Basic Tips for Starting out in Food Photography

Basic tips for starting out in food photography

Basic tips for food photography

Pick the freshest ingredients

Use the best and freshest ingredients, this will show up on the photographs and images.

Lighting

With a backlight you can make food look amazing and can highlight steam coming of the plate. This is true whether a chef prepares a simple salad or a T-bone steak. The more light the better as people can see the food and a good photographer will have an easier time accentuating the greatness of a given dish.

Simple

Don’t add clutter, by clutter we mean ingredients that tend to be scattered around the finished dish, while tempting, keep your setup simple and free of clutter. On the other hand, a photographer who insists on this should try to use simple props that will add to the photo without taking away from the main subject.

Before and after

Use before images of ingredients and during the cooking process, this gives a true feel for the dish and see how much work the chef did to make it look so great.

Show cooking

Take shots of the cooking process, try to capture a bit of the chef, something simple like his or her hand which adds reality to the images.

Keep the plates clean:

While it is nice to show true and raw form, keep the plates clean. Fingerprints and smudges on the edges show up under lighting.

Different angle:

Experiment with multiple angles, its easier to get the best shot. By getting creative and thinking about this a photographer can find the sweet spot and take photos that people will enjoy.

With a little work and studying, you can take the perfect picture every time.