Cupcakes Gallore

Earlier this month the studio was all about cupcakes from Gigi’s. The smell in the studio has been sa-weet!

After spending a couple of days processing the images, I’m quite pleased with the results. It’s so nice when a shoot goes well. Additionally, having great equipment, super nice client and reasonable schedule makes the food photography formula work, too.

I’ve been shooting with the PhaseOne P40+ digital back and it makes for such nice pixels. Almost 40 megapixels to be exact, almost. In case you don’t know, it’s a medium format camera setup. I’m using the PhaseOne back on a 555 ELD Hasselblad camera body. My lens of choice is usually a 120mm macro.

I thought it be fun to show you a couple details from one of the 31 cupcakes we shot.

This is the full image (scaled down for web resolution) of Gigi’s Chocolate Sundae Cupcake. Processed, color balanced and a little retouching.

This is just a cropped detail of the full image. Doesn’t this look yummy! It might look like ice cream but it’s frosting. Yummy frosting … so I hear.

This is a 1 to 1 detail to show exactly how clean the pixels are at capture.

Confession: While I didn’t eat any food ‘off’ the set (you know my rule), I did find the opportunity to taste a few of the cupcakes that didn’t make it to set. You gotta hate it when one falls over and wrecks it’s appearance and just has to be eaten. Such is the life of a food photographer.

- Kyle

The Making of a Cupcake Photoshoot

I spent two days with Darlene and Gina for Gigi’s Cupcakes. We shot 31 different flavors. What a great team to work with. The cool thing about this food shoot compared to others is that the product was very nice to start with. The folks at Gigi’s did a great job designing these cupcakes. They are beautiful.

When it comes to styling what is a great looking food product to begin with there are certain challenges to arise. The camera sees everything. I mean everything. That’s the advantage (and sometimes disadvantage) of shooting with a 40 megapixel PhaseOne digital back. Shooting at super high resolution provides fantastic image quality and huge files but it also shows any slight oddity that might present itself in the food. One example were some teeny tiny sugar crystal garnishes that hitched a ride on an unsuspecting cupcake during transport.

So, the food styling wasn’t anything too terribly crazy on this shoot, just different than keeping a burger patty looking fresh or making sure pasta didn’t dry out. There’s nothing better than having a beautiful subject, and I can tell you, these cupcakes were outstanding creations … and very cooperative as well.

After we completed the photography I had a little fun dissecting a number of the cupcakes and … well, uh … we had a cupcake ping pong party here at the studio. Thanks to John, Michael, Elvis, Cory and Burk for coming by to share in the left overs from the shoot. The only thing missing was a nice tall cold glass of milk.

-Kyle