Low key photo

Decided to here and there add some tidbits about photography,
and nice start could be about capturing food, or at least insight
on how I do that.
Not owning a studio and having myself as food stylist, I’m basically
where most people are, but it’s possible. With availability of SLR
cameras today, quite easy, and totally doable with regular
point and shoot camera if it’s equipped with manual controls.

Low key is in general for dark, dramatic picture, often used
for portraits, acts and similar.
For normal photography, three light setup is used,
main (key) light, fill and back light, where low key picture
is created with single, directed light, sometimes reflector
comes to play if needed.

At “home studio”, you can do picture as the garlic above quite easily-
for black background I’ve used my coat, but any non reflective fabric
or black photographic paper will do, table lamp – temporarily with 100W
bulb, normally I use energy saver
and piece of white paper held on the opposite side to the lamp for
minor reflection back. Camera on tripod, expose for the garlic.
Adjusted contrast and corrected color in editing program.
Done, nothing hard to this.
Camera settings were 1/13 sec. at f/9, ISO 100, but I believe if you
are really a beginner, today’s camera technology will choose
very similar settings to this, even if you use auto mode.
Tripod is important, with so little light, shutter speeds are slow.

Some food pictures are looking really nice on black, it’s not usual
to see food set as low key. Try it, nice alternative (or time killer
for rainy weekends and long winter evenings).

Above: 
Cassis (blackcurrant) sorbet made into small scoops, covered
in dark chocolate and served in ice bowl as sweet finger food.

Bigger pictures?
www.flickr.com/photos/tomassedlacek