Big Mac box photograph trick that creates professional looking portraits

If you ever needed justification to go to McDonald's

Lighting is essential to a good photograph, but most of us don’t have professional equipment and lighting studios to hand.

What we do all have easy access to, however, are torches, straws and Big Macs.

Whilst this may sound like the recipe for a scary dining experience, it’s actually the secret to amazingly lit photos, as discovered by French photographer Philippe Echaroux.

Before and after shots of Rachel

He uses the Big Mac box and straw to position the torch so it reflects light onto the subject of the portrait.

Ideally, you want to rub a little oil from the food on to the inside of the box for extra reflection too.

Echaroux, 34, specialises in celebrity portraits but decided to get creative and set himself the Big Mac Portrait Challenge.

He used simply his iPhone for shooting and retouching, using the VSCO, Photoshop FIX and Lightroom Mobile apps.

(Philippe Echaroux (Philippe Echaroux)

The subjects in the shoots are all strangers, but they look like professional models.

(Philippe Echaroux (Philippe Echaroux)

Can anyone really create such brilliant pictures this way though? Is it all down to knowing how to edit rather than anything else?

We decided to give the technique a try to find out.

It’s simple to put together - you just stick the straw to the torch and rip the box in a couple of places. It’s then a case of changing the angle of the box to reflect the light on to your face.

We tried with a couple of different torches and found that it helps to have a powerful one - but the trick really does work!

We got some strange looks in the office

Your face is well-lit which gives the photos a lot more detail.

Not being photo-editing experts, we simply applied one of the pre-set VSCO filters to add an extra bit of pizzazz. So while our photos may not look as great as Echaroux's, we're pretty impressed by the results.

Who knew a Big Mac box could be so useful?