Food Photography Workshop with Modernist Cuisine Photographer Ryan Matthew Smith

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Join Modernist Cuisine photographer, Ryan Matthew Smith, for a hands-on food photography workshop at TASTE in downtown Seattle. Ryan will explain the lighting techniques used during the making of Modernist Cuisine, as well as critical Photoshop steps to make your images pop!

Sunday, September 18th
10:00 AM – 4:30 PM
TASTE restaurant at the SAM
1300 1st Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101
United States

$125 per person, includes lunch.  Click here to purchase tickets.  Enrollment is limited to 12 students.

Agenda:

  • An introduction to Ryan’s food photography
  • Demos of strobe light techniques used in Modernist Cuisine
  • Lunch provided by TASTE restaurant
  • Hands-on action shooting workshop.  Attendees will learn to shoot food in motion!
  • Photoshop Lesson 1: Curves -  The nearly everything tool
  • Photoshop Lesson 2: Layer masking techniques -  How to localize your adjustments
  • Photoshop Lesson 3: Making a single image from multiple captures
  • Q&A session
  • Student portfolio critique (optional)

A DSLR camera and previous Photoshop experience is recommended, but not required.  If you have a DSLR, please bring it for the hands-on shooting workshop.  If not, there will be a camera available to borrow.  You will have the opportunity to work with high-end Broncolor lighting equipment and also experiment with budget-friendly Alienbees strobes.  However, the lessons you’ll learn will enhance your food photography skills regardless of the equipment you use at home.

Your ticket price includes lunch provided by TASTE restaurant.  Confirmed attendees will be allowed to upload samples of previous work into a Flickr pool for the student portfolio critique at the end of the workshop.

If you have questions, please contact scott@seattlefoodgeek.com

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/193673

Behind the Scenes with Modernist Cuisine’s Food Photographer Part 2–Photoshop Magic

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In Part 1 of this article, we got a behind-the-scenes look at the equipment, lighting and shooting setup used by Ryan Matthew Smith to achieve the stunning food photos in Modernist Cuisine.  Now, we’ll take a look at the second step in the process: cleaning up your pictures in Photoshop to really make them come to life.

Ryan is amazingly talented with Photoshop and he has shared some of his favorite tricks and techniques with me.  There is a lot more to be learned than what’s covered in this article, but this is a great start for any food photographer looking to squeeze a little more succulence out of your shots. 

The steps below are my attempt at cleaning up the grapefruit picture shown here.  Although my process achieves a similar result to Ryan’s work on the same photo, chances are, an experienced Photoshop guru like Ryan can correct this image faster, cleaner and more accurately.  However, as I was quite pleased with the finished product, so I thought I’d share my steps with you. 

At the end of the article, I’ve listed a handful of other useful Photoshop tips that Ryan was kind enough to share. 

Behind the Scenes with Modernist Cuisine’s Food Photographer Part 1–Getting the Shot

tomato-560

This week I had the extreme privilege to get a lesson in food photography from Ryan Matthew Smith, the principal photographer for Modernist Cuisine.  We recreated a few shots from the book and Ryan explained some of the techniques he used to create those jaw-dropping photos.  In this article, I’ll give you some of Ryan’s best tips and tricks for shooting food in this style.  We’ll cover the lighting setup for each shot, talk about the equipment that Ryan uses, and even look at some at-home alternatives.  Finally, as a reward for reading all the way through, you can watch gelatin bounce in extreme slow motion :-)  In Part 2 (coming soon), we’ll walk through a set of steps in Photoshop to pull out the hyper-real detail and lighting that make Modernist Cuisine’s food seem to jump off the page.