Food Photography Tips And Tricks – At Serious Eats, we’re a bunch of self-proclaimed foodies who are always curious about the ‘why’ behind our dishes. Staff have worked in restaurants, test kitchens, bakeries and other prestigious publications, bringing extensive culinary and editorial expertise to the table.
Taking great photos of food is a hard-earned skill. After all, some people are lucky and get what they pay for. But no matter who you are, it’s much easier to hone in now. Even with a smartphone, you get excellent, high-quality images.
Food Photography Tips And Tricks
Of course, it will be easier to take great photos if you know how to use a professional camera and lenses, but they are not required for this course. Think of all the amazing Instagram feeds. What separates the magazine-worthy photos from the less impressive ones isn’t fancy cameras or expensive equipment. Knowing how to build a compelling image and realize your vision takes confidence.
How To Take Good Food Pictures With Phone
Good photos are no fluke. You may not know what makes a photo special or how it does it, but the truth is that certain basic elements come together to make it. Details like composition, lighting, and style apply whether you’re using a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR), a simple point-and-shoot, or an iPhone.
Take out? Taking some mouth-watering food photos takes some basics and practice. Read or skip a section in the index to get started!
Most importantly, good food photography should evoke the deliciousness and unique taste of the food. The color and texture of a dish should be celebrated, not muted or hidden. That means avoiding blurry snapshots, unsightly angles, and the all-too-common yellow cast at all costs. If you’re not drooling while editing your photos, you’re doing something wrong. Here’s what you need to step up your food photography game.
Good lighting is the most important criterion for good photography, and the best kind of light is indirect light. The shaded spot on a sunny day is the holy grail of natural light conditions. It provides bright, even light to your food without discoloring it like indoor lighting usually does.
Food Photography Tips And Tricks — Sandy Noto
On the left is a blown-in photo taken in direct sunlight. On the right is a balanced image taken under indirect light.
But when it comes to natural light, it can be tempting to move your food to an attractive spot in bright, beautiful sunlight. Out of direct sunlight tends to be harsh, creating dark, distracting shadows and producing whites and bright colors.
Bright enough to lose any apparent texture and shape. Think so. In post processing, which we’ll look at more closely later, we can often add more brightness to a picture without too much negative impact. On the other hand, if you remove the brightness, the image tends to be soft and anemic.
Similar rules apply to in-camera flash when we do this. Don’t use no matter how bad the light is, never, ever. Flash photos of food can have harsh reflections and glare, as well as a zoom-out that looks ridiculous. In other words, the food appears to be floating in space.
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The moral implications of the story? If you’re shooting indoors, your best bet is to set it up near a window during the day. Likewise, keep out of direct sunlight. In a restaurant, this might mean politely asking for a specific table. At home, this might mean shooting in a room other than the kitchen. It may help to pay attention to the quality of light received by different rooms during the day and set accordingly. However, if your house gets a lot of direct sunlight, don’t despair. You can create your own indirect lighting by hanging a white cloth over the window. This diffuses the light without adding to the hue you get from colored drapes.
Once you’ve found the perfect spot, it’s time to think about placing your food according to the light source.
Ideally, the light should hit the plate at an angle, like options B and C in the photo above. If the light is right behind you, it will cast unwelcome shadows on the dish. Another option is to backlight the subject (option A). This produces more atmospheric and generally more interesting images. In this case, the light should come from above and behind the dish, perhaps slightly to one side. But figuring out where the light hits the board is directly related to the angle and frame of your shot.
Composition is basically the general term for arranging things in a photograph. In a well-framed photo, you can immediately tell what the main subject is: a person, a plate, or a dot on an ice cream cone. In other words, composition is second only to lighting when it comes to taking good photos.
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A helpful tool, especially at the beginning, is the rule of thirds. It’s a simple but useful concept, but I’d rather see it as advice than an actual rule. Here’s how it works: Imagine the frame is divided into a grid of nine parts, like Sudoku. According to the rule of thirds, main objects such as plates, cakes or olives should be placed along these lines or at the intersection of these lines, for example:
Of course, following these general guidelines will often result in more familiar, appealing images. Our eyes are naturally drawn to these intersections. graphic design). Offsetting the subject from the center of the frame draws the eye and can also be used to convey off-center action or activity.
Choosing the main subject to place on the grid is usually easy and obvious. In other cases, you may wish to choose a specific part of the theme to emphasize (for example, a blob of melted cheese instead of an entire grilled cheese sandwich). In this case, you need to adjust the frame accordingly.
When deciding where to place your camera, consider the best quality of the food you’re photographing. Bottom right: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.
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However, framing food is only one element of composition; you should also determine the best angle for your subject. Flat, circular pizzas are often best photographed from directly above, while tall ice cream dishes are best photographed at a 45° angle to keep the three-dimensional silhouette of the scoop sharp. Meanwhile, a burger piled high with all the fixings will look great at eye level, so keep your camera close to the table. Make sure there is something in the background, such as a wall or a wooden board, to block out unwanted objects in the kitchen. Remember, food also wants to capture the good side. One side of the burger may look more appetizing than the other, and you want to focus on the side or top rather than the back of the roast turkey. What is the best way to learn? Shoot from different angles until you hone your instincts.
One pitfall you especially want to avoid is camera tilt. Some people think that turning the camera slightly clockwise or counterclockwise will make the composition more interesting, but in reality this will confuse the viewer and make the saucer look like a flying saucer. Keep the camera level, and if there are strong lines in the image, try to keep it as straight as possible.
In the end, decide if zooming in or out on the photo would help. Would seeing the whole dish and some background give a better image, or can you make it look better for specific parts? Sometimes the individual ingredients of a dish are more interesting than the entire dish. Zooming in on a cute little dumpling is much more attractive than six baskets that are busy and distracted. At the same time, by zooming out on a table full of different cheeses, you can paint a more interesting and varied picture than a bird’s-eye view can.
Once you’ve got the basics down, it’s time to start enjoying. Get creative with your props and styles to take your images to the next level. For dishes that aren’t particularly appetizing (basic soups, messy sandwiches, often-fussy sausages, etc.), it’s especially handy to have the sidekick on hand.
Our Top 5 Tips For Photographing Food
In the first picture, the cooking is too boring and simple. To be honest, the chili looks like a mess. In the second picture, we added a yellow napkin, but it doesn’t stand out because it looks too warm and doesn’t contrast with the soup. The blue napkin and spoon in the third photo convey a more appropriate sense of color and movement, as if someone had picked up the spoon and dug in. some small bowls for toppings to make room
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