I’ve noticed only recently that I seem to take a lot of photographs of food. No, not those sort of photographs. I see enough pictures of my friends’ meals while scrolling through Facebook and Instagram to know that people probably don’t care what I happen to be eating right now.
I’m talking about using food in photography, specifically in macro toy photography. The textures and colours of grains and powders take on magical new meanings when scaled up to the sort of magnifications we use when taking photos of toys.
The most recent shot I uploaded to Flickr was an experiment with poppy seeds to emulate a road texture. A technique that I’ve repeated in the header image for this post (which I think is a much better photo). It also features baking powder “snow”.
When I posted that photograph I asked if anyone could guess what the ground was made of, and it didn’t take long for someone to work out my secret. What was more interesting was the many guesses that appeared. Pepper, lentils, coffee, chia seeds, all sorts of foodstuffs that I’m going to have to try out to see what interesting textures turn up.
If you really want to see what you can do with food in photographs I highly recommend a look around Carl Warner’s ‘Foodscapes’ series. If you thought that using broccoli as a tree was being clever, this is a whole new level.
http://www.carlwarner.com/foodscapes/
-Mike
P.S. As side note for those interested in LEGO building geekery, that motorcycle is the first thing I’ve built where the minfig is actually part of the support structure. The bike would literally not exist if there were no minfig holding it together!
Amazing work, you’re so creative! Great link to those foodscapes, who knew the many ways one could play with their food?
Thanks Margaret!
Food stuff works really well for different materials in miniature shoots, I relly like how the poppy seeds look. I would like to add to the list: corn flour for sand. :D
Interesting, I normally use real aquarium sand, but that’s quite coarse in comparison.
I love this picture, combine it with the fact you came up with a bike that falls apart when you remove the trooper… I am jealous at the idea :)
Wow! Very clever to to use poppy seeds, and those Foodscapes are incredible! Thanks for sharing!