Summer time is barbecue time! Photographing your summer foods, your BBQ favorites, can provide you with some wonderful photos to scrapbook with.
Take some photos of your cooking area, your barbecue. Step back and capture the location of your BBQ, the scenery around you, but also get in nice and close, take some photos of the yummy food that is cooking.
If the sun is bright in the background, try photographing the BBQ from the side, avoiding some of the bright sun haze and/or shadows. Taking a photo from higher up, looking down onto the BBQ can often eliminate or minimize the effects of the sun on your shot. Change the perspective your framing, watch how the light is positioned in relation to you and what you’re taking a photo of. I tend to under-exposure a bit if using my DSLR as I know I can bright up the shadows in editing but this will help to keep some details in the brighter, highlight areas of my photo. If using a camera phone, I will try to position myself so that the sun is to my back or off to the side, as I know I won’t have as much leeway when editing, and want to minimize the highlight blow-out, if possible.
Here are some ideas on what photos to take at your BBQ:
- The food as it is being prepped.
- The food as it is being cooked on the grill.
- Pull-back shots of the surroundings and people.
- Pets (who love to linger close to the action, like Taz does, hoping for something to drop or come close enough to grab).
- The decor and table settings.
- The food as it’s being served.
- Capture people eating but lower the camera to food level so as to not capture unattractive food eating expressions (unless you specifically want some fun shots that will make their eyes roll when they see the photo later LOL).
- Dessert, beverages, etc.
- Clean-up time.
I took photos of my prep work for a BBQ we attended this weekend; we were bringing a coleslaw/bacon salad with us. I was away at our trailer and used our outdoor stove, rather than the BBQ, which is out on our back deck. I snapped some photos as the bacon cooked on the outdoor grill pan and took a shot of the salad I prepared, that the bacon went into. The journaling for my scrapbook page will include the story of how the salad was prepared out at the trailer and then brought with us back to Canada for the party. It was a fun memory of a wonderful day.
Here is a photo of the cupcakes served for dessert. I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of conversation and make anyone feel self-consciousness about eating, so I lowered myself and the camera down to the table level and told them “don’t worry, there won’t be any faces in the shot” and was able to take a photo of the dessert without bothering anyone. It was not the best composed photo I could have taken but it was a shot that was acquired without disrupting the party and only took a few seconds to get.
So the next time you BBQ, take a few photos, journal about the meal, the weather, your favorites, or your not so favorite foods. Take photos to help tell your story, journal about some of the details of the BBQ and preserve the memory in a scrapbook page, as I will be doing with these photos.
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