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Capturing Your Splash Image

Lesson 7 from: Capturing Food in Motion

Steve Hansen

Capturing Your Splash Image

Lesson 7 from: Capturing Food in Motion

Steve Hansen

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Lesson Info

7. Capturing Your Splash Image

Summary (Generated from Transcript)

In this lesson, Steve Hansen discusses capturing food in motion and specifically focuses on capturing a splash image. He emphasizes the importance of timing and patience in order to get the perfect shot. He also explains the use of lighting and props to enhance the image. The duration of the shoot can vary depending on the number of shots needed and the resources available.

Lesson Info

Capturing Your Splash Image

So Jack, what I'm looking for is I'm gonna do with a lot of force, this gonna happen really fast. The first time I'm going to fake you out for comedic reaction. And then the second time, really going to go. It's going to be kind of going, it's not going to be perfectly horizontal but it will lie within this. But I need you to capture it kind of at it's peak, you know what to do. You'll see it. So we're doing this visually. He'll see it and trigger and it's so fast as long as you get a feel for where that is and maybe even doing on a hair faster than you think you might need to do, or a hair later. You can make adjustments as time goes on. And I don't think we're going to splash too much on the back. I do need to make sure that we have a back plate. Do we have a plate where there's nothing in it? We've got a couple plates with nothing in it but-- And we haven't moved the camera since then. We haven't moved the camera, we haven't moved the lighting. Got it, okay. And then when yo...

