How-to

Diffuse natural light brings out the best in food. If you’re picnicking on a cloudy day, you’ve got  it made in the shade―literally. If you’re indoors, set up near a window or switch on some lights. Use sidelighting when you want to shoot from above and emphasize texture. If you want to make the overall effect more even, try using a reflector on the opposite side to fill in some of the shadows. And when you’re aiming for all-out foodie drama, go for backlighting.

You can get lucky with light. Of course, you can buy expensive gear and study this essential craft at the feet of the masters, but sometimes your success with lighting will come down to a single variable: Being in the right light at exactly the right time.But this success requires more than simple luck. You have to recognize great light when you see it and manage to leap into action to capture it. That’s how Theophilos Papadopoulos, a Greek high school teacher, bagged the beauty above.

We asked one of the country’s best professional child photographers how she captures the innocence, warmth, sweetness, and silliness of childhood. Her answer? She never fakes it.Your images of children have a wonderful natural and unposed quality. How do you achieve that?

Sometimes a picture of a room is only that—simply a depiction of an enclosed space, without character. When Erik van Hannen, a Dutch molecular biologist, walked into this Utrecht museum library, he knew that a straightforward depiction wouldn’t be enough to do this space justice. He wanted to capture its warmth, mood and appeal. “I had visited the museum with my two children, and while they were busy exploring, so was I,” he says. “I ended up in this library, and was shocked. It was beautiful.”