I’m really excited to be sharing with you that I was interviewed recently by the lovely Bronya & Sammie who co-host The Business of Cake Making podcast! The ladies wanted to interview me about product photography and more specifically, how to photograph cakes at home.
Bronya & Sammie asked me loads of great questions and although I like to think I explained everything clearly, I thought it would be a good idea to write this post and show you what I was explaining and leave links to where you can purchase the kit that I also use.
With that being said, let’s get into it!
How can smartphone cameras be optimised to get the best images?
One of the first questions I was asked was about phone cameras and how they can be optimised for taking better images. I told Bronya & Sammie that:
- You can turn on the Grid feature in Settings and this will help you when composing your shots*
- You can change the exposure on your phone by tapping the screen and waiting for the little square to come up. If you tap to the right of the box and slide your finger up or down, you can bring the exposure up or down and that affects how bright the image is
- You can also tap anywhere on the screen and your phone will expose for that part of the image
- Most smartphones have wide-angle lenses so try and photograph the bakes in the same spot for a consistent focal length throughout your images (distance between camera and cake)
*to turn on the Grid feature, go to Settings -> Camera -> Composition -> Grid and turn the slider to on. I can only speak for iPhones here but if you can’t find it on your Android, Google will be your best pal to help you find this feature or something similar.
Lighting
The second main question that was asked was all about lighting. I could go on and on and on about lighting because there is so much to say but I want to keep it simple for everyone.
It’s definitely worth investing in artificial lights as it will help with consistency when posting the images to social media or on your website. It also means you can shoot at all hours of the day or night.
In the podcast episode I spoke about the Profoto C1, LED lights, Ring lights and other accessories. Here are some links to what I talked about in the episode.
- Profoto C1 Smartphone Light
- LED lights
- Softbox lighting kit
- Ring light with changing colour temperature
- White Foam Board
Here’s a video of me using my video light to capture the foil details on some skincare products I was photographing. I was also using a flashgun which was pointed at the ceiling so that it created soft, flat light which a soft box would also do.
Here’s another behind the scenes snap from the same product shoot with a different set-up. This shows off the white foam boards I was talking about. I’ve got one to the left of my scene as the window light is coming from the right hand side. I’ve got another one holding the backdrop up using the backdrop clips I linked above.
If you’re not in a position to purchase lighting equipment then use what’s already available to you. Put your bakes near a window and put some white foam board on the opposite side to bounce light back onto the scene.
Backdrops
I love using backdrops as they give an extra element to my images. I’ve always bought vinyl because they’re flexible, portable and wipe clean so if you get any food on them, they’re easy to clean. Places I buy my backdrops from:
What I tend to do is clip the backdrop to a white foam board and lean it up against something heavy so it stays in place. You can invest in a backdrop stand kit (I have one and it’s good) but it can be a pain taking it out, putting it up and tidying away again afterwards. I’ll link the one I have in case anyone wants to take a look.
I think that’s all the links I mentioned in the episode! I hope this post was helpful and I hope you enjoyed the podcast episode too. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I’ll leave the link to listen to it, here.
Speak soon xo
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