u're triggering stuff by hand, it's always good to make sure the cameras locked down. And I have so many knobs on this thing. I have to twist them all, this one's loose, oh yeah. I have to twist them all to make sure we're fully locked and that this won't move because even when you press down on this it will move a little bit, which isn't a deal with the flash. What it is, is reframing. So if we get stuff that, if the camera moves over time, it's just a matter of we have to drag every frame to perfectly match the other one before we can work again. Something we want to avoid if we can. Okay, here we go. So another thing Jack to remember is when you shoot, if you don't shoot for a while it has to wake up. So you have that initial trigger, remember the one that we ran into? Okay. So shoot it. Oh, you already got it, okay. Are you ready? Now Moline, I want you to watch how this happens and check to see if there's any issues with the way we've set this up that we can fix. So when we start really tossing it. All right, here we go, you ready? Yep. Just holding it, I know the liquid is going to come up first. All right. Cameras are on, here we go. (audience laughing) The thing is I don't want the pot to go with it. I have to stop the pot. I kind of want the pot to be in the frame and you're like shut up, throw it! But I want the pot to stop right here because we are, it's not just exciting throwing stuff. We have to compose something. I kind of do want the pot in the frame. I just don't want my huge grizzly hands in the frame too so I don't know if we have hand models that can throw stuff. I think we'll just go with it. If we get a good splash image where the pots not in there, we're good. If we don't, we don't. But I need to stop right about here for it to be in the frame, which is I think fair to say. Yeah. Okay. Here we go, you ready? One, two, three. Too late or too early? Yeah, probably too early. Is there anything in the frame at all? Looks like no. (audience laughs) All right, how did we do? Exactly what I thought would happen. Do what you want to grab all that and yeah. I'll help you with it. 'Cause we have to reset. Normally on a shoot, we would reset. I'll get it all so I need to move this much more towards... Thank you very much so if you want to get... So if you want to get the rest of it real quick. So Jack let's practice timing. I was just gonna clean the top real quick. So we didn't hit the background. So the good thing is that the tub wasn't positioned perfectly, which isn't ideal but that's okay, that's fixable. We have a picture of the copper already so even if we squeegee this off, it's mostly just for cleanliness. What I need to do is get the tub into the corner because regardless of how things go, I'm going to naturally start to aim for that. So we need to move it, scoot it in, and then Molina is going to get this picked up. We will refill. I'm going to refill the bucket with some of this liquid. Now, from your perspective what did you see happen? Because I'm in the moment and Jack's triggering. When you saw this fly out, did you see the liquid go first or the vegetables or both? Was it a mixture of the two? Were you just like oh, wow. Wow. All right. That's what happens. That's the thing you have to get over is the oh wow thing. and not being excited at all by the fact that you're... because you have to be focused on the details, not just the big picture. We're not even at the big picture yet. We haven't caught anything on camera. But okay, so here we go. That's a common thing, you just have to get in a groove, and I'm going to go with Jack. I'm just going to throw like a lemon across and I want you to capture that lemon in the middle. So we'll practice. All right, so get a little bit of liquid, a little bit of oil. Thank you Molina. I'm going to owe Molina big-time. She's gonna be doing a lot of picking up off the floor. Now, if I move this over to the edge though, we could avoid this completely. So this stuff's pretty, the food is pretty durable. I always check between shots to make sure something hasn't succumbed to the crashes, which will eventually happen. So you do have to work fast if you're going to reuse stuff. But in a home, when you're doing this on your own reusing is the way to go. I mean, it's too expensive to have, for a shoot I would have, I would buy multiple stock pots. I would buy multiple of this or at least have containers where I can least pour em into. Two stylists would be filling ten of these at a time and we just go, go, go. So I'm going to move that back there. That'll catch pretty much everything. I'm going to get rid of this unnecessary stand. No, it's not unnecessary, okay. Do you want to cover that more? Yeah, if you want to get a little bit of just anything. Any kind of plastics fine. You can cut a little bit. So we're going to do a piece of corn. We're going to do a test here and this is good for you to do at home to practice your skill as far as... I'm not saying Jack can't do it. We need to get in a groove for sure. So all right, I'm going to throw is just as hard as I would the stock pot and then I can have them grab it. I'm going to go one, two, three, go. When I go, I'm throwing. One, two, three, go. That was good. Right in the middle. And it went in the bucket. So now we've solved all the little problems that we've achieved. So we have a piece of corn so that's good. (audience laughs) But okay, so zoom in on the corn if you can. Look at the... I know that monitor isn't as contrasty and saturated. We're definitely a little far. I want to say that's too far back on the plane of focus. So I'm going to push focus into scene just a tiny bit further. Okay, do you want me to hold the corn? So we can do a test? Huh? Do you want me to hold the piece like... I think this is going to be the front of focus as opposed to up here because I do go at an angle. So there's trouble shooting at the beginning. You can see how sharp it is now. Okay, let's throw it. Let's make sure we're not getting any... let's make sure I'm not getting any... and I'll just do a soft toss this time so you go just get it. That's too early. But I think we got it. Let's just check sharpness on it. But you see the corn? Yeah, that's much better. Do you see how... do you see how the edge lighting really makes it pop? You get fill on the right. It's as if I were just photographing just that, taking time to photograph just that piece. That's what the strip lighting does for you on both sides. No matter where you are. And I actually like the fact that there's no fill, its any more drama. And you can bring up the shadows in post-production, no problem. So having that be flat isn't mandatory although it is nice sometimes. Okay, let's do another throw. Let's do it. I'm going to make sure there's lobster on top and lemons are distributed easily and