This week I had the pleasure of working with Food and Drink Photographer Steve Payne based in North London. Having editorial experience mainly within a TV production environment I was keen to see how a commercial and advertising photographic studio operated After Steve agreed with me to assist on his shoot photographing kids ice lollies for Tesco, I turned up bright and early full of enthusiasm for the day.
Steve works with a digital medium format camera which as I expected was synced up to a very large screen for easy instant viewing. As the files that are produced by such a camera are so large they are stored directly onto a computer hard drive.
We shot the lollies from above while they lay flat on an elevated glass surface with black or grey paper underneath. The black paper worked for most of the colours, however some, in particular the cola flavoured ones, required grey. As you can imagine iced lollies don’t last too long once they are out of the freezer but thankfully don’t melt away as quickly as ice cream based ones do!
Ailsa, the food stylist, helped achieve different looks for the lollies by having them on dry ice in the freezer creating a smooth frosted look, spraying with pipe plumbing spray to create chunkier flakes of ice on the surface of the lolly and would paint the lollies with meth’ spirits to even off the edges and create a glossy look. All the while lighting was adjusted as the varying textures absorbed or reflected the light on the lolly differently.
The most challenging colours to shoot were the yellow and white lollies as the light colouring made it difficult to capture the coutures of the lolly shape. Of course we prevailed and success was achieved. It took a full day to shoot six different lollies and the sticks.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and look forward to working with Steve again in the future. I was made to feel most welcome and was put to good use. Thank you Steve.
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