Bringing Food to Light

Escape cabin-fever with photography on a light-pad.

I am a big fan of Harold Davis, who has pioneered some fascinating techniques in close-up photography. One of the methods he uses is to photograph items, often flowers, on a light pad. He describes his process in his latest book, Creative Garden Photography, and on YouTube broadcasts. I wanted to make a series of close-up food items from my kitchen — fruits and vegetables, seeds, tea leaves, and other items whose shape and color can create compelling images. I thought Davis’s light pad technique would be a unique way to approach it. My goal was to record the iconic shapes of these fruits and vegetables in interesting ways.

This project is quickly undertaken at little expense and is a perfect Covid at-home activity. Below are my tips and techniques to get you started.

To start, I slice my translucent subjects very thin, then pose them on a light pad, so they are backlit against a white background. Opaque subjects will need to be given a little front lighting, so their colors and textures are visible.

To make the photographs shown here, I placed my subjects on a 17 x 24” light pad. The pad is large enough so that I can create more extensive arrangements of other subjects in various configurations in addition to solitary fruit and vegetable slices. The light pad I bought can vary the intensity of its luminosity. For translucent subjects, the light from the light pad is sufficient illumination. Their shapes are revealed by the light shining through the thin slices. Opaque subjects, on the other hand, require some front lighting so that in addition to the light shining through their translucent parts, their frontal colors and textures are also illuminated.

To make this image, I made a thin slice from the center of the apple, about 1/8 inch thick, and placed it on a light pad. Multiple exposures were made and blended in a layer stack in Photoshop.

In crafting these photos, my goal was to create strong images that reveal the iconic structures and graphic qualities of my subjects. When they are arranged in groupings, I try to build visually interesting patterns. These might be organized chaos or arrangements that use the photographic concepts of line, color, form, and texture. In either case, I want to build images with strong graphic qualities that reveal the essential characteristics of the subjects.

Yunnan Golden Needle tea leaves. These were photographed on a light pad with some frontal lighting to show the texture of the tea leaves.

It’s important to understand the photographic intent in creating the photos. While each photo is unique, the objective is to reveal the inner qualities of the subjects. In the case of the stringy Yunnan Golden Needle tea leaves, my goal was to use the apparent randomness of shapes and display that quality. I do not think this image would have worked if I had arranged tea leaves in a more orderly pattern.

Lima beans with single kidney bean. Like the tea leaves, these were photographed with some front lighting so the surface of the beans would be illuminated.

The photo of the beans presented a different opportunity. The subject was amenable to an arrangement that emphasizes line and form. At one level, the photo is about the structured organization of the smooth skinned lima beans. But the predominant theme is clearly the color contrast between the light limas and the solitary red kidney bean. Compositionally, the arrangement is orderly, with the red bean at about the rule of thirds point where its impact is maximized.

This image of mixed legumes is all about color. Like the first two photos, frontal lighting supplemented the light pad so the surface of the opaque legumes would be visible.

The photo of the mixed legumes emphasizes yet another compositional principle, the use of color to achieve impact. Here again I’ve employed a rather carefully organized chaos to suggest randomness.

This pear slice was photographed by making multiple exposures, then blending certain of the images as layers in a stack in Photoshop. The result was an image far superior to any of the individual shots in the HDR sequence.

The fruit and vegetable slices present still different compositional opportunities. Here, the compositions are the iconic profiles and colors of the subjects themselves, which makes them quite recognizable and yet unusual graphically. Unlike the tea leaves, beans, and legumes photos, where some front lighting supplemented the light pad, the fruit and vegetable slices were entirely backlit.

Like the photo of the pear, this red bell pepper slice was photographed without extra supplemental lighting; multiple images in the HDR sequence were blended as part of a layer stack in Photoshop.

To reiterate a key point, the pictures in these compositions were intentionally organized in the patterns they display. They are by no means random scatterings that reflect only happenstance. Instead, in building each composition I carefully placed the elements in arrangements that seemed to me to be effective.

A technical note is in order. I made these photos with a Nikon Z7 mirrorless camera, which has a resolution of 45.7 megapixels and gives me a high degree of resolution. I set the ISO at 64. The camera is mounted on a Smith-Victor Pro Duty 36-inch copy stand that allows me to shoot straight down on my subjects.

My lens for these photos is a Zeiss Milvus f/2 50 mm Makro Planar lens, which is a manual focus lens. I achieve sharp focus by zooming in on the LCD screen so I can see the details up close. I set the f-stop at the higher end of the range, typically f/18, so that I get as much depth of field as possible.

The exposures for these photos vary. I shot multiple exposure sequences to enable HDR processing. However, for this series the tea leaves, beans, and legumes photos are simply the edited version of a single capture. For the fruit and vegetable slices, on the other hand, I used layers and masks in Photoshop to combine several captures to enhance the final images.

Using a light pad is a great tool for introducing creativity into photographic explorations. It doesn’t require expensive equipment. The light pad I bought is made by A2 and sells on Amazon for $69.99, but other models are available in different sizes and with different features. The copy stand I use is a convenient tool, but it’s by no means a requirement. Good photos can be made by positioning a tripod above a light pad resting on the floor. Light pad photography is something that can be safely done at home. As such, it can be not only a new avenue for creativity but also an escape from the cabin fever we are all presently experiencing