The Tiger Lounge in Rawtenstall

January 10th, 2024

The Tiger Lounge in Rawtenstall

the tiger lounge in rawtenstall

I had a phone call from The Tiger Lounge in Rawtenstall one morning, asking if I would be happy to travel to Accrington, which is a couple of hours away from home. To be honest, a couple of hours is pretty much next door compared to some of my clients. So the following week, I trundle down the M6, and walk into a bit of a building site. Well, to be fair, The Tiger Lounge was at the end of quite an extensive refurbishment, and it was the final stages before the reopening.

I took a deep breath as I walked in, as everything was upside down, and Luke the manager smiled warmly as he shook my hand. “It’s okay, we’re upstairs” he said, as he grabbed some of my kit and bounced up the stairs.

So, having sweated a bit at my initial assessment of the venue, I found the upstairs to be a haven of peace and quiet, and a really nice atmosphere.

The room and decor had a dark grey and veined gold theme, which included the table tops. This would actually help as it would reduce any light being bounced back from the surrounding room. It also meant I would have absolute control over the lighting of the food etc.

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There’s a number of things to consider with food photography, although it’s applicable to pretty much everything we photograph. I’m talking about texture, shape and form, although the specular highlights tend to play a significant role with food photography, as it’s the highlights that tend to make the food appetising or appealing.

With regards to the above image, I wanted the highlights to accentuate the texture of the crispy chilli chicken, as well as the sauce present on the batter. For this, I placed an Elinchrom ELB500 on the far side of the table as an accent light, centre frame. It was approximately 30cm (or about 12 inches if you’re old enough) above the table height and firing across the dishes, directly towards the camera. The ELB500 was firing through an 18cm standard reflector with a 30° grid fitted, at an output of 0.1 (Equivalent to 7Ws). The grid ensured the light was tightly controlled, allowing me to avoid glare from the table top. I had to point the light at the camera rather than the dish, so as the light skimmed the food, without lighting the table. My initial test shot had a horrendous white-out and glare from the table.

My key light was another ELB500 firing through an 80x80cm folding softbox, placed directly over the table, or about as close as I can possibly get it. The lightstand itself was to my immediate left. The ELB500 was set to fire at an output of 1.0 (Equivalent to 12Ws)

E-M1 mkII 1/80th sec ISO200 12-40mm f2.8 @ f6.3

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This is simply the same dish rotated 180° and photographed close. Same lighting and camera settings.

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Whilst the lighting looks pretty much the same, there’s been a couple of small tweaks that have made all the difference to this image. The accent light was move towards the right side of the frame, giving more contrast across the filling in the bun. I also made use of a silver card to reflect light back into the bun, which you can see frame left.

The light settings remained the same, and the camera settings were pretty much the same, except I increased the aperture by a third of a stop to f7.1

E-M1 mkII 1/80th sec ISO200 12-40mm f2.8 @ f7.1

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I’ve touched on the current demand of overhead images before, but not really talked about the challenges of such images. As I mentioned above, it’s the specular highlights that tend to make a food image appealing, or makes the viewer hungry. With an overhead image, it’s a little more difficult to generate those specular highlights we desire. Thinking of the angle of incidence, and bearing in mind we want the camera overhead. To get the specular highlights means having the light hit the dish and bounce towards the camera, which means the light has to be immediately above the camera as it looks down.

The downside is that a glossy plate or a sauce is likely to show the camera, and whatever is supporting it (Be it a boom arm or photographer) to will be quite clearly seen. We need to get a little creative here, and rotating a dish can often find a position where the reflection is either hidden or reduced to a point it isn’t as obvious.

In the above image, simply rotating the dish allowed me to hide my reflection in the darkest area of the fish skin, and also the greenery on top, along with the flower.

Secondly, you tend to find you have to increase the output a little on the overhead keylight to gain enough specular highlights to make the dish look interesting. I increased the output from the ELB500 overhead from 1.0 to 2.0 (Equivalent to 25Ws).

The accent light remained the same, and you can see how it picks up and adds specular highlights along the edge of the fish at the top of the frame.

E-M1 mkII 1/80th sec ISO200 12-40mm f2.8 @ f7.1

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Same again regarding light positions, power output and also the camera settings.

So how can we perhaps tweak it a little to make it just a little more interesting.

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I wanted to photograph all the Asian themed dishes together, and originally moved the accent light further back to allow sufficient spread from the top of the frame. However, I then realised by moving it closer, it would provide a central path of light, and adding a little more interest and depth to the image.

The accent light output remained the same, but due to the increased height of the key light, I had to increase the output to 3.0 (Equivalent to 50Ws).
The camera settings needed the aperture increased to f8.0, with the shutter speed and ISO remaining unchanged.

E-M1 mkII 1/80th sec ISO200 12-40mm f2.8 @ f8

I particularly liked this final image, and it’s basically down to the path of light from the top of the frame.

The Tiger Lounge in Rawtenstall can be found at https://www.thetigerlounge.co.uk/rawtenstall/

My food photography portfolio can be found here.