I do not know about everyone else but I do not typically buy food from the gas station. Especially the hot dogs that have been on the hot rollers for who knows how long. However, for the purpose of this project I thought it was a great opportunity for you all to see how good photography can make even a gas station hot dog look good.
The Packaging/Before
When I bought the hot dogs at the gas station by my house I didn’t take the bun out of the packaging in hopes that it would stay in better shape during transport. If you get to where you are doing the shoot and the bun has become a crumbled up mess then the photos are not going to turn out very well.
Another tip when buy the food from the gas station or even when bringing it from home is bring more then you think you need just in case you mess up you will have another to fall back on.
In this packaging shoot I left the plastic rap on the hot dog buns for the purpose of showing you to leave it on as long as you can because that it what is protecting your bun from becoming a crumbled up mess.
Lighting
The lighting in this one like the other ones is sweeping over the food from the left on the image. I do this because if I were to have overhead lighting this would make the food look flat. We do not want that because we want the food to have depth and texture.
However you also want to avoid having harsh shadows which can sometimes happen when you are lighting an object from the side. To help fill in those harsh shadows I used a piece of white foam core, or poster board, on the opposite side of the light in order to reflect a little bit of that light back into the hot dogs and reduce the shadows harshness.
The Final Image
For the final image I just used one of the hot dogs and I strategically put condiments on the hot dog in the bun. I got all the condiments for free at the gas station when I got the hot dogs so the cost of this shoot was pretty low. Some other props that I used were a red and white checkered cloth, chips, condiment packets, a glass of water, and a small white plate. I used a small plate so that the hot dog would look bigger and it would help bring attention to it since it is suppose to be the main focus of the image. The other props in the image help to fin in the negative space in the image without drawing too much attention away from the hot dog itself.