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How to Perfectly Capture Steam in Food Photography

Mar 24, 2015 by Laya Gerlock 15 Comments

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feature image steam

I normally hangout at a local coffee shop editing photos because it’s easier for me to concentrate (plus free electricity and air condition… not always easy to find those in the Philippines). On my last visit I saw a person holding a cup of steaming hot coffee and thought of this article. This will be a 2 part article on getting good steam shots for coffee shots or food photography.

We will be using ‘real hot water’ rather than photoshopping the smoke…

What you will need:

  • A camera
  • Wireless triggers
  • Speedlights
  • CTO Gel
  • Props (coffee beans, burlap, wood planks)
  • Coffee
  • Boiling water

Setup shot 1

How to:

1. Start of with the props and background for your shot. I started mine by placing the back side of my DIY wood planks as my base.

setup p1
To add more textures I added burlap on the right side of the cup.

setup p2

I always have a can of coffee beans in stock (which I used in my very first article on DIYP) so I added them around the cup and the burlap.

setup p3

2. Now to set up the lighting. Start with your main light. I used an sb-600 with lumiquest softbox on the left side of the subject.

I wanted to get a shallow depth of field, so set my camera at f2-f4. I was using both the Nikon D3 with 85mm 1.8 and a Fuji Xe-2 with 18-55 f2.8-4 for the shoot.

setup 1 light

Setup Shot

setup without bg

3. Next add your background light. I placed a bare YN-460 speedlight pointing at the background, and to add more ambiance feeling I placed a 1/4 CTO gel on the speedlight.

setup 2 lights

Setup Shot

4. To fill in the shadows on the right side, I quick DIYed a board with silver paper as an impromptu reflector.

setup with reflector

Setup Shot

setup with reflector 2

Without and with reflector

5. As far as steam goes, this is the MOST important light of them all, the back-light. This is the flash that will light the steam. I used a bare strobe and DIYed  a snoot from a piece of paper, then placed it on the back right of the subject pointing at the top of the cup.

quick DIY snoot

quick DIY snoot

setup backlight smoke

Highlight to light the steam coming from the back

Final Setup

Final Setup

6. For the steam use BOILING HOT water or coffee. I placed some powdered coffee in the glass and used boiling hot water to get the steam. I did this a couple of times and reheated the kettle to get it boiling again.

setup pour

Results

I did some quick levels adjustment in Lightroom.

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 1.40.28 PM

final 2

final 1

Final image:

Add a logo and you’re done.

Final 3

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Related posts:

How To Add Steam To Food Photography (Using Photoshop) Who needs a keyboard and mouse when you can edit your videos with a Steam controller? Professional food photographer debunks myths of nasty food styling hacks Here’s what food photographers need to have in their food styling kit

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: beverages, burlap, coffee, coffee beans, diy wood planks, food photography, lighting, lighting tutorial, Photography, starbucks, steam

About Laya Gerlock

Laya Gerlock is a Portrait and Product photographer based in the Philippines. His passion is teaching and sharing his knowledge in Photograpy and has been doing this for 6 years. You can follow his work on his web page, follow him on Flickr and if you happen to come by Cubao, Quezon City (To Manila, Philippines) he gives a great workshop!

« Paul C. Buff, the Man Behind White Lightning, AlienBees and Einstein Flashes, Dies at Age 78.
Heidi Levine is the Inaugural Winner of the Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award »

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