Best Ways to Photograph food

There are only so many angles for photographing food. Nevertheless, you want it to be a conscious decision. The placement of the camera will influence the story that your photograph tells.

Think your angle through beforehand and see if it works well for the food’s shape, size, and height. Next, look at what the highlight of that dish is. Try to capture this highlight in your photograph. For desserts, for example, it could be the sprinkles. Some dishes appear more beautiful when photographed from right in front, while others appear nicer when photographed directly from above the table.

Let’s look at our desserts example. If you’re photographing an ice-cream with some delicate sprinkles, it’s best to photograph it from right in front because it shows the shape of the sprinkles. However, taking a picture right from above the table will not highlight sprinkles very well.

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See the difference?

Artificial lighting can make your white rice, plates, and tables appear orange. When photographing food, colors are an extremely important element and you want them to appear as accurate as possible.

Photographing food in natural daylight gives a beautiful still life photo. Ideally, the best kind of natural light for taking pictures of your food is diffused and soft daylight. Warm weather works fine, but try to steer clear of an excessively bright sun since that results in exposure problems and casts harsh shadows.

It’s a big turn-off to look at the image of food where it has been randomly served on a plate without putting in any thought. The composition of the plate is a quintessential part of food photography, where you must place all elements of the dish tidily after giving it some thought.

When you’re done with composing your plate, make sure that there’s no spillage on the plate’s edge or the background. If there is, clean it up along with any other mess that appears in the frame. 

The best thing about food photography is that it allows you to play with color. Colors have a huge impact on your composition and they can affect the overall feel of the image.

Adding a human element to your food photos adds a personal touch to the photography. Especially if you have a tattoo or a mark that people can identify as yours. It helps to create a sense of presence for the viewer because it is as if the photo has been captured from their point of view.

The food and background are both vital elements, but to make your photos more interesting you should also consider decorating the scene with some other smaller items. Adding dry ingredients to the background is a great way of designing the scene. It also acts as a visual recipe for the food photo.

Food comes in so many wonderful colors, but sometimes the camera does not capture them quite the way they wanted. You can make the food look more vivid and less muted by using simple photo editing apps like VSCO or Snapseed.

Sometimes keeping it simple does the trick. If your food subject has a bold color or shape, and you have a contrasting colored background then a simple, minimalistic composition can often create the strongest impact. For added effect, keep the food at the center of your frame and don’t use any heavy decoration.

When you are composing your food photos, leave some breathing space around the plate so that it doesn’t fill the entire frame. While close-up food shots can look great, leaving some empty negative space will create a more pleasing look and add focus on the food at the center.

Shadows are important in photography and they can make or break an image. Sometimes a shadow can ruin the image by dominating too much of a picture and other times they can enhance a photo by adding depth and visual interest.

The intensity of the shadows depends on the type of light you are shooting in. An overcast day creates a diffused light which makes the shadows softer while strong directional sunlight will cast hard, dark shadows.

The above photo was taken in bright sunlight. Notice the harsh shadows being cast by the objects in the scene.

Photography is a great way of telling a story without using any words. By adding more elements to your food photos, you can create interesting stories that draw the viewer into the image. Think about what kind of objects you could use to help tell a story through food photography.

The background is very important when you are shooting for food photography. If the background is too messy or colorful, the viewers will focus on that instead of food. Use a fairly neutral background as it allows you to place maximum emphasis on the food in the scene.

A neutral background does not mean that you have to have a complete black or white background. It means that the background should complement the subject rather than suppress it. Light backgrounds, dark backgrounds, and wooden backgrounds work best for food.

When you have composed your shot with the elements and lightning that you want, there is one final thing you should do before you press the shutter down. Adjust the camera’s exposure level. Exposure simply refers to the brightness of the image. The main exposure problem that comes with food photography is that white plates and backgrounds can appear overexposed and become too bright with no visible detail.

To avoid over-exposure, you should expose the highlights. This means that you set the exposure levels so that you can see some detail in the brightest area of the scene.