Photography for an e-cookbook...any advice?

[Tara Woods Turner]

My sister and I are writing a cookbook and I have no idea how to go about the photography aspect of it. Will the pictures come across well on a reader? Can I just use my trusty ipad for the shots? My pics come out beautifully but what if it doesn't translate well to an ebook? As always, any advice is greatly appreciated.

[T.L.]

If you're going to put it into harback, you'll need decent resolution photos (more mega pixels; mega pixies in my head). I'd recommend a good DSLR camera for the job. If you have a photography friend ask them; there's all sorts of lighting and ways of shooting food you need to create a decent picture.

Or ask your local college? There may be a budding photography student who wants the pics for their coursework, and would be cheaper than employing an experienced pro?

xx

[Y.A.]

For food or any object, you need to have great lighting. Light is more important than the camera. If you are on a budget go buy about 4 to 6 clip on lights from Lowes/Home Depot and some cooking paper. Cover the lights with cooking paper using wooden clothes pins. Then with a stand or whatever you can muster place the lights all around your kitchen table or wherever you're setting your dishes. A half circle or 60% circle should work.

what you want is a nice glow of light with very few shadows, except behind the food, one light back there to give it pop should do it.

That should get you really close. Other tips are that many times food that "you think" is food is not. Like photographs of ice cream are generally things like shortening/lard. Peopel also undercook a lot of the food so that it won't have a "burned" look. People also airbrush or do photographic touch-ups with Photoshop.

A lot can go into it.

BTW I'm a pro photographer. :-)

[Tara Woods Turner]

Y.A. wrote: "For food or any object, you need to have great lighting. Light is more important than the camera. If you are on a budget go buy about 4 to 6 clip on lights from Lowes/Home Depot and some cooking pa..."
Fascinating! I guess I'm off to look up cooking paoer..,

[R.]

Seconded the comment about lighting. Also try to avoid mixing types of lighting, use all LED, all tungsten or all fluorescent, otherwise the colour can look blotchy.

Also, even with nice bright lighting, use a tripod to avoid camera shake.

[Missy]

Tara, I have some experience when it comes to adding images to an ebook. I have learned the best way to do it is to have high resolution images and in photoshop use the "save for web and devices" selection. This strips the image of all extra information but keeps the integrity of the image so that you're not filling your book file with lots of unnecessary data. You should also save your image to 5" wide or less so they fit on the kindle screen properly. There are a lot of small things to do in Word to make sure Word doesn't mess with your image file by lowering the size or resolution.

When you get close to that point, if you need help, I'd be happy to do what I can to help out. You can also check out the book Pictures on Kindle by Aaron Shepard which was a huge help to me while setting up my books, though I'm not sure whether there is an updated version for the newest version of Word.

Also, just as a heads-up, in an ebook, it's much easier to give an image its own page (page break before and after the image) than it is to have the image surrounded by text. It will look okay on some devices, while in others it will be skewed and odd-looking. That's something to keep in mind while you're planning out your book.