furthering their food photography and styling skills.  January’s challenge was a fruit on a white background, and February was a raw and cooked vegetable presented in diptych form.  And this month?  A “splash” challenge which is just what it sounds like – dropping something into a type of liquid and capturing the splash.

Let’s just say I’m looking forward to NEXT month’s challenge, which is styling and photographing a pasta dish – definitely much more up my food alley so to speak.

But this was fun – and it was a nice excuse to do something together with my son, who at his age prefers Xbox Live with his buddies than anything else.  He gets a kick out of things like this that have an element of potential failure or a complete mess – those things seem to humor him.  Hmm.

We chose strawberries and water.  He was the dropper-into-the-glass and I was the photographer.  No flash, no tripod – just a high shutter speed and seemingly steady hand with my much lighter 50 1.4 lens on instead of my 24-70 heavy guy (but I should have used a tripod anyway).

Settings were 1/8000 shutter speed, aperture f/2.8, and ISO 320 using my 50 1.4 Canon lens. The high shutter speed will “freeze” the motion whereas a lower shutter speed will create blur.

And sorry for my crooked table.  As you can see, the horizon is relatively straight.  Unfortunately, my terrain off of my lanai is not.  I’m used to it.  It’s not easy to walk on either.

Fun to have a couple of outtakes – in the first one below I was way ahead of the drop and captured the strawberry during its descent; in the second, the strawberry actually dropped right onto the side of the glass rim, spearing it!!!  Needless to say, my son found that accidental drop completely hilarious.  We broke out laughing so hard.  That’s not an easy feat!

Overall, we had to refill the glass several times, dry off the table in between shots, and pick up quite a few strawberries scattered throughout the grass for all the totally missed shots.  But it was a fun way to spend an hour with my son.

Please stayed tuned for next month’s challenge we would love it if you continued on through our blog circle to see how the ladies in The Inspired Plate (yes, we have a new name!) fared with this month’s challenge.  I’ve had a peek at a few and they’re great!!  Up next is Carey Pace, Kingsport TN Lifestyle Photographer - she is so awesome and I LOVE her work.