here we go. You don't want to throw it too high either. Are you having fun with this Jack? Oh, always. All right. One, okay. One, two, three. Oh, we did it again. Oh my god. Okay, I'm gonna trigger. You can throw. Sure. All right. Now if you're if you're okay with not, we can squeegee that off. That's probably not a bad idea but... the background is what you want to avoid getting anything on because it really and we did get a little splatter. Where my stockpot go? I put the stockpot over there. Okay, let's style this up again. We're going to get something in frame. Do you want more liquid or no? No, that's actually a... Maybe a little bit more. All right. I'll show you the... the triggering it's really about patience. You get really excited especially in your first few tries, it's totally normal for this to happen. And it's easy to pre trigger. So if there's a question. Can burst mode be used instead of single? Can what? Can burst mode on the camera be used instead of single? Burst mode is no good because what I'm after is the peak action. Burst mode is a good way to get before-and-after shots. I'm looking for that. I'm visually looking for that and I can feel it. You'll see me when I trigger, I can I can find that peak action. If you get three shots... if you're at home, burst mode is actually not fast enough because even if you're going super fast between those shots it could be left and right of the frame. There's only one shot that will always be good and so it's good to just go for that shot rather than just waste images because then you're filling up your... You have to edit and find out which images are which. It's good to really commit to a single shot. It's not as fast. If you have a super fast sports camera, maybe. And the Broncolors are really good about flash recycling. Especially at the lower powers. So that could work but you're still going to end up with less than the ideal because you're looking for that one shot. Not a few. Where as in sports a few will work and you know, there's a few. All right. So you have the... are you up for this Jack? Yeah. So you want to keep it pretty low and with a lot of force. And I kind of just hold on to one of the handles and then hold the back of it and then push it in like just do a... And I'd go vertically on that. So this is how I would hold it. I'm left-handed though but like this to grab onto it. And then this to actually like this and then go bam but only right-handed. I am left-handed so I can't explain anything to anyone. You just do this. They're like what? Okay. Yeah. (audience yelling) Catch bucket. Was the internet freaking out about that? They didn't see it, did they? Thank you, student. The student has become the master. (laughs) Okay. All right Steve, you ready? I have to get into my triggering position, here we go. Okay. One. Hold on, I want to make that shot. I don't want the shot to be delayed. Two. Okay. And Three. (audience laughing) Now, I'm getting warmed up. Okay. Should we trade back? No, scoop this in. So when you have oil and water mixed together it becomes slippery so you got to really watch it. So let's get something on camera for everybody. Do it again and I will promise you this time we will get it. And so when I go off set, I'm going to the towel and I usually have a towel hanging on the tripod. So I have it. And I always do a trigger to make sure it hasn't gone to sleep on me. All right, so here we go. One, two, yeah. One, two, three. There we go, now we're in the groove. It's a little high but we're in the groove. So you see the splashes and you see there are some things that need to be fixed from the lighting perspective but I like it. So we were high on that one. I saw that there was a question. Is that in fact the case? Yeah, just in between the shots feel free to like keep moving full speed ahead but if there is time for questions, let me know. One of the questions was around, I think you mentioned why you don't use but again, the motion sensor triggering. People are wondering have you ever tried that, in theory that, that might help. It helps if you're doing controlled, like a drip. There's there's triggers that trigger off of sound and triggers that trigger off of a laser. The thing is I'm looking for an artistic thing to happen in front of the camera and I want that to happen at a certain time and sometimes it depends on the force. The force matters. So if you have a laser delay that's set to a certain delay or just to be instantaneous. Just because if a line goes way out in front and happens to trigger that trigger, it goes before you're ready and so it's better to kind of take some shots. We do this all time, we miss the first five shots all the time, we just don't have it. And a trigger would solve that but you never get that perfect. There's always something that hits it before the rest kind of gets going. So it's just as unpredictable as doing it by hand in this instance but if you're doing drip photography or things that are very closely calibrated then a trigger is much more useful in that instance. So we're going to put this back in the pot. Liquid please. And there's no denying that things will start to get beat up so once we have this which is almost the mock-up right now. Once we get in a groove and we are in a groove. Add more liquid I think and if you want to make more that too, that would be great. Cool, thank you. Want more oil? No, I think we're okay on oil. It's starting to stick to the vegetables, it kind of hangs out there. All right, here we go. I'll trigger and throw this time. I'm just kidding. So what we're going to do is... We need to come in flatter. You're almost actually just... act like you're serving it to the table. Like you would never really serve it that way but come in very straight but almost like you're... maybe go down on the and just have it crash as opposed to just throwing in the air. Just go very horizontally but it goes you know, or as horizontally as possible. All right. (audience yelling) Huh? The bucket, the catch bucket. Oh my god. All right I'm gonna put Molina, you're on bucket duty. All right, it's in the corner, ready to go. If we miss, if we don't put on there once, we're gonna have a major mess. Okay. Yeah, so I'm going real flat on this one. Okay. And you ready? Yeah. One, two, three. All right. (audience cheers) Yay! Not bad. Okay, so the one thing I see right now is that the left side has too much shadow. The right side isn't bad. Which is interesting because the left soft box is actually pulled more forward but we are getting... You know what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull this forward. I'm going to actually have you throw it from behind the soft box. So I'm going to pull this forward a little bit more. Because he's throwing it into the scene, the left soft box isn't far enough forward