FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS: MAKE YOUR FOOD LOOK PRETTY

We have already talked about the best tricks of photography on Instagram and the best photography tricks with an iPhone. Today we want to talk about the best food photographs tips, are you ready? Get out your mobile and practice!

Food Photography Tips and Tricks

Food photography may be one of the most challenging types of photography. In this type of photography, the goal is to get the perfect balance between reality and art. How can we do that? If you are a chef who is having problems with their own food photography or a simple person who wants to impress people with good photographs of food, keep reading!

Choose the best angle

Do you know that where you place your camera to take the photo, affects the type of story you are trying to tell? You have to make a decision about your angle taking into account what you want to express!

What size, shape, and height is the food? Is it big, small, with a lot of ingredients? Try to obtain the best angle so that this is seen.

Also, think about what is unique about it and express it in your photoshoot! The trick is to try, try all the angles until you find the angle!

Surround your food

To be able to tell the story, it’s very important to surround your plate of food with ingredients and props, empty spaces are prohibited! However, these ingredients and props as oils, sauces, cooking utensils… have to have a relation with the story and with the food, don’t forget that! You are trying to tell the story of your dish, so, use the empty spaces with the things that for example are related to the origin of the dish.

Do you want the recipients of the image to think: ah look a cake! Or do you want them to perceive a more elaborate message as how is your plate? Well, don’t forget this step!

Give importance to the light source

Light is a very important element in photography and surely you have heard it more than one faith. Above all, it is very important in food photography because for example, using poor light will bring you a negative result, you won’t tell the real story and the audience won’t be interested in it.

First of all, you have to get rid of the dark and hard shadows and the light that comes directly from the windows. How can you do it? One option is to place a diffuser between where the light comes from and the table that you are using. Try to find out the best option to improve the quality of light, and remember to eliminate the hard shadows!

You have to take into account that the viewer will always look first at the brightest part of your photo. Therefore, unless it is your objective, you have to make sure that direct light doesn’t affect parts of your dish making them brighter than all the other parts. And how can you avoid this?

First of all, would be to prevent direct light from reaching your area. If this is not possible, you can use black or white cards, depending on the objective. There is a big difference between these cards, the black one makes shadows stronger and the white one bounces light into shadow areas. This is an important technique for creating darker, low-key-styled images.

Compose with lines and layers

This is like when a chef has to make a simple dish with a good composition on the plate to make it look unique and with personality. So, how can you do that?

You must consider the composition with lines and layers. You can organize your ingredients or props to create, with them, line effects that will reach the audience’s attention. This is a basic technique that photographs use to lead their audience’s eyes to the main subject.

There are a lot of options to create this effect, use your imagination and trust yourself!

Give importance to the color

Color is just as important as light, you should use the same shades of colors and try not to highlight any accessory with a color that is too bright. Imagine that you are using colorful elements and one of the accessories, like a spoon, grabs all the attention. This is a big problem, right?

Try to select neutral tones with the accessories to make the food the most important thing in the dish.

Incorporate actions

People are interested in how knives are held and used. For example, you could pour cream into a coffee or twirl spaghetti. However, don’t force it when it’s out of context, remember that you have an objective and you want to express something in particular.

When hands appear in a photo, it is very important to bear in mind the importance of showing hands that are clean and moisturized, be careful with this!

Best camera for food photography

It can be difficult to find the best camera if you’re new to food photography. Also, there are a great number of cameras that would be perfect for food photography. Therefore, the clue is to consider elements of the camera to know that is the camera you need.

The size of the sensor

The size of the sensor is one of the things you have to consider. For example, with a cropped sensor you can take great pictures. However, your camera and lenses will behave differently with a cropped sensor than a full-frame.

You can get excellent pictures with a cropped sensor device. The issue is that your camera and lenses will behave differently with a cropped sensor than a full-frame. A full-frame device has a sensor size of 24mm x 36mm. On the other hand, a cropped sensor is smaller than this, it doesn’t match most lenses and the final images look different.

An 80mm lens works great for photographing food on a full-frame camera!

File Size

It’s important to take into account the file size especially if you want to print your images. Yes, most people want to use the photos only for the web or social media, but you never know. So, you’ll need to make sure that your camera can accommodate a large file size.

In addition, the camera has to be capable of shooting RAW files. These are digital negatives and it would be easier to edit the photos as you want. The quality of a JPEG file is downgraded with every edit.

ISO Level

Do you know what the noise of a photograph is? Well, it’s something you have to avoid! And for this, it’s important to choose a camera with the capability of handling a high level of noise.

You don’t want your image to be poor after all the effort, right? So keep this in mind as it could spoil everything and take into account that using high ISO does degrade image quality.

Focus points

Although using the manual mode sounds more professional, if you are not used to it, everything can turn out less well. That is why it is important to choose a camera with a large number of focus points. For example, if your camera has only nine focus points, many times you won’t be able to get the focus point where you need it, and it is a big problem.

Food modes

Currently, there are a variety of cameras and telephones that have food modes for photographs. It could be useful to you!

Popular Cameras for Food Photography

Sony A7R IV

With this camera, your food photographs will sparkle with dazzling detail. It has 61 megapixels to play with and a great array of AF points right across the frame to help with composition.

Nikon Z7 II

This Nikon has a very high resolution and 45.7 megapixels. With this camera you have the option of macro lenses or DSLR lenses via the F-mount adapter, giving you much more flexibility.

Canon EOS R6

If you want to get a camera at a more affordable price, we recommend the Canon EOS R6.

You can get a good range of manual focusing options, but it’s the incredible 6072 autofocus points across the entire frame which help it to stand out.

iPhone 12 Pro

And who said that a good mobile does not serve to take good pictures of food? For example, the iPhone 12 Pro is one of the best options!

In this case, the iPhone 12 Pro is better than the 12 Pro Max, as the close-focusing distance is better for the smaller model.

This mobile makes taking pictures of food so easy! You have to know that the straightforward Portrait mode can come in handy for food photography.

Now, you are ready to rule on your food pics!