Photography by Ian L. Sitren

Posts tagged “Professional Photography

National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day: The One Cookie Theory

A stack of classic chocolate chip cookies photographed under studio lighting against a black background. The cookies have a golden brown finish with visible chocolate chips, making the image ideal for commercial use in snack packaging, bakery branding, or editorial content about desserts and comfort food.

There are foods that inspire endless debate. Burgers. Pizza. Barbecue. Then there are chocolate chip cookies. Nobody argues about whether they belong in the dessert hall of fame. The only real debate starts after the first one.

It always begins with the best of intentions. “I’ll just have one.”

One becomes two because the second one is obviously for comparison. Three is simply to confirm your findings. Somewhere around four or five, you’ve stopped conducting research and have entered a completely different phase of the experiment.

For photography, chocolate chip cookies are deceptively simple. Every crack, every chocolate chip, every highlight and shadow has to look just right. A cookie that tastes great isn’t always the one that photographs the best, and the one that photographs perfectly may not survive long enough to make it back to the kitchen.

Fortunately, these did.

Happy National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.

You can see more of my photography, projects, motion, and my Blog on my website at https://www.secondfocus.com

Thank You!


National Lipstick Day And You Thought It Was Just Red Lipstick

Aristodeme holding a color checker during our photo shoot.

For National Lipstick Day, I thought I would look at lipstick from a photographer’s point of view.

We take lipstick color for granted. We see red lipstick and think, well, it is red. But at the professional level of photography, especially when photographing cosmetics and other products where color is part of what is being sold, “red” is nowhere near precise enough.

The color in the photograph has to accurately match the actual color created by the manufacturer. That means color accuracy becomes serious business.

It starts with lighting. The color temperature of the light needs to be known, consistent and reliable. Then there is white balance and comparison against a known color reference, like the color chart you see in my photograph. The monitor used for evaluating and retouching the image must also be properly calibrated so that what I am seeing is actually what the image contains.

And then there is the photographic equipment itself. The camera, sensor and lenses all contribute to how accurately and precisely color is recorded. At the professional level, image quality is not simply about sharpness. The quality and accuracy of the color palette matters too.

All of those pieces have to work together from the moment the photograph is shot through the final processed image.

And you thought it was just red lipstick.

You can see more of my photography, projects, motion, and my Blog on my website at https://www.secondfocus.com

Thank You!