When a food photo shoot job lands on my lap, I’m more than a happy little kid who finds himself perpetually lost in a candy shop. As a food lover and self-professed ardent culinary arts enthusiast, the opportunity to being a celebrity chef even for a moment is irresistible.
The power to mould and shape food into its most artistic but yet, logical in presentation and mouth-watering state is truly rewarding. Hence, when I was engaged to shoot for both Mercato and Cold Storage’s Oktoberfest promotion on German sausages, I couldn’t be happier.
As it was done on a short notice with limited budget, there wasn’t a food stylist on board. Fret not. I couldn’t be more ecstatic to wear the food stylist hat too myself! I could have whined and complaint but I so totally jumped at the opportunity.
However, I had to do quite a bit of research into German sausages, their history, the tradition, preparation methods, ingredients and dig a little into the background of Oktoberfest. I needed to know what are the festival’s norm when it comes to food and drinks. What are the colours, presentation methods, table setup and combination of side dishes that go with the usual German sausages.
I came across sauerkraut, blaukraut, pretzels and mash potatoes, amidst a host of many other food types. These were by far the commonest. However, due to time and budget constraints, I had to ditch the shot of the sausages on a flaming grill, along with the side dishes of the above mentioned.
The first shot was for Mercato. The sausages to be cooked and shot were the small, fat but cute Nuerenberger sausage, the familiar long and slender Chicken Frankfurter sausage, the big wicked German Bockwurst and finally, the feminine righteous German Weisswurst, or white sausage.
I first setup on a weathered wooden dining table, with a red/white chequered table cloth. I stuffed some cloth into the bread basket before putting on another chequered napkin into it. This added volume at the base and allowed me to create an “overflowing”-basket-full-of-bread effect, without resorting to actually jamming in with tonnes of bread.
I then added the real loaves of bread which I used to substitute the pretzels. I’ve also added the second Pilsner glass for the beer which I’ll be pouring in later. At this point, I already have two Pilsner glasses sitting in the refrigerator for the past 2 hours waiting for the real action.
Next, the sausages were placed carefully on the small white platter. Aesthetics aside, I’ve arranged them in such a manner as to get them on a closely compressed focal plane for maximum depth of field.
The sausages were brushed with a mixture of water and dissolved brown sugar before lightly pan-fried (with some crushed black pepper for texture) to brown it and assume searing marks. They were not to be fully cooked. They were then left to sit at about 100 degrees in the oven. When I was ready with the lighting setup, they were brought in and arranged on the platter. That simple.
Finally, the stunt double glasses were removed, to make way for the real heroes in the scene when they stand tall and sweat it out, as a result of condensation. This created the fresh “cooling” and “DRINK ME!” effect that makes one just feel like gulping it down in one go. Beer was poured in and intermittently when the foam subsided, a straw was used to blow bubbles into it. This got the beer all excited and soon, foam began to build up again.
The final picture was warmed in post, slightly sharpened and contrast was added, despite the picture being already closely resembling the final desired output in-camera. As I knew the eventual deliverable in the flyer/magazine would be a square crop, I purposefully placed all attention somewhere right where the sausages and basket were. Right smack at the middle of the scene.
The far left and right side of the picture would be cropped eventually. The beer glasses were notably too close for comfort at the top, but I knew it’ll be cropped off, as the main star of the scene were the sausages.
Here are the behind-the-scenes look at the lighting setup. I shot with a Canon 5D Mark 3, at full sync speed, f/16 @ ISO 100 (similar settings were also used for second Cold Storage shot below) zoomed in at 70mm. I had one main light soft box at full blast coming from high 2 o’clock.
I used a series of gobo (coroplast) to cut the light and sculpt the atmosphere around the main scene. A mirror was carefully placed to light up the right underside of the basket, while a huge silver reflector was to camera left, to provide general fill to the scene. A second tightly gridded strobe was bounced into this reflector to lift the general mood of the scene (e.g. foreground fill of underside of plate and skim the surfaces of the sausages for more glint).
As with the print ad for Cold Storage‘s promotion of Oktoberfest’s German sausages, I opted for a cleaner and “sterile”, albeit, the similar outback, rustic and country, farmer’s dining table look.
I laid a gunny sack taken from a previous trip to visit a roaster at Tanjung Sepat on the same wooden dining table. I laid over it, another much redder chequered table cloth.
I took a shot and realised the top portion was a little burnt. I gobo’d the incoming light (now flooding in from a raking low 12 o’clock) close to the surface of the table, and voila! I could now see the texture of the gunny sack at the top frame.
I placed some dead twigs and branches, while my old faithful reflector mirrors were used as a stand-in for my sausages. Once I was satisfied with the arrangement, I substituted them all with the real sausages. This time, they were Nuerenberger sausage, Thueringer sausage (which looks like white sausage to me), the brown Farmer Bratwurst and the German Weisswurst.
I sprinkled some black peppercorns to the top and bottom right corners to help balance out an otherwise floating picture. Small portions of parsley were added in just the right strategic locations as a visual divide between the various sausages. The final image was also warmed in post.
Unlike the previous Mercato’s final output already known to me as a square format, the client hasn’t decided the final format to run in print for this Cold Storage outlook. Hence, I had the liberty to shoot in whichever manner deemed fit, and they would then adjust their print layout to fit my picture taken.
Finally, all the sausages were cooked once again to perfection, before we digged in and had an early Oktoberfest feast!