Top Tips For Taking Food Photos #1

Getting nice photos of your food isn't as hard or as expensive as you may think! Tom, our resident graphics designer will help you to make the most of what you've got without having to pay someone else.

Good looking food

The most important element of taking food photos is obviously the food itself. Making sure your food looks its best should always be the focus. Ideally you would want to shoot your food just as you’ve finished preparing it, this helps to keep the food looking fresh and will help maximise the quality of your photos. Preparing the same dish a few times and presenting it in multiple ways for you to photograph might also help for you to maximise the range and quality of your photos.

Equipment

After getting your food looking great your next focus would of course be sorting you’re camera. You don’t have to be using an expensive camera to take good quality photos of your food, even camera phones can provide good quality images. Modern day camera phones such as the iPhone's and Xperia's have good quality cameras and many apps to help you get the best out of your photos. Apps like Instagram might help you get a unique feel to your food photos through filters and editing, but it is not always suitable for all applications. Adding filters might make your food look more artistic but it won't always help. I would suggest not using filters for photos of takeaway food as it can change the style of your photos and give an inaccurate representation of your products. Try to learn how to use the equipment you’re using beforehand so that you can maximise the quality of what you take when your food’s plated up and ready.

Scene

Don’t be afraid to shoot your food somewhere other than the kitchen. Offsetting your food against textured backgrounds such as wooden chopping boards or garden tables is great for adding dynamics to your photos and will help to keep the natural feel. Shooting your food with props might also help to provide some unique photos. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to presenting your food.

Lighting

Try your best to use natural light for the photos. Steer clear of using flashes as this won’t help to bring out the richness and colour in your food. Stage your food where you get good natural light will help with getting your food looking best in the camera.

Composition/Angles

While taking your photos try to vary how you shoot the food, sometimes focusing more on the scene rather than the subject can help to bring out interesting results. Making the scene look as natural as possible will help the food and photos to look their best, also take into consideration where the photos will be going as not all photos will be suitable for every usage. Try to take as many photos of different angles/composition as you can, this will help you to have options when it comes to deciding which photos you will end up using.

Enhancement

Less is definitely more when it comes to post editing. You want to be giving the photos a natural feel so be very careful when adding effects to the photo. Playing with brightness and slight contrast changes will hopefully be the only changes you might need to make. Also consider file types and resizing your images dependant on the usage.

Now that you've got your food looking great in your photos, why not use them for your online ordering website available through ZPos.