I’m taking another class at Photographic Center Northwest this quarter. This one is called Light Control, and is supposed to teach us how to manage lighting, whether it’s natural, artificial, or a mix of both. There’s a huge prejudice in the food blogging world against using artificial light for food photography, but it seems to me that it works fine as long as you know what you’re doing (and not using on-camera flash). It just takes a bit of practice, and the right equipment.

For our first assignment we had to go into the lighting studio and do a basic still-life shoot using a single strobe covered with a soft box, then adding a second strobe as needed. I took in a bag of fruit and played around with various close-ups, and particularly enjoyed this rather dramatic shot of a lime and a satsuma. It’s a little underexposed but I like the deep shadows. Hopefully I’ll figure out how to get less of a shiny spot on the fruit in the future.