How I shot a burger

I was feeling the itch to shoot some food again and I started to watch some YouTube videos to pick up a tip or two. I was thinking of something to shoot and pancakes are easy but it was late and I didn’t want to make them. So the next best thing was a burger. Costco sells these frozen burgers that are pretty good so now that I knew what to shoot I grabbed some stuff from the fridge and headed into the studio. 

The first thing I did was set up my scene. I wanted to get it all set before I built my burger. I grabbed some props and layered in a couple backgrounds for texture. I wanted to keep the scene monochromatic because I wanted the beer and burger to pop. Once I had that set, I set up a light behind the scene at 45 degrees at 1/8 power. My go-to is f4.0 at 250 and iso 200. I also added a bounce once after I got my burger in place. I like setting the main subject on the plate or in place and then construct it right there. There has been plenty of times I’ve built up a dish then moved and something has fallen. Here is what it looked like. 

You can see the addional bounce to the right and a plate i used for a secondary fill. A plate is a great small surface that helps to lift the shadows in small spots. I like the larger fill to get a nice big highlight on the bottle.

Here is the result. I’m loving the highlights on the tomatoes, they help keep your eye pulled into the burger. This image is set up as an editorial image which would have text in the upper left hand corner. If you keep the end goal in mind for your images then you’ll shoot more meaningful photos. I was pretty happy how it turned out. After I took this image I wanted to see what would happen as I moved my position higher and lower, left and right. Once I took some shots from a few different angles I started to move the light. Moving the light was way more interesting then my camera position. Pulling the light away from the scene gave me a different mood and look, to the same burger. I pushed in on it a little more and the result was a lot more interesting. 

It really made the burger pop. I added smidge of light to the background and in retrospect I could have back lit the bottle but all in all I like the darker more moodier photo. Overall, it was a good learning experience and something that was quick and fun. I was done before the studio even heated up and I was able to eat a pretty burger and beer too.