Meat Photography

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Had an unusual job a couple of weeks back, I was asked to photograph various meat cuts from a side of lamb. I have done a lot of product photography including food that has been cooked but not uncooked meat. First of all everything was kept cool with an esky and frozen cool packs, this kept the meat looking nice and fresh. I then had to make sure that the surface of the meat was clean as a lot of the cuts were cut with a meat saw and there were fragments of bone all over the surface of the various cuts. The best solution was a tooth brush, I just brushed the surface and the bone fragments were gone. The other problem was blood on the surface of various cuts, this was soaked up with paper towel. Once the cuts were cleaned up the problem was how to light them. I found out that meat is somewhat translucent so out with my opal acrylic so I could light the meat from below, I metered the light and after adding a couple of sheets of white poly to further diffuse the light I had a nice white background with a little light making it through the thinner cuts. I then added a couple of soft boxes and all was good. All in all I was very happy with the results and so was my client.

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4 thoughts on “Meat Photography

  • December 14, 2009 at 12:17 pm
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    Those photos looks a very healthy kind of meat. I guess there’s some kind of a “light” trick for meat photography, which is very interesting.

  • December 14, 2009 at 12:35 pm
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    Meat is somewhat translucent so the thinner cuts were also illuminated from the bottom through an opal (translucent white) piece of acrylic. The meat was very fresh so had great colour. I was also very careful to get the white balance correct with the use of a grey card.

  • May 30, 2010 at 12:55 pm
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    Thanks for posting, great site you have here.

  • June 7, 2010 at 9:14 pm
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    Great site, keep up the good work, very interesting indeed 🙂

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