Thumbing through a recent UK photo mag I came across an interesting article about David Loftus, a Brit food photographer who has worked with Jamie Oliver (”The Naked Chef” - UK readers will know!) on his past five books. Unusually, David works only with natural light, his only lighting equipment being a couple of lightstands and a selection of Lastolite reflectors and diffusers. I very much like David’s clean style and use of differential focus (or narrow depth of field, if you prefer) and agree with his contention that much contemporary food photography has tended to be both over lit and over styled, although there does seem to be an overall trend away from this lately. I think, if I was working as a full time pro food photographer that I would maybe take a bit more of a “belt and braces” approach and at least carry some artificial light gear - if only a small shoe flash and softbox or soft umbrella - to cover unforeseen eventualities but perhaps that’s just my natural caution!

The point about over lighting in a lot of commercial work you see these days is still a good one and the temptation to use a few lights to “refine” the image just because you have them can sometimes be irresistible - sort of “over egging the pudding”. In fact, even when I use artificial light (which is, admittedly, most of the time) I usually only use one light + reflectors - see a previous post Hot Shoe Flash + Softbox = Portable Window Lighting - and always try to mimic the effect of natural light. I would say that the cut off point for me is when there has obviously more than one light source but that is a personal style and preference and in no way a general recommendation. However, if you are just learning about lighting there is no doubt that your lighting problems can increase exponentially when you first start to use two or more light sources and it’s equally true to say that you probably won’t go far wrong starting out with just natural light and a few reflectors. It’s difficult for your lighting to look jarringly unnatural if all you’re using is natural light! On the other hand that might be just the effect you want.

So for “beginners”, for want of a better term, I would recommend using either natural light or, at most, a single light source but, as with most things in life, I would hate to restrict myself to just the one approach or style. However, I will definitely be doing more natural light work myself if for no other reason than to see if the sheer variety of available lighting scenarios might in it itself lead to unexpected changes in the style and emphasis of my work. Or, to put it more succinctly, sometimes a change is as good as a rest!