You might have already seen Andrew Scrivani’s photographs in The New York Times Food section or in any number of magazines. And you’ve probably stopped to look closely, because even though they seem relatively unadorned, they’re bathed in beautiful light, sometimes in a dark, moody photo and other times in a bright white one. And like all good photographers, he uses light to tell a story.
Scrivani’s new “That Photo Makes Me Hungry: Photographing Food for Fun & Profit” (The Countryman Press, $24.95) is for every blogger who wants to get better, every baker who wonders why the photo doesn’t look as good as the confection, every amateur longing to improve, and many professionals who know cameras and lighting but not food.
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This photographer likes something happening in his pictures, like a ripe center of cheese oozing out or chopsticks picking up noodles. A photo of a T-bone steak shows the very rare beef cut off the bone, the edge of the knife that cut it, and the bone bare of meat. Red juices have spilled onto the cutting board and it looks like it’s really delicious. “When people tell me that my pictures make them hungry,” he writes, “I feel like I did my job.”
In a series of six photos showing a stack of brownies, Scrivani does an exercise in which one photo has a silver reflector but no white card to bounce some light on the dark squares, then another has silver and white, another silver and black, and so on. It’s the sort of thing amateur photographers do all the time and it’s gratifying to see that we’re not crazy.
He’s also got food styling tips (“When you have to choose between delicious and delicious-looking, you must default to the latter”); a peek into his own studio (“I have a few hundred different table surfaces”); and advice for making a living from your photos (“Never, ever give it away”).
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Scrivani is a huge talent in the field and he’s very generous with sensible advice on all aspects of his trade. The book will either make you want to go out and photograph everything you possibly can, or get under the covers because you can’t ever be this good. Hopefully the former.
Sheryl Julian can be reached at sheryl.julian@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @sheryljulian.