5 Food Photography Tips: How to Create Perfectly Styled Food Photos

In order to capture accurate and appealing photographs of food, you should try and use natural light when possible. Artificial lighting can sometimes distort the true colors of the food. When harnessed properly, natural light will highlight all the subtleties in texture and color tone.

• To find the best natural light, move freely through your studio or space, taking a sample plate and camera with you to set up a test shot for lighting. Skylights are a great natural light source, just be sure to adjust the position of your scene so that the light falls on it. The same goes for natural window light. Shooting directly into the light creates an undesirable effect by casting dark shadows upon your entire scene. If the light is too bright or harsh on the shoot day (such as direct sunlight) try draping a gauzy or sheer fabric over the windows to diffuse the natural light.
• If the light is being tricky or falling in an uneven way, a suitable alternative is to place your scene within a lightbox. A lightbox is a portable photo studio with a flat bottom and walled sides, usually made of white fabric. Since the walls act like ad hoc reflectors, lightboxes provide a controlled environment with evenly-distributed light.
  

Learn more about natural light in our handy photography guide.

As a food photographer, your goal is to create tantalizing pictures of food that will inspire the viewer to seek out the recipe and recreate the dish. Thus, the most important element of food photography is styling.

• Collaborate. A good food photographer either collaborates with a team of other creatives or takes on the role of art director and stylist (and sometimes recipe creator, too!). Either way, there are a few food photography tips to follow to make the images of your food look good.
  
• Think about complementary colors. When coming up with a concept and preparing for food styling, factor in the colors of the food and the complexity of the dish. There are infinite background options, ranging from a single, bold color to an entire table setting or kitchen scene.
• Experiment with different backgrounds. Think tabletops, floors, window sills, and poster boards. Which background you choose depends on your personal style, point of view as a photographer, and creative expression of the food. Experiment with composition, and familiarize yourself with the Rule of Thirds. To learn more about the Rule of Thirds, check out this comprehensive guide.
• Work the background. The same dish will reflect an entirely different feel and message when placed against various backgrounds. You are essentially creating a still life with food, so think carefully about the artistic elements that go into the scene. For example, a simple green salad in a nondescript bowl will exude a rustic feel when placed on a wooden table. That very same salad will demonstrate an elegance when placed over a fancy white tablecloth. It is also possible to deconstruct the salad and photograph it while strewn about a brightly-colored backdrop for an abstract, artistic effect.
• The background works hand-in-hand with props. In order to create a cohesive scene, consider the story you are telling with each dish or food item. Curate the styling elements around this story. Just as there are many different background options, there are virtually endless prop possibilities. Anything can serve as a prop, from cutlery and dishware, cookware, and utensils that you already have at home to vintage finds, decorative items, and even scraps of fabric. Milk cartons, cake stands, candelabras—the prop options are virtually endless and only depend on your creative eye to bring food images to life.
• Know the secrets to good plating. The presentation of the food items can drastically change the feel of the final image. A fully decorated cake with a slice placed on a nearby pristine, white plate feels different from a half-finished cake left in a pan, with all the various components, like flour and eggs, surrounding it. It is better to think about the concept and plan ahead for this part since some foods create a unique challenge in plating. For example, ice cream melts and caramel hardens, sandwiches can become soggy and sliced fruit can brown. Glasses filled with liquid can leave rings of condensation, and that perfectly runny yolk might run right through the rest of your scene. Planning ahead means knowing you only have a short amount of time to get your shot, so make sure to use an empty plate double while you adjust the final details before bringing out the real food for the real photos.

The ease of smartphone cameras paired with a suite of photo editing apps like VSCO and Snapseed means professional-ish food photography is at just about anyone’s fingertips.

• Contemporary smartphone cameras are so advanced that the images they produce are more than satisfactory in quality for digital use, like social media, Instagram, or recipe blogs.
• Professional food photographers still tend to prefer DSLR cameras, however, due to the increased control of different camera settings like shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, freedom with swapping lenses, and overall clarity of the final image, which results in a high-resolution image better suited for print publications like magazines or cookbooks.
• Food photography relies heavily on capturing the details. Invest in a macro lens. There are a handful of macro lenses ranging between 35mm and 60mm that allow a photographer great control in narrowing the depth of field, which is a desired effect for making the subject pop in the foreground. Some food photographers also prefer fixed lenses, which means the photographer has to move closer to or further from the subject instead of using a manual zoom on the camera; this provides the benefit of tightly controlling the frame while also focusing specifically on certain areas of the scene in real-time. Learn more about depth of field in our comprehensive guide.
• A tripod is the next most useful tool if you want to photograph food. It should be part of every food photographer’s arsenal. Some dishes, like a colorful grain bowl, are best shot from above, while other dishes, like an extra juicy burger, are best shot head-on. Sometimes a 45-degree angle will bring out the most appealing qualities in a dish. A tripod is particularly helpful for nabbing those perfect overhead shots, known as flatlays. That type of extreme angle could lead to shaky hands, which would mean an out-of-focus picture. Tripods minimize this shake, and also eliminate the presence of unwanted shadows made by a person hovering over a scene.

Learn more about picking the best camera lens in our comprehensive guide.

The final step in food photography involves post-processing with editing tools and software.

• Most food photographers prefer Adobe Lightroom to Photoshop due to the highly organized filing system, and the white balance, exposure, and contrast tools which pump up the true colors of an image.
• Lightroom is also available as a smartphone app, which makes it the blogger-preferred tool for creating beautiful images of food photography. The in-app camera feature has a RAW file mode that allows greater control over white balance without sacrificing any details or data due to image file compression (which is what JPEG files do when you shoot in the native phone camera).

There is so much more to food photography than taking pictures of a pretty plate of food (though the rise of Yelpers and social media users who photograph their restaurant meals would beg to differ!).

From styling to setting a scene to getting the perfect shot, food photography is an end-to-end creative outlet for everyone from seasoned recipe writers to budding food stylists and professional photographers alike.

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