Doing food shots for a TV Commercial in daylight has been my first experience at the onset of 2010, I had been called for a mega shoot by one of my favorite directors of recent times; Latha Menon of Iris Films. The film is for a new brand of Dairy products to be shot in Sri Lanka. Obviously I was very excited by this proposition, having heard so much about Sri Lanka… I was told that the shoot was scheduled on top of a mountain range called Nuwareliya. And the most exciting part was that Latha had planned shooting the whole film, in daylight!!

Before I start my experience about shooting food for TV Commercials in day light I Would like to take you to the marvelous location selected by Latha. Nuwareliya is one of the most famous mountain range for its tea plantations. A variety of teas like Silver Tips, Orange Pekoe, and all the other varieties are specially grown and sold on Nuwareliya. The place, true to its claim is something close to paradise. It’s actually the vastness of the landscape that I was in awe of when I opened my eyes to see the first daylight from my car. The shoot was scheduled at one of the dairy farms on top of the hill. Cold, bright and with a lovely light from the sun it was an ideal location to shoot outdoors. As expected, the shoot was underway when I reached. Latha briefed me about what she expected from me for that day. Till then I was completely unaware of her plans to shoot live food images in the lush grasslands of Nuwareliya along with the rest of her film. But honestly, I never thought it would work. I mean, no-one had ever executed such a task before. What I didn’t realise then is that I was working with very evolved and open minded people and anything was possible.

 I am normally very used to doing all my food-related live action & pack shots in specifically controlled environments, where everything is controlled by the DOP (Director of Photography) and myself, preferably with an A.C. blowing cool wind across my forehead. Now here was Latha with her harebrained scheme suggesting us to come out of the box and cook in the sun, probably barbecuing ourselves in the process! To my utter surprise and indignation, even P.S. Vinod, the DOP, was game for this. That’s when I began realizing that this might work after all.

The shots were all defined and scheduled, and it felt exactly as if I was doing what I do best; with one small change – I was doing it outdoors. My first shot to begin got scheduled very abruptly as we had some extra time in between the models changing their costumes.. Under normal circumstances we would have wasted that little time with tea or snack breaks but rightly Latha realized that daylight cannot be extended even if we want to extend our shoot. Hence making the most of the little intervals we got in between set up changes and location changes, we started planning our food and pack shots..

By this time I had got totally consumed into the new challenge of composing each shot with as much ambient background as possible The DOP was on my side and hence together the two of us started planning the shot execution with only one thing in mind —- show off the lush greenery of the beautiful surroundings… Basically, close compositions with wide lens usually gives a good ambiance to play with. We worked up on this concept to shoot our images. We actually sat on the grass to start with my first shot!! The sun was also on my side, playing its magical light along with some filler lights on the packs and shots, and being chilly enough to prevent anything from melting … or barbecuing in that case! I saw so many of nature’s mystical effects on the food, such as the aforementioned sunlight tinkling on the packs, the mist swirling ominously in curls around the dairy whitener as it was poured through into cups, the sun rays beaming on the butter-glossed parathas in steamy pans and the glowing hues of dawn melting on the butter curls.

Here I would want to enumerate the fact that we are all so scared of shooting outdoors, but as I saw it was really not such a difficult task.. We could actually start shooting at anytime and literally anywhere as the DOP never needed to redo his lighting whenever he changed set ups from people to food. Just change the lenses maybe. The lights used as supplementary supports were minimally used. Of course the preparations have to be thorough from my side as well. There were no schedules that could be put in place.. One has to just flow along with nature. If the sun decides to go behind the clouds, you wait till it is bright again or maybe adjust the camera aperture values and move on.. Too unpredictable but some huge learning!!

On the whole it was an exhilarating experience. I learnt so many nuances of dealing with daylight. I am surely going to utilize this knowledge in my still photography. I am already planning a still shoot in actual daylight. All I need is an open minded client. Or I could just shoot my own pictures and display them to the client. He may not accept it, but that’s the risk I am ready to take. I am now eagerly waiting for the advertisement to release. Latha has already called on and congratulated me for the outstanding shots and I eagerly await the release.

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