Magazine Front Cover Assignment – Food Photography

Alex: As the terms slowly go by, the assignments and briefs get harder and harder, and while I love a good challenge, this assignment was right up my alley and got me very excited!!

For those that don’t know, I’m currently in my second year, studying a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communications majoring in photography at Raffles College of Design and Commerce.

The assessment brief for the first assignment of this term was to create 1 finished image as either;

– a front cover of an exotic/creative food magazine, titled “Nosh“.

– an enticing and descriptive imagery of fresh produce and ingredients that promote local growers and quality Australian produce as a double page editorial with article.

I decided to go for the front cover! So here is how I went about researching, and going about the shoot for those that are interested!

For my front cover food shoot for ‘Nosh Magazine’ I decided to go with the idea of getting a cake from Black Star Pastry in Newtown.

Originally I was going to get a bunch of little cakes and shoot them for the front cover, but after sussing it out, I figured it would have looked very messy and complicated especially considering most of the cakes are very different in colour and shape. So the cake I decided to use was the Orange and Persian Fig Cake ($32). The reason for choosing this cake was because it is creative and exotic, therefore it met the brief, it was pretty to look at, I knew for a fact that it tasted good and the main reason was that it travelled well. It didn’t need to be refrigerated so I had no problems getting it to the shoot and didn’t really have to worry about discoloration or it melting/collapsing.

For me, my choices of props were vital to making the image perfect. Because the cake was already so unique, I didn’t want it to be overshadowed by the props so I kept it as simple as possible.

The above image ended up being one of my final setups for my food assignment.

I brought all my props from home and used one of the table clothes from uni as a last resort and it turned out perfectly. Stak (my lecturer) gave me some great pointers to add some interesting effects with light. As you can see in the image there is a clear glass object at the back of the table which was used as a reflector of light to add some intrigue to the shot.

While I did have some issues while shooting, I managed to sort them out and get through it and eventually achieved some really great shots that I am so so proud of! The idea in my head worked out better than expected.

Here are some of the shots that I really liked;

 

But! The one that I decided to use for my front cover mock up was the one below!

Let me know what you guys think!

-Alex Squadrito

-V.B.A