Flying Tea Food Shoot

Elevate your food photography with this deliciously creative class.

In this food photography class, you’ll learn how to create an eye-catching flying tea image. All it takes is a dash of knowledge, a pinch of ingenuity, and a healthy serving of creativity – plus two experienced professional instructors in the form of Karl Taylor and Anna Pustynnikova!

As Karl and Anna guide you through each stage of the planning, preparation and lighting, you’ll learn how to create your own version of this explosive and exciting photograph. You’ll learn about problem solving and creative thinking, how to control lighting and why fast flash duration is crucial when photographing flying objects.

In this class:

  • How to photograph flying food shots
  • How to use pre-visualisation as part of your planning
  • Lighting setups for food photography
  • How to suspend items for photography
  • How to freeze motion using flash

To watch the retouching and editing process that followed the shoot, check out  Flying Tea Post-Production.

Questions? Please post them in the comments section below.

Food photography setup and preparation

Photography often requires creativity and problem solving to realise your creative ideas.

Anna and Karl wanted to create an image of a cup with rose bud tea and sugar cubes exploding out of it and a floating milk jug above, pouring milk. Guided by Karl’s pre-visualisation, the pair were able to identify a number of challenges that they’d have to overcome to get the final result. These included:

  • Create a realistic explosion of rose bud tea
  • Include sugar cubes to add depth to explosion
  • Create floating milk jug with pouring milk
  • A lighting setup suitable for the cup, milk jug and exploding objects
Flying food shoot

Freezing the fast moving rosebud tea was just one of the challenges Karl and Anna had to overcome.

Together, through a combination of DIY, acrylic rods and fast flash duration, they overcame each of these problems. The setup, although it looks complicated, required only four lights with simple modifiers.

In the end, this shoot proved that it is possible to bring any creative idea to life — all you need is careful planning and the right knowledge.

Flying tea photograph

The final flying tea image.

Comments

  1. Hi Karl, amazing video class! I have a question though – what would be the difference if we just throw the roses top-down for the shot (avoiding making the hole in the cup and dealing with the air pressure which I don’t have)? Would that work as well? Or are there any differences to the final image if we do it that way (just throwing from the top) and that is why you decided to go with this approach? Thank you very much!

    1. Hi and thank you, I think it would just take longer that’s all. Essentially you could just take lots and lots of shots until you had the roses in enough of the correct places that you could comp them together. You might also want to twist/roll them a little as you throw them to get some more interesting motion blur if necessary. All the best Karl.

  2. Hey Karl, really enjoyed this tutorial.
    Can I ask, what is the name of the acrylic object you use to mount the jug, is it an acrylic riser? I’m struggling to find something with a similar shape and it would be perfect for a shoot I have coming up!
    Thanks,
    Kate

    1. Hi Kate, this is covered in other classes (I think the one with the Chanel hydrator floating in the air getting splashed with water) but we make them with glue and two acrylic rods, it shows how in the other video. You’ll see us use similar ones in many videos.

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