Pleasant Food Photography Tips for Delicious Images
Still-life visuals of food for commercial purposes are known as food photography. This is used extensively for print advertising, surrounding media, menus, and cookbooks. Traditionally, food was showcased in fine china or carefully arranged on a decorated table. Now, the photographer’s best friends, apart from his loyal parents and assistants, are a colorful team of art directors, food stylists, and support stylists. Yes, packed with this creative team and a few trade secrets, it can make a splash in the commercial culinary photography scene.
Now, let’s get into the basics of how to shoot food effectively that leave consumers wanting more. Even bloggers and chefs can add such nice pictures to their text and get other readers to understand the nuances of what they eat.
Lamp & protection
Food photographs are best in white light. Yes, LEDs, softboxes, and canteens are ideal for this setup. Natural light with a diffuser is great, but again calculating the days and the location can affect this. A tungsten kitchen light does it, yellow or orange and evening light does it blue. Midday sunlight is the best white. However, this does not mean that you can shoot only at noon, whatever the conditions, you can white balance the same. According to the lighting, you can set the exposure compensation. This will help you make your picture darker (if it’s bleached out) or brighter (if it’s dull and dark).
Props and styling it
The arrangement of food, whether on a plate, ball, or kitchen deck, is important. Don’t overcrowd the space with too many extras like flowers or forks or napkins or champagne flutes. The balance must be pleasing to the eye and can be placed in lateral positions with a blurred foreground or background according to the composition. Attention to detail is a must. There must be balance in the food shot – colors, shapes, and structure. Everyone must also apply the concept of the baseline and the rule of thirds. Anyone can enhance the shot even by consuming non-food items for a rich look. For example, shaving cream swirls edible sour cream and steams to deliver piping-hot meals.
Angles and macros
Everyone should always shoot, food from below closes the view or is almost at eye level. Newbies shoot food from above, which is a lower way to display food. Anyone can shoot from a distance with a long lens that, walking in the vicinity of the food. The photographer has to be quick to capture the moment, change lenses, and so on. Food tends to wilt or lose its gloss and color fairly quickly.
By adjusting the ISO, and the depth of field according to the conditions, everyone can get better pictures without it. Flash should also be avoided to avoid uneven lighting patterns that can leave food looking sticky. Ideally, post-processing should go a long way to add some shine, move colors, and sharpen elements, and so on. A well-airbrushed food picture is often irresistible!
