Newsletter 2 — Karen Hilmersson Photography

How to vary your pictures in one photoshoot

If you follow me on instagram, I have posted several photos of a winter cake in December and promised to show you the settings of all the pictures and how to vary the photoshoot with the same cake, on the same day.

I made a simple vanilla layered cake and took my main inspiration from the cake made by @Twiggstudios and the gingergread houses from @lindalomelino but then I used a lot of objects and plants I had in my home to make different decorations and set ups. I used a Canon 5D mark IV for the entire shoot.

All the settings will be written under each photos and I’ll try to describe every time where the light comes from and/or if I use a background.

I have three lenses: I used mostly the 50mm 1.4 but also sometimes the 35 mm 1.4, the one I use the most in general and sometimes I also used my 85mm 1.4. That lens is probably the one I use the least in general but I love the creamy bokeh it creates in food photography.

For this one on the left, I used my 50mm as I wanted to have a bit of her face in the frame and the light comes from the left, it’s a very very wide window so I can use a very low aperture and have a blurry back ground while still having some details on the cake :)

Same setting but a bit less exposure in LR

For the two images above, I used a backdrop I purchased via Capture by Lucy @cblbackdrops and I put a cloth on the table to give it a darker frame. the light is coming from the left but the sunlight was a bit further away than the one I showed you first and the window is less wide too. The speed is much higher in order to capture sugar movement. Same with the one below where I raised the ISO in order to raise the speed for sugar dropping :)

It’s not drastically different between the two lenses (of course one of the main difference is that when I shot with the 85mm I didn’t realise that the house on the right was upside down! I just find it easier to have the focus on the cake with details and a very nice bokeh on everything behind it.

35mm is my usual go to lens. I love that I can have much more in the shot while having still this beautiful bokeh behind with the Christmas tree. The light was getting low here but I still tried different things: movement shot, close up with hands and backdrops:

In the one above taken with my 35mm, I should have widen the aperture, the cake is a bit blurry but I love the movement of the sugar so much, I thought I would show you anyway. These were taken on my dining table, with our normal background, the window is on the right and very wide but it was winter and the light was going down very quickly, hence the relatively high ISO.

To summarise: in one day with one cake I used different places in the house (not always possible with food photography depending on the type of food but here it worked to move it), different decoration stuff from my home, different movement shots (blowing candles, sugar dropping) with higher shutter speed and different lenses. I also used Lily for carrying the cake and had different backdrops too in order to have brighter and moodier pics too.

It’s still and always a bit of trial and error for me but that’s what makes it so varied in the end. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop me a mail, I would be happy to go further into details if needs be.

And then of course, a little gallery to show you some more :)