I'm sometimes able to combine my hobbies. I like to design and I like to take photographs. As part of a project I as a graphic designer, I needed to create several pictures of coffee beans that could be used on a coffee label. This post will be dedicated to how I achieved the results displayed in the post.
A picture of me photographing some coffee beans! Alright, this is on sand, but the best results were those photographed on the tiles ;)
What I like about food photography, is that you don’t really need expensive materials. While this is true for most types of photography, there are still some advantages that helped me out when taking these photographs. First of all, the beans were extremely small. Therefore, you don’t need a large background.
Materials used
- A camera (Nikon D600 with 50mm 1.8 lens)
- Light (can be natural light only)
- Coffee beans
- Burlap
- Tripod
I photographed most of these beans on the tiles in the kitchen of my boyfriend’s parents. They had this lovely color which contrasted beautifully with the brown color of the beans.
Process
Allright! On to the fun stuf, meaning I will actually tell you how I did it now ;). The first, but an important step was to seperate the perfect looking beans from those that were not photo-worthy. This is important to make it look as tasteful as possible.
Next, we could position them where the light was best. The light in the Kitchen was quite bright. There were these windows that are faced south and are as high as the walls. Therefore, I didn’t need a flash. The sky was very cloudy, which meant that the light was evenly spread among the coffee beans.
What I did not like was that the shades were still very dark. To solve this, I used a studio lamp with an umbrella. The light of this lamp was not very strong, so I had to hold it really close with one hand, to shoot the picture with the other. In order to make this a bit easier, I used a tripod. It prevented some camera shake as well.
Results
The results are some stock-worthy pictures ;). Some editing needed to be done before the final results could be used on the label. However, I won’t elaborate on this editing in this post. Stay tuned for a Lighroom tutorial!
Contrasty colors
Round shape coffee beans
More beans!
It never ends! Fair enough, it does, this was the last picture.
What do you think? I will soon post the results of the graphic labels when they are finished :)
This was fun thanks. I am also very interested in learning the art of photography.
Following you
Thank you! What I found out is that you have to keep making photographs and you will improve quickly :)
I will do many more of these posts. Thank you for following me! :)
Excelllent I look forward to them - please check my work too if you have a moment.
Cool pictures I'm just getting into photography :)
In the beginning, it is important to take many pictures, and you will see improvement quickly! I will keep sharing my experiences, which might help you to improve :)
Cool! waiting for lighroom tutorial)
Thanks! I will post it soon :)
Quite interesting. Nice camera and lens. Did you brew a cup of coffee with the beans when you finished photographing them?
Thank you :). To be honest, I don't like the taste of coffee! The beans smell amazing, but that is all I like about coffee haha. However, my boyfriend likes it, so he did brew coffee out of the beans afterwards ;)
I drink way too much coffee. takes another sip
Haha, I know, you either love it or you hate it. There is no in between ;)
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That is great, thank you!
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STOPBeautiful work! Loved it. I will look forward to the Lightroom tutorial.
Thank you! I have it planned for tomorrow! :)
Great! Thank you for sharing the information. :)
Nice even so simple things like coffee beans can look so great on pictures. Nice work
Thank you!
Wow. Amazing. It is a good way to introduce and integrate photographers in steemit. Photographers will have good reasons to stay. Giving us a stage to grow. Thank you!
Thank you for the nice compliment, I'll try to continue adding as much value as possible regarding photography. :)
Congratulations @alieke!
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That is great, thank you!
capturing coffee beans is very clever and you made some great photographs !