to actually light the side. It's almost back lit. Which actually does create sort of a nice look because the right side is filled in more but it's still way too dark. So we need to pull the lights forward to fill in that. It's really contrasty, really edgy right now, really cool. There is liquid going through it. You actually see a pattern of liquid from the left to right following the food, which is kind of what I'm looking for. But I'm looking for more than that. So I might add more liquid to the shot. We're going to pull the images forward and we're going to go, I think Jack, even a little higher is fine. I wouldn't actually go just throw it on to the surface but. Let me give you some help here. Let's do, do you want to prep another one to be ready to go into the pot? Yeah. Okay. Do we use that same pot or-- No, just give it like a bowl out of the thing and just have it ready to put in. Maybe even since we're going to start shooting heroes soon, I'll take care of the bucket. I'll make sure that there but if you want to get like two hero bowls that we can just actually put in and then I'll just transfer. I didn't want to go buy tons of lobster, go figure. So we're going to transfer that. That's going to be used in every shot and I'll just transfer it. Okay, ooh it gets slippery. Oil and water don't mix. All right. So this needs more liquid for sure. Thank You, Molina. So I'm adding more than I did before. A little bit of oil and the reason, why am I adding the oil? It adheres to the food so it gives it a nice glisten and it's not just one liquid, there's you know. It adds a sparkliness to it so I don't want to forego that even though it's really making for a slippery set. Okay. So you're a good splasher. Let's move that. I pulled the light forward so I can hit it from here. All right, do you still have room or is that to? Yeah. I still want the edge lighting to occur without being too filly because now it's gonna be really filly. All right. Well, we can turn fill down. In our post real quick after this. Okay so it's going like that. That's coming from behind it. This actually needs to come forward too because now what you're doing is you're going to be aiming naturally for this side. So I'm going to move the bucket into here and I'm also going to compensate this light too now. So we're just going to move both lights forward and come from behind so we get a nice edge light on it. All right, I think that will do the trick. So just an inch higher but I'd really do the same thing as you did last time. Yeah, this will naturally be a little higher because with the added liquid, I can't flatten the thing out as much. Okay. All right, let's go. All right, one, two, three. How did we do? Quite a bit higher. That's a lot better though. That's nice, right? Yes, still a little early. Yeah, huge improvement. No, there's no question that when you do this. Even when you've been doing it forever, you have to warm up. It's like when you go running, you don't just go running. You stretch and that's what we did. We stretched and now we're really in a groove where we see everybody. Sometimes there's certain shoots that just Jack triggers and then certain shoots where I trigger and someone does the throwing and just for some reason, someone falls into that position and it just works. So sometimes he'll trigger and does a great job and then sometimes I'll but you see the sharpness you're getting there at 100%. It almost looks like it's too in a row so I think even more, even more aggression if you can handle it. Yeah, I can definitely get a little more force. But I think that's one of the plates we'll select as a keeper for the left side. Because what I'm thinking maybe is that we blend in the left side of the shot with another shot where I get maybe the right side and kind of create an S with the material. And then I'll start to clone in some pieces around. This is usually how it works. Like I'll throw just straight vegetables and no liquid or just liquid and I'll start to blend that in around the edges to create more drama. If you get too much force, this looks beautiful because it's gentle but it doesn't have as much of a dramatic gesture and aggression to it that I like. So in order to get that, if you throw it too much, the water just sprays everywhere and you get this massive wash of spray and it doesn't look as clean and as interesting as this. So there's some happy medium that we're trying to find that will allow us to get what we want. Why did you choose to do the liquid the way you did? From the pictures it looks kind of muddy and it's too transparent to be a broth or water but it's not... I don't know, it looks a little muddy. Why did you choose that? I mean, it's the same color as you would have a light chicken stock. It has a golden hue as it is in reality. So how it appears on your on the screen is way muddier than we're seeing on our screen. It looks like chicken broth on our screen and we're also going to bump up, if we do see something that's muddy, we're going to be toning down, we're going to take the oranges from more yellow to red. So I see that happening very much in the scene where we take that and it looks more golden than it does muddy. I think on that monitor it's very neutral. It's very unsaturated. Here, we're getting a perfect chicken broth but it still needs to be pushed, there's no question. But I would rather have that, if we add too much, it'll start to look like shrimp iced tea and people are going to wonder why you like that combination. But you're right. Yeah, so I think what we could do is add a little more, do you want to add a little bit more of the Kitchen Bouquet to the... We can try a darker. A little darker? Yeah, if we get too dark, it doesn't look as fresh. We could just go with straight water but then I feel you're losing something. So as long as we color balance it towards not a muddy color, I think we're in the ballpark. At least from this angle that I'm getting. I wouldn't, I'm not going to change the lighting at all. I think the lighting's really good. I do want to dry off the background because getting rid that in post, even though we have a frame of it not there, is annoying. So I'm going to get a towel. Steve, speaking of color pallettes, now that we've tweaked to the lights around, let's pull another white balance card. Or another color card and we'll recalibrate off of that to make it, see if we can get a little more accuracy. Let's do it. Watch your step on here, it's getting... Getting real slippery. So when you're doing this it can be, it can be stressful. This isn't always fun, it's mostly fun but it can get kind of like... you can get exhausted. Like there were weekends I would be doing test shooting all weekend because I rented the flash and it was exhausting because there's so much cleanup in between shots. It's