Beer is Serious Buisness

Working in restaurants and pubs always presents a different set of challenges to a food photographer. The space to shoot is not often ideal and photos not just showcasing the food in all its glory but have to tell a story about the ambiance of the place where it is served.

What story do the photographs (or the owner) want to tell? Is this place warm and cozy, bright and airy, casual, more modern or traditional? How do you fit the mood of the photograph to the mood of the place you're in at the time?

Recently we've been able to document the ambiance as well as food and drinks in a couple of local restaurants. Thanks to the amazing staff and fun-loving patrons it has been a wonderful experience. We plan to do a blog for each location we have photographed over the last couple of years and how we approached shooting and handling the needs of each with keeping their own character.

The first is a series of photos from a local organic brewpub called Roots. According to the owner, it served the usual pub fare but he felt what it did best was create a community around the family and of course great beer.

What made this project so fun is the way our newest digital photo technology allowed us to play with light, mood, color and composition in a very intuitive way. High sensitivity cameras that produce a wonderful image at 1600 or even 3200 ASA, portable lights which can be remotely controlled while they are adding accent or fill to a dark scene make this job easy. With instant feedback of the camera screen lighting and compositional problems become obvious.  Stick a light in the corner of the room, play fly on the wall and capture people in their environment as they go about their daily pleasures or business. For the photo geeks in the crowd, I used an SU-800 controlling two separate strobes, 1 SB800 bouncing in the ceiling and one SB900 into a 36" umbrella and while shooting at 1600 ASA to bring some of the ambient light in play.

The one thing to remember is if you are going to use peoples faces in advertising somebody is going to have to collect model releases or the photographer will get in trouble.  Whatever anybody says, the photographer holds the primary liability but the client can also be held liable. Most people are really open to being in the shot once you explain what it is and maybe buy them a drink for their trouble. ;-)

Sometimes it seems computers and anything digital just adds unnecessary complexity to our already complex lives, in this case the new cameras and way of controlling the lights help us find new ways of seeing and isn't that great!