This was a class project for my Advanced Commercial Photography class. This project was all about photographing food which involved preparing it, staging it, and continuing to make it look tasty as the shoot went on.

 

I started off by getting all of my food setup on the ground so I could look straight down on everything. Once it was setup I didn't quite like the way the strobes were hitting everything. I was just using softboxes and it wasn't quite the effect I was going for. I wanted that warm feeling that you would see if you were at a restaurant with an red brick oven. What I did to achieve the look above was take a large softbox and put it right above the garlic and tomatoes at a 90 degree angle so it would illuminate everything. I turned off the strobe so it wouldn't fire, but I left the modeling light on. Then by using a longer shutter speed I was able to let the warmth of the modeling light fill in the frame and make it look like heat and fire was what was lighting up the pizza.