not like you just go, go, go, and you get it on one try. You have to warm up like we did and then on top of that you've got to stick to it and get every image that you're looking for. And I still haven't actually addressed the fact that we have this black acrylic back here. Have you guys wondered what that is and why it's there? Okay. This is our background obviously. This was just here because like I said, we don't have the the drapes installed to the control backlight. So to keep light from spilling into the frame, we take a shot at 250th of a second with no flash just to make sure that it's completely black. If you see any color in that image with no flash, it means that portions of that image are going to be affected by natural light and you'll get a blur in those spots. So at least we have the backlight control a little bit going right in to camera and that helps a lot just to make sure we don't get that. When you see a blurry image or a blurry portion of the liquids, you're going to question yourself saying am I focused right or is it the flash duration? There's multiple things that can be causing it. One of them is the flash duration, if it's not properly set or if you have a light bleeding into your scene affecting your exposure and it can also be focus. So you have to figure out, you have to know by look which one is which and it tends to be the ones that are caused by light infiltrating it. There will be like a little bit of a shadow and a streak and the ones that are caused by focus are just soft around the edges generally. So there are two different looks to that and you have to be able to see which one is which and we'll invariably be able to show you. But I think we're actually getting it right down the middle which is helpful. So you do want to control the light in your studio so that you won't have to worry about that as an issue. So take that first image at 250th of a second with no flash. If it's black then you'll never have to worry about the fact that it's just your focus. You don't have to, because sometimes I'll twist focus saying oh my god, there's no way to get this in focus and then I realize either my shutter speed happened to get tripped up and it's not or there is some light getting in there that's dramatic affecting it. So it's better to be in a darker room for this but we do need lights for the video but regardless, we're still getting the shot. You'll notice there's a lot of light in here. None of that is affecting our image. Oh, you look great in that shot. Okay, here we go. So we have a... Is that a prep pot or is that just the-- This is a final prep pot and I have Molina going ahead and she's going to create replacements which she's already done. Which is really helpful. Okay and I'm done adding oil for a while. When we put a new one in here, I'll add a little bit more oil. All right, here we go. And I think let's do one with all the aggression you can muster gather for this round and then I'll... All right. All right Steve, are you ready? Yeah. Okay, one, two, three. Too high, too high. Too high. Yeah. That was pretty aggressive though. We got some good aggression, it looks nice. It's just off frame. It shows you how little room you have to work when you're throwing this. That's why I back off on the exposure but even now we still have a... So I'm going to get the lobster. I'm going to forego everything else and we'll get a new styled. Okay. And you can see why we have plastic up because I pretty much hit Molina with some of that food. Not really, you just missed me. Is it going through the plastic or are we fine? No, I missed the plastic. It went off this edge and we had some corn end up all the way over there. This looks nice, okay. That looks really good. Did you at least get a sense of how much liquid, do we need more or less from that shot? That seemed pretty good. So just don't lob it, go really straightforward. It's more of a push but with a little height. So we're not just going right towards the surface but that was-- Do you want to restyle this at all? I do you want to get a lobster in the front. Are they even in here, where are they? In your other bucket. No, they're in there. They're on the bottom somewhere. Yeah, they're there. Okay so that's good, that's good. All right. Let's throw another, we're just grabbing stuff off the floor, it's cool. All right, we got a lime. That looks good, let's go for it. This one's broken. This one's not open. And where's your squeegee? Oh, we got it. So we're going to squeegee this onto the floor, where's the bucket? So you're throwing left to right so we're going to go over here on this. So it's important we just get it right down the middle. Just more of a push than anything and we'll grab this one. That's done, if you want to grab, yeah. I'll do the other side too. So it's not all, as you can see there's a patience involved with this. Like a lot of patience. All right, here we go. All right Steve, you ready? Yep. Okay. One. Two. Three. That's going to be a decent one. It's low but it's good, that's almost a good panorama. I like that one a lot. What do you guys think? Interesting. The nice thing about this is it has the liquid but it's not overtaking everything else. It's kind of following it. But if we crop the top out of this, we have a shot. Almost in one frame. Yes. Super cool, first of all, I just have to comment that someone at home is watching this with their kids and the kids are saying throw that soup, throw that soup. (laughs) So shout out to those kids. Can you explain again though, why it is that you are doing this, sort of trying to get so much of it together versus one by one by one, the different ingredients. Yeah, I mean, there's instances especially in commercial shots where you'll know which one is appropriate, which approach is appropriate but when I'm doing personal work, I want it to be more like it happened in one shot and not contrived. However, there are ads that you see, there are some major photographers who do work that there's tons of errors in but I know personally that those are because somebody requested that something be a certain way and because most of it was composited and they didn't have the budget or time to actually spend days and days creating color casts. Because what will happen when you have stuff interacting like this, there's color cast, the yellow and the corn is affecting the liquid. The purple potatoes are being reflected somewhere. There's tons of nuances going on here that you would never, you could never recreate this in Photoshop ever. You couldn't come close. So when you have something that's very clean like my rum shot or the the tropical fruit shot, you can get away with some of that. You can still tell with your naked eye that there was obviously some Photoshop going on there, obviously. That's the way with a