Food Photography: Light Modifiers (part I)

In this article we're entering the huge realm of all the instruments used to modify the light for a shot. I'll try to keep the notions the more related to food photography possible, but as many of you could rightly guess, food is a subject just like others and those notions are indeed useful even if you want to take a portrait or get a decently illuminated shot of your dining room.

In another article I explained (also with visual examples) the differences between hard and soft light, so here I assume that those concepts are clear, if not go back to read it ;)
A further concept is that no matter how the light is produced the various ways to modify it are very similar, just the instruments could differ. I'm starting soon in the first part of the article with a practical example that it's very easy to understand and to put in practice: the scrim.

Westcott Scrim Jim: one of the best commercial scrim systems available 

(Image by Claud Jodoin)

Scrims

The scrim is a very light and translucent textile, usually made of cotton or nylon fabric, very similary to many curtains we all have in our houses and its purpose in fact is precisely the same as the one of those curtains: to make the light less harsh diffusing it.
There are countless industrial produced scrims, purpose-made for photography and filming, but you can also make your own scrim, the difference of course will be in the practicity of use (and how it behaves with wind outdoor) and on your DIY abilities.
Scrims are simple, effective and real savers when you have to mess with harsh lights that ruins your scene. For example you have those wonderful dish and you want to get a shot of it on a sun-bathed terrace. But it's almost noon and the light is too strong, the shadows are horribly dark and sharp and your beloved food looks like it's coming from a terror movie and not from a cooking magazine. Ok, just put a scrim between the sun and the food and you'll have most of your problems solved, the light will diffuse more gently, depending on the distance of the scrim from the subject. Yes because, as I explained in the other article the source of light will become the scrim and not the sun anymore, so the nearer the scrim to the subject, the softer the light will be, and the opposite. Of course scrims aren't used just to shot food, but also if you want take a nice shot of a person under direct harsh sunlight, and can also be used not just to soften the sunlight but any other light, from flashes to normal iridescent lamps: whichever light, just pay attention that it won't burn near to hot lights like bulbs.
But the scrim doesn't just diffuse light, it also reflect it back, depending on its woof and thickness, contributing to further softening it.

Lastolite Standard Translucent TriGrip: here used both as a 

scrim and a reflector.

You really have no excuse now for having your food shots lit like they seem coming from Frankenstein Jr with deep, cavernous shadows and horribly burned highlights. Just use a curtain from your dining room, put it in some way between the light and the subject and see the effect. Play with distances, play with positions, experiment and you'll understand so much more about how the light behaves than reading a thousand instructional books about photography.