On Sunday, March 6th, 2022, I had the wonderful opportunity to photograph items on Matty G’s menu at the Matty G’s location in Flagstaff AZ. The items that were shot were the All-Star, San Diego Chicken, French fries, Onion rings, and Fountain drinks. The image featured in this article shows the All-Star burger, French fries, and a fountain drink.
To achieve this image, I used
● 50mm leans with a Canon t6i body
● Godox TT600 Speedlight with a softbox diffuse
● natural light.
The settings for this image are
● ISO 100
● F-stop 3.2
● Shutter Speed of 1/100
For the props of this image, I used
● Fresh tomatoes
● Newspaper
● White linen napkins
● The basket that the burger comes in
● The fries that came with it
● A fountain drinks
● The background of the restaurant
I found myself leaning towards these items and props since the atmosphere and aesthetic matched perfectly. The restaurant is based on memories of sports games. Since the burger basket is what they use to serve the food, I kept it to be true to the restaurant. The French fries added to the sports feel of the image, as they can normally be gotten at any professional sports game. The tomatoes added color and the drink and napkins added dimension to the photo. For the styling techniques, I left it mostly to the cook to style the food. The only thing I did was put a stand under the burger to make it stand out of the basket and add some toothpicks to give a little dimension to the burger.
For the lighting of this image, a side backlight Speedlight was used with the addition of multiple windows giving the image plenty of natural light. For the editing of the image, I just added some contrast to the image, played with the highlights and shadows till I was happy, and added some saturation. When thinking about what I could do to make this image better if I was to go back and reshot, I would add some bounce light into the dark side of the burger and try to get more of the restaurant. I also think I would move the drink to a different location in the photos as it is a little distracting. Now you may be wondering why I selected this image and this image alone to speak about and the answer is a little complex. Matty G’s has an extensive menu but what they have the most of is burgers. I wanted to talk about the product that they serve the most, as they are the client. I also chose this image as it is one of the images that have the most topics to address. With each thing, I added the more in-depth I could talk about this image and why I chose what to do.
This is the image that is being talked about in the article.
What it looked like to get the shot.