lot of ads. Getting to that point where it's, kind of your second guessing whether it was done is where you really want to be. But when I do it, I spend a lot of time to create the color casts that happen but if it's just someone wanting a splash like this to look fresh using their ingredients, we will do it until we get the shot naturally in one frame and then add little pieces here and there that we shoot separately. We'll just attach like a potato to armature wire and just you know, yeah I've got it right here. I use this a lot in food photography and we'll probably use this later on, where you just connect a potato to this and you just hold it. Some people use a paintbrush. It's actually good idea to put just like a T pen or thick needle on the end of a paintbrush so that we can hold it because this will bend if it's too heavy. So I'll use this for lighter things. But yeah, this comes really handy because what we'll do is we'll make our own luck. We'll just keep going. For a shoot we would probably do 30 more of these maybe and then we'll pick the best one and then we'll start to shoot pieces in addition to that and then Photoshop 'em in naturally. And with the Broncolor, there's not as much of a difference between the exposures because it's such a high-end flash. So I can actually paint with a soft paintbrush, just paint stuff in and it looks like it was done in the same shot. There's very little exposure difference and if there is, I'll just do a little layer adjustment. You can cut stuff out but it tends to be that you've got to be really good with how your images because these aren't perfectly sharp edges so you've got to add a little fuzziness to those edges if you're going to do that. Totally fine to do that too, it actually gives you a little more leeway but if you're cutting stuff out, it means that you're really looking to move it somewhere because you don't want any of that background. And if you're looking to move it then the lighting's not right. So I take a very natural painterly approach to Photoshop, which will probably drive people crazy at home but it's just the way I work and I try and get it right in one shot and then very gently add stuff naturally so looks like it's supposed to be there. Because it will quickly look out of a place if you try and move stuff or bend stuff and I'll show you how that happens in post-production later too. That wire that you're holding is that the same one you used for that doughnut and coffee shop? No, for the coffee shop I actually had the mug propped, actually held in place. Actually had the the doughnut held in place and I actually move the mug in to the donut and the that way the coffee interacted with the donut because you could have shot everything in pieces but I love the interaction of stuff. So I just Photoshopped the other Donuts in later but they were placed specifically using this or even just a stick or something to hold it in place. Like a long toothpick or a chopstick or something. Yeah, something you can easily remove later and put it exactly where I want it so there's no mistake in it because there's only so much luck you can have. You can't get everything in one shot for certain images. For this it's so randomized that we're going to get a good shot. I'm already happy with this. We can clean this up and make it look awesome because we have left-to-right stuff. There's a tailing on the right side of the liquid. There's an entry point of the liquid. The rosemary just happened to fall in the perfect place. Everything sporadically placed in the shot. It's just a little bit low but if we crop it down, we have a shot already. And a cool panorama if I don't say so. What's the duration for such a shoot? We're looking at 30 images. They keep on filling it up and prepping it. I mean, this looks like it can take up to two days or-- Oh yeah, we go slower to show you but when we're in a commercial shoot, Molina would have tubs full of these, which we have now. Full of pre-made, well it costs a lot of money to buy 10 pounds of lobster so just that alone would probably put you out. That's more than the Broncolor. Forget about the rental fee. Food can get expensive for these shoots because you have to reuse it. Our limes in the shot are already finished so we have to go in and we're going to use, actually we did put new ones in so they're pretty good but you have to keep replenishing stuff but you have to look at your bucket which is going bad, which is still good? Especially if you're on a budget doing this. You don't have to use expensive ingredients though. You can just do an amazing liquid shot. It doesn't cost any money to do a liquid shot really. You can just use water out of your tap and find something, you can find perfume. You can do product shots too like this, there's no difference. Except you have to be aware of the reflectivity of the pot. So we might do a few shots where we actually get the pot in the frame. And I capture it coming out of the pot. So we can do that too if you want to see that because when you deal with reflective surfaces and splashes then it gets really difficult because you're already, you have to have product photographer brain going on and the lighting around you to support it as well as the keeping your eye on the splashes. But yeah, the duration, it takes a long time to do any shots but we're also much more streamlined. We're going bang, bang, bang. So I'll actually shoot, we'll just have it all lined up here and I'll have Jack or me just splash and I'll take a shot. Splash, take shot, splash, take shot. Then we have an assistant refilling the buckets on the other end and then sending them back. So it's just a chain reaction so it goes way faster but we kind of want to show you how you would do this if you're on your own. You're not going to have, we don't even always have that many assistants so we do have to scramble and make this work like this. And we always get the shots that we got that we're just a gray wall. We get the shots done before the client shows up and so they don't have to see that. (laughs) So it's good that you got to see it because you're not going to get it on your first shot. The triggering, if you do it my way at least, the natural way, will result in more shots like this than not but you're going to have a few at the beginning that are just nothing. And it's always funny. You're always like really. I'm a pro, right? Yeah and so, but then you you finally get the groove and you're fine. And you wouldn't get this if you were just bursting it like crazy. It would be before or after. You would be even more lucky to get the shot if you weren't doing the timing 'cause I'm watching him come out and once I'm on my roll, then I get it. Most of the time. Depending where it's thrown too.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with RSVP

