Food photography | Tips for really tasty photos of food / dishes
Food is always something beautiful! The eye eats with you, as we all know - so reason enough to push your Instagram lifestyle by photographing your food for once!
12 quick tips ahead
- Use window light to illuminate the image beautifully.
- Diffuse window light using a reflector or a transmitted light surface.
- When composing the food, be careful not to use too many colors.
- Decorate the image with ingredients from the dish or other decorative elements.
- Lighten up or darken down deliberately.
- Create a mood board on Pinterest.
- If you're working in a studio or similar, take a laptop with you and shoot with tethering. This way you can see the image bigger and evaluate it better. Another advantage: you can also edit it directly with a preset.
- Be careful not to burn out white dishes.
- Turn off ambient lights.
- Use olive oil to enhance highlights.
- Avoid fingerprints by using gloves or a napkin.
- To photograph steam, you're better off choosing a fast shutter speed and increasing the ISO sensitivity.
Image composition & Tips around food styling
In food photography, it can make sense to style the food differently than what you're used to. A good example is the classic sushi maki. This is rolled up and arranged in such a way that you can hardly see the contents on a photo. Here you place the roll so that the central content looks into the camera.
Otherwise, the rule in food photography is "kitchen chaos". A healthy chaos in the picture helps to make the picture exciting. To do this, use ingredients from the dish and decorate them around the dish. However, be careful not to overcrowd the image and leave air so that the dish remains the focus.
Make cold drinks sparkle? Nothing easier than that! You can simply take a spray bottle and wet the drink. This way it will be moist and get the typical bubbles like in summer.
Use your Pinterest mood board as a guide for your image composition. This is a quick and easy place to gather everything that inspires you or that you want to use as a guide for your upcoming set. A good example is decor, what goes with the dish I want to photograph? How have others staged that.
Ideas for picture compositions
- Use edible flowers for coffee and cake. Sprinkle them over the cake as well, use coffee beans as well, scattering them loosely throughout the picture.
- Sprinkle flour when photographing a pizza or bread. Maybe add some herbs (like basil or oregano) or a pizza roller. A dish towel also makes a great addition.
- Place a teapot with your cup.
- Use a honey spoon for a honey jar.
- Use a bread basket filled with baguettes to take off dips, as they are usually eaten with bread in combination.
- Combine several courses in small portions in one picture, arranged in small glasses or similar.
- Create contrasts through colors: black & gold, white & gold, white / gray & lavender, etc.
- Create the impression of freshness through water, moisture, shine, cress, cut fruit edges - such as lemons, oranges, etc.
The choice of background
We can recommend here to get PVC backgrounds. These are usually printed on both sides and if you have two, you can already create some combinations. The nice thing about backgrounds is that they can get wet and are independent of your own four walls.
Light or dark? Black and white or colorful? That depends on your concept, among other things, as well as the lighting setup you use and the tableware you use.
A tip: Golden cutlery or straws look very classy and modern with dark backgrounds.
Golden section & line management
Have you now arrived at the final composition of your image? You can check the image composition on the display of your camera - ideally on a tripod - either via the set grid (in Live View on DSLRs), or when viewing the image while tethering in Lightroom, Capture One or similar.
When composing the image, also pay attention to the subsequent crop / format. We advise the classic square or 5:4 format here, as this is particularly attractive on Instagram.
The cutlery, a towel, chopsticks or a pad all have edges that affect the image. You can pay more attention here to make sure that these add positively to your image composition. This is very helpful because it allows hands to hold the chopsticks and point to the food, thus directing the eye directly to the main subject. If you now position the hand and the food each in the golden ratio, you already have a very pleasant image.
Seasonality
For dishes that have more of a seasonal background (for example, pumpkin soup or tarte flamb?e) decorate your set a bit autumnal here. Use here as decoration perhaps a pumpkin, leaves or the like.
Where to get the food?
