One of my favorite things about food shoots during the holidays is that there is always a ton of food at the main dinner, which means plenty of leftovers to play with afterwards. I decided to get a little creative this year and made leftover cranberry sauce popsicles. Grab this easy popsicle recipe along with a couple of food photography tips from the photo shoot!

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Food Photography Tips for Popsicles

Complimentary Colors

Popsicles are so pretty and colorful, so don’t be afraid to play with those colors when you’re taking food pictures. I wanted to experiment with complimentary colors during this food shoot and the bright red popsicles made it really easy to do. Complimentary colors are two colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel. Since these cranberry popsicles are red, I was able to use a bright blue board for a nice, bold complimentary color look.

Food Photography Equipment

For this photo shoot, I used my Nikon D750, my 50mm 1.8 lens and natural light from the window. Try not to shoot your food pictures in your kitchen with your overhead lights. Overhead lights can cause unwanted shadows and inaccurate color temperatures. Set up your food next to a window, so you can get the best natural light on your food.

Since I was working with bold, bright colors and ice, I didn’t want the natural light coming in from the window to cause hot spots. Hot spots are when certain areas of your images are way too bright causing important details to get lost. To soften the light and spread it out more evenly over the food, I used a large diffuser over the window. A diffuser is one of the best tools you can use when you want to create a soft light look for your food images.

READ MORE ABOUT: NATURAL LIGHT FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS

Recipe Notes for Popsicles

Popsicle Molds & Sticks

The recipe comes together very easily using cranberry sauce, greek yogurt and 2-3 table spoons of maple syrup. But, in order to actually make the popsicles, you’ll want to get some good popsicle molds and popsicle sticks. I like getting popsicle sticks in bulk, so you’re all set to create a bunch of different flavors of your choice.

Use A Vitamix

One of my favorite recipe tips when you need to blend multiple things together is to use a Vitamix. A regular blender would work fine for this particular recipe, but the Vitamix has helped make recipe prep so much faster and easier (and less messy). You’d be amazed at the range of recipes the Vitamix has helped me with including velvety smooth soups, chunky salsas and even fresh homemade pasta dough. We have the A3500 and absolutely love it!

Happy Cooking!

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All images © Regan Baroni 2015.