Food In Motion Lighting Setups

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Capturing Food In Motion Gear List

Ratings and Reviews

Cynthia
 

This course is so fun to watch! I love how hands-on this course is even while watching it 3000 miles away on the other side of the country. I love how Steve Hansen is like a mad scientist just throwing food everywhere just to capture the "right moment". It's great to watch a professional at work especially the behind-the-scenes that we normally won't ever know just by look at the final product. It's amazing how much work goes into this and actually gets me excited to try my hands on capturing food in motion as well - first need to find a place that allows me to get it messy :D I do prefer this type of course set up than the lecture-style some of the other courses are.

Christy cwood56
 

This course will NOT disappoint! So much quality info that can really help a photographer move to the next level. To see the actual shoots with food flying everywhere and how to capture all of it and turn it into an incredibly stunning image is worth every penny of the price tag. To spend an afternoon with Steve on a one to one basis would cost more than most of us could afford but that is exactly what this class offers! We see into the mind of an incredible artist and his creative process. This class has been invaluable to my personal education as a photographer. There is so much here and I will continually come back to it again and again to learn and refine my techniques and images. You opened up a world of possibilities to me with this class! Thanks Steve!!!

a Creativelive Student
 

I attended this class in person and I found it to be wonderful. Steve is awesome at what he does and he is great at explaining what he is doing and why he is doing it. This course will lay out all the steps needed to help you create awesome splash and crash photography. I highly recommend it.

Student Work

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