Olympus Visionary Lou Manna has been photographing food for more than 30 years. He got his start as a food photographer at the New York Times, where he worked side-by-side with acclaimed food columnist Craig Claiborne. During his career, Manna has worked with star chefs such as Jacques Pepin and Emeril Lagasse, and his award-winning photographs have appeared in more than 30 cookbooks, including Jacques Torres’s Dessert Circus and Dr. Phil McGraw’s The Ultimate Weight Solution Cookbook. Manna is the author of Digital Food Photography, a book that teaches readers how to use digital technology to enhance food photography.

This image was shot in April, 2009, in my studio. The client, the National Onion Association, was looking for ways to showcase onions in fresh, exciting recipes. Working with food stylist Diane Vezza and prop stylist Deb Donahue, my goal was to create a bright, open, clean-looking shot with great color and appetite appeal.

The dish here is an avocado citrus salad with marinated onions. (Recipe below.) The great thing about this recipe is that when you marinate the raw red onions, as well as taking away their bitterness it really intensifies their color and makes the red pop. The contrast in textures and shapes in this salad is pleasing to the eye. To highlight the lovely fresh ingredients, we chose to keep the background simple, using just a piece of whitewashed wood, a straw mat and a rustic, teal-colored plate.

I shot this with the Olympus E-30 camera with the Zuiko 50mm macro lens at f/7.1, 100 ISO at 1/100th of a second. The Olympus sensor has superb color rendition and fidelity. It helps to bring out the vibrancy in the subject. The edge-to-edge sharpness of their digital lenses allows me to shoot full frame all of the time. I can get in tight and maximize the perspective of the Zuiko lens.

To light the shot, I had an 800w/second flash head in a softbox on the left and I diffused it further through a piece of 4’ x 4’ milky white plexiglass, to give the effect of soft, bright window light. Typically, I also “feather” the softbox, which means tilting it upwards so that you’re using light from the edge, not from the center. Since the center of the light is the brightest part, feathering it lowers the contrast range and gives a soft, pleasing light over the entire area.

I also had a 4’ x 8’ white formica board set up vertically in the background of the shot, and I bounced a 200w/second gridspot off the formica, which gave me some of the specular highlights – the bright, glistening spots of light on the food that I’m known for. To create more of them, I bounced light off a mirror placed in front of the salad, which also highlighted the front edge of the plate and opened up some detail in the shadows on the mat and under the avocadoes. I sometimes use up to 10 mirrors in my work because generally, shadows are not appealing in a food image, but specular highlights can make a dish look mouth-watering.

I’ve been dieting lately, so salads are important to me. Since they’re often perceived as boring health food, it’s great when you can make a salad exciting. What I like about this image is that the placement of the onions—and the contrasting colors make the onions into a crown jewel. We’re used to having this humble vegetable play second fiddle, but here, it’s in the center of the dish and it’s being used for its beauty too.


This behind-the-scenes image shows the softbox shining through the milky plexiglass on the left, with the formica board in the background and another reflector at right.


Here, you can see the mirror I used to open up shadows in the foreground of the image and create specular highlights in the food.

Marimba Avocado Citrus Salad with Marinated Onions

1 red onion
2 oranges
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 avocado, halved, pitted and skin removed
1 grapefruit, peeled and sliced, seeds removed
1 endive and/or small romaine lettuce spears

Peel and thinly slice the onion. Combine the vinegar, honey and water in a jar with a tight lid; shake well until blended. Add the onions to the jar. Shake the jar to coat onions in the liquid, then refrigerate overnight or for at least 6 hours.

Grate 2 teaspoons of orange peel. Combine oil, vinegar, honey and orange peel in a small jar with a lid. Pare and slice oranges; remove seeds. Slice avocado.

For each appetizer-salad serving, arrange endive and/or romaine leaves spoke-fashion on individual plates. Portion oranges, avocado and grapefruit pieces onto the center spokes of endive and/or romaine. Lift the onions from liquid with a fork and transfer to the top of each salad. Drizzle with dressing before serving.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Recipe provided by the National Onion Association.