If you're not an avid cook yourself, you might be the avid ordering service user! You can also just use a restaurant's food to take your first food photos. If your results are worth looking at, you can also send them to the restaurant's operators and maybe get some initial feedback. Especially small restaurants don't have the capacity for photos of this kind - financially or even due to lack of staff.
Your pictures can then perhaps be shown on the social media presence of the restaurant. You might also get a meal as a thank you.
Lighting
There are several options when setting the light, the most common being the side light, which is often set with a rectangular softbox. Why a rectangular softbox? It is very similar in characteristics to a window. So you can also recreate a window in the studio / home studio itself. Here, a reflector is often used on the other side. If you don't have one at hand, you can also achieve an effect with aluminum foil, paper or a Styrofoam plate. Often the white side is used. If you want to bring a cooler tone into your pictures, you can use the silver foil, the golden side of the reflector alternatively a life blanket brings a certain warmth into the picture.
Another variant here is the light setting from behind, in this case the food is then strongly illuminated from behind, it makes sense in any case to set a reflector from the front, so that the shadows have less depth.
We say that a rectangular softbox is often used, but of course all softboxes go like an octabox, or parabolic softbox, just as a light umbrella works. If you're thinking about working with more than one active light source, this is where it makes sense to work with attachments like a snoot. This allows you to brighten up certain bowls or cups, for example, where the contents might otherwise have received little light.
When working with multiple light sources, you should always try to avoid creating additional shadows.
Did you know? Photographing glass is an art, which is why this is considered a final project for a photographer, among other things.
Available Light
No light at hand? Never mind, you can just use the light that falls into your apartment anyway. You just have to consider in which angle the sun falls into your room at the current time of the year. You might have to cover the window with the inside of a reflector or a white sheet.
Play with harsh light
For a summer look, it may be a good idea to work with hard light as well. Warm summer evenings that end with a BBQ at a friend's house and the evening sun streaming through the window or onto the balcony. Hard light makes everything shine and glow, which is especially interesting for drinks, at the same time the contrasts are higher and the shadows more intense. Here you have to try out whether a reflector still softens the shadows.
Viewing angle
When selecting the angle, the natural viewing angle that you know when you sit at the dining table yourself applies. Depending on your height, this angle will vary. Another popular angle is the Top Down Shot, because here you can see everything on the table.
- 25 - 45? degrees | Natural angle
- or 90? degrees from above | Top Down Shot / Bird's eye view
- Frontal
Detail is also a word to keep in mind here. When working with a macro lens, depth of field and detail in the close-up of the food being photographed are key points. It's best to ask yourself once what detail in the image should have the focus. All macro photographers might also consider doing focus stacking for maximum detail!
Frontal shots make sense especially when the subject has important image information on the front. A good example is drinks like long drinks, highballs, etc....
The choice of aperture
Here you have to consider what exactly should be in focus! It makes little sense to name a general aperture, but an aperture around 4 - 5.6, sometimes up to aperture 8, offers the option of having enough sharpness for the plate area and having the background blurred to such an extent that it conveys a certain calmness.
Thoughts on image composition with the aperture:
- What details are important?
- What mood do you want the image to have?
- What does the client want?
Image editing
In food photography, less is more! So you should not simply pull all the sliders wildly, but perhaps rather pay attention to setting the whole thing as perfectly as possible in the camera.
Image editing in Capture One or Lightroom
Especially interesting for editing in Lightroom are the following sliders & groups:
- Exposure
- White balance
- Highlights
- Shadows
- White
- Dynamics
- Gradation curve
- Colors in particular here the luminance
Capture One 22 Pro Full Version
- Image editing software
- Improved noise reduction for better quality images at high ISOs
- New Basic Color Editor is compact and easy to use, one-click adjustment of hue, saturation and brightness
- Revised high dynamic range tools with controls for highlights, shadows, blacks and whites
- Visible handles in the cropping tool make it easier to achieve the desired image detail
- Put your favorite tools firmly at the top while scrolling through the other tools
- Copying layers and masks between photos made easier
- Support for DNG files
- Speed up import and export and benefit from a smooth editing workflow
- Use the wide range of image editing and color correction tools to best realize your creative vision
- Transfer images via tethering directly while shooting to review or adjust them immediately after capture
- Save time and create your own personal workspace thanks to the customizable interface
- Over 500 supported camera models
Image editing with Photoshop
Use brushes or overlays with fog, haze or smoke textures to decorate warm foods with them. You have to be careful when using them, as it's a fine line. It's best to go very low on a brush with the flow, around 5%. With overlays, you can play with the area. Remember to still blur the whole thing to fit on the layer.
