8 tips to photograph sparkles

Do you want to challenge yourself and give a wow factor to your food photo? Then photograph sparklers. Sparklers give a festive touch to your food photos. Here are some tips for shooting sparklers. A little note I couldn't shoot the sparklers without watching the video about shooting sparklers from The Bite Shot.

Requirements: camera, Adobe Photoshop, tripod.

Food photography sparklers

Canon 250D, 50 mm 1.8 lens, ISO 400, f / 5.6 en 1/40 sec.

In the photo above I photographed 'oliebollen' (a typical dutch sweet for new year) with sparklers. For this shot I watched the tutorial of The Bite Shot on Youtube. I took several photos of the sparklers and then merged several photos in Photoshop. For this photo I used Photoshop for the first time to combine the photos.

Tips for shooting sparklers:

1. Cut the sparklers at the top and bottom. Sparklers are quite long and when they burn they can still leave quite a bit of ash. If you leave the sparklers intact, the ash will not look good in your photo. If they are too long, they are no longer in proportion to the subject that you want to photograph. Ultimately, it's all about the food you want to photograph.

2. Shoot outdoors or indoors with all doors open. Sparklers are still a form of fireworks and it can be dangerous to photograph indoors. Sparklers also leave a huge stench. Take this into account.

3. Use a tripod. A tripod is indispensable when photographing sparklers, because you take multiple photos and eventually merge them in Photoshop, all photos must be the same. This is only possible with the use of a tripod. Sparklers are also a moving subject to photograph, so it is important that your camera is on a tripod. It is also advisable to use a remote control and the self timer.

4. Use the continuous shooting mode on your camera, so you can take multiple photos in a row. Sparklers run out quickly and therefore you have to be able to take several photos quickly.

5. Adjust the exposure for a flame. Keep a flame where you want the sparklers to go to set the camera correctly. Flames of a sparkler provides extra lighting in your photo. This way, your camera is properly set up for this.

6. Experiment with the shutter speed. A slow shutter speed produces larger and longer sparks (shutter speed 1/25). A fast shutter speed ensures that there is more focus on the food (1/60 to 1/125). See what you like best by setting a different shutter speed each time.

7. Try to get your subject and stars in focus by choosing a slightly wider aperture.

8. Take a photo at the beginning without the sparklers, so you can use this photo as a starting point for Photoshop.

Time to shoot!

Combine the photos in Adobe Photoshop

Swipe to the right to see what I did in Adobe Photoshop.

After you have finished taking the photos, it is time to edit the photos. Choose the photos with the most beautiful sparklers on it. Open the most beautiful photos in Adobe Photoshop. It is necessary to have Adobe photoshop to combine the photo's. I have got the photography plan from Adobe. In the photography plan I have Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.

Now it is time to combine the photos into one photo. In the photo collage above you can see that I added every time a part of a photo to the base photo. I had never used Photoshop before, but TechMindBlow's Youtube tutorial made it happen. It is easier to visually see how to create the different masks in Photoshop so that you can combine multiple photos. That's why I've included the video below that I used for combining multiple photos in Photoshop

Hope you succeeded. Good luck photographing the sparklers! Don't forget to tag me in your photos #fleurfoodie.

Sources:

Joanie Simon (2020, TheBiteShot, How to Photograph Sparkles

TechMindBlow (2016), How to combine multiple Photos in Photoshop.