I was sitting at my computer one day contemplating my place in the universe. Thankfully, I was interrupted by a call from Fresh & Easy, and didn’t have to go down that rabbit hole.
Apparently, after the first shoot, I was their go-to bread guy. I’m not complaining, it’s nice to be their go-to for anything, really. They needed some overhead shots for their bakery end-caps. This time, I was shooting in one of their test kitchens. It was a good sized kitchen with some privacy but no natural light. I was prepared with my trusty Broncolor Senso pack with a beauty dish. I point that through a California Sunbounce scrim with a 2/3-stop diffusion for a diffused light source about as big as a window.
The shoot was for several different breads and pastries from the bakery.The first one was a French bread/baguette combo. Next we tackled a breakfast message with muffins and croissants. We wrapped up the breads with pretzel and ciabatta rolls on a cooling rack but that one ended up not being used. It happens. That wrapped the first day.
I came back to shoot some of their ‘Ready Meals’ in plated form. We were in a different test kitchen and this one was smaller, unfortunately. I needed to switch to the 5-foot Chimera OctaPlus softbox in the smaller space. Not quite a nice as the 6-foot scrim but still a pretty big light source for single plate shots. For most of them, we wanted to shoot them fairly simply, mostly with a white or lighter surface. Sometimes they use the images without the backgrounds and sometimes with.
There were a variety of meals ranging from salads to a french toast casserole. It was a minimalist arrangement with an emphasis on the styling of the food.
Because of the lighter backgrounds, the entire image needed more light to keep it balanced. In the set-up below, I reflected light back into the front of the scene.