If you want to show it in the photos and your food is already cool or even cold, you can also recreate that with a tampon doused with hot water.
Equipment Tips
Focal length / Lenses
Three popular lenses for food photography are actually three time-honored classics:
- 50mm
- 24-70mm f/2.8 or 28-75mm f/2.8
- 85mm / 105mm Macro
Important to note in food photography in the technical data is the closest focusing distance of the lens.
Sigma 105mm f/2.8 DG DN Macro L-Mount
Light
We recommend the beginner in light setting to use a continuous light, because this is particularly grateful, since you can always see the change that the light has on your photo / image composition. If you use a flash, we advise you to use a flash that has a built-in modeling light, because of the advantages mentioned last.
One or two reflectors are quite useful to direct the light as you want it
.
It's also best to use tripods with reflector clamps, which then hold the reflector so you can freely set up the image.
- Kaiser Nanlite Forza 200
- Godox VL 200
- Godox VL 300
- Kaiser Nanlite LED studio light FORZA 300 for photo and video
- Amaran 200d
Light shaper
- Godox Umbrella Softbox Bowens 80x120 with Grid
- Godox Snoot SN-01 with Honey Comb
- Walimex pro Octa Softbox PLUS OL 90 Auro/Bowens
- Caruba studio umbrella 81cm / 32
- Helios Studio Umbrella 100cm white
light shapers assortment
Filters
There are quite few useful filters here, but every now and then we can recommend a polarizing filter, because a polarizing filter can be used to remove or better attenuate annoying reflections.
- B+W Polarizing Filter High Transmission Circular Master E 67
- Hoya Polarizing Filter Circular HD E 67
- Hama Polarizing Filter Circular AR E 67
Tripod & Tripod head
Do you prefer to shoot freehand or with a tripod? Especially for darker settings, where you might have a slightly longer exposure, it can make sense to use a tripod. This way you will have a sharper image. It also makes sense to use two tripods. One for the top down shots and one for all other shots. We can recommend here the Manfrotto ball head with ergonomic handle, with it you can quickly switch between portrait and landscape format, but also set the angle.
- Caruba C-Standkit LS 9 boom tripod
- Manfrotto ball head with ergonomic handle and friction wheel
- Quick release plate
You can also use the app of your camera manufacturer as an alternative to a remote shutter release, should you even have an infrared (IR) transmitter installed, there are apps for this that can also fall back on it to use the shutter release of your camera.
Nice to have for food photographers / food stylists
- Spray bottle
- Stool / ladder
- Gloves to minimize grease stains on glass
- Play dough
- Sifter for sprinkling flour or spices
- Fairy lights
- Sharp knife
- Toothpick
- Brush
- Kitchen roll
- Tweezers
- Make-up correction sticks
Tips for assembling props
- Consider what you have yourself
- Visit flea markets
- Browse auction platforms
- Look in decoration stores & eurostores
- Furniture stores also offer an attractive range
Ideas for props
- Beautiful handmade tableware
- Table mats
- Boards, made of different materials: olive, walnut, cherry, marble, slate
- Baskets
- Cocktail glasses
- Cutlery in different colors
- (Cloth) napkins in different colors
- Chopsticks in different colors and patterns
- Spices & herbs like: Chilis, basil, turmeric, star anise, cloves, cinnamon, vanilla beans, pepper
- Nuts and seeds
- Croutons
- Citrus peel
- Pepper mill, salt shaker