The Inspired Plate Challenge | September | Food Photography enhanced with Digital Texture

I am always thrilled for this time of the month when my photography group “The Inspired Plate” shares our monthly challenges. Each month we dare to stretch ourselves with a theme, topic or technique that is widely used in the field of photography, but may not be a regular in our own genre or style.
This month we introduce to you Texture Overlays in Food Photography.
I have to say, I am a little jealous of the food photographers who use this technique of “Texturizing” with such mastery. I’m proud of the fact that one of our own TIPpers, Caroline from “Nowordz Photography” is one of those professionals who use it with ease and subtlety. Her work is beautiful!

You may not see texture overlay’s on food often. It’s not really an editorial type style. Usually in publications vendors want their food to look clean, crisp, appetizing. Good enough to eat! But it does have it’s place, and with a delicate application the photograph takes on a very artsy expression.

This month was a challenge in using my time wisely! Which I have to say, I was NOT very successful at. Of course like many of us do, I waited almost till the last day to even think about my photograph. I did play with textures on other food photo’s and sought out textures of variation.. but when it came time to actually plan out and style my photo for this challenge.. I came up a little short. Sans a bowl of cereal! I did have some fun props though. I have been keeping these old magazine advertisements encased in plastic for YEARS now! I love them and have planned on framing a whole series of them for my kitchenette.. which I don’t seem to have much wall space for. But I was so glad to take them out of my prop box and use them in this simply styled shoot. I even tried to recreate what is happening in the photo. A bowl of cereal with a side dish of fruit.. And some vintage silver ware. I wish you could see the actual texture on the jar.. It is beautiful and has this elaborate cross hatch finish on it. It doesn’t look like it here, but it has a very pretty aged patina on it.. And the lid that came with it.

There is one more bit of news that I am excited to share.. The Inspired Plate now has a Facebook Page! We have all been talking about it for awhile now, and I finally set it up Saturday.. Just in time for this months challenge post. I invite you to share and join in on the conversations there, take part in some of our on line events and even tell us what you would like to see in Food Photography! So please click on The Inspired Plate FB link and we’ll see you there!
Please take the time to visit my sweet and talented friend Jennifer Grant | Metro Detroit Photographer to see how she used textures in this months challenge!

Colored Sugar Shapes

September 4, 2012