Food and three Flashes

Boston, MA 020811 This first image is a Squid ink Risotto dish from Erbaluce restaurant Boston's Bay Village area on February 8, 2011. The rest of the dishes are from Canary Park in Jamaica Plain. These are fried twinkies, criminy pickled mushrooms and a plate of charcuterie. (Essdras M Suarez/ Boston Globe)/ Food BEHIND THE SCENES: I have been assigned to photograph at least three restaurants per week in the last three weeks. This is mostly due to my schedule which is usually afternoon to early-evening shifts. At first a couple of years back when I started getting these many food assignments I used to resent these since I thought my talents were being misused. I have since learned to appreciate the extreme efforts chef put into their culinary creations. Thus, I've come to the conclusion that it would be a disservice not to do my best to make these dishes look their best. TECH STUFF: First of all I must say that I pride myself in the fact that I can shoot food under any situation. I don't need a lot of space to work and my gear consists of one camera body usually with a 100 macro 2.8 or a 60mm 2.8. The latter tends to offer a certain degree of optical aberration so I try not to use it unless the food that I'm photographing is many dishes at once. Until very recently I used to use only two off-camera strobes and a remote atop my camera. The strobes are usually positioned across from each other at table or food level on their own little stands at the 7:00 o'clock and 2:00 o'clock positions. Lately I've been experimenting with a third strobe and I position this at the 11:00 o'clock position. By adding an extra light the set up allows me to move around the dish and try different angles without really having to do anything but minor adjustments to the strobe positions. The strobes behind the food are usually about 1/3rd higher than the one on the front and they are all synched on TTL mode.