Quick Tips for Great Food Photography

14th March 2023

Quick Tips for Great Food Photography

One specialized genre of photography is food photography. It comes useful in designing cook books and magazines or to just click photos of food you have sampled in different places.

 Here are some tips for great pictures which you can learn from advanced photography classes in Delhi:

Select Fresh Ingredients

If skin of fruits and vegetables look damaged, scarred or wrinkled, it is time to get new ones. Another idea is to click photos in an angled position, which hides the bad sides. This seems like an obvious fact but many times, we fail to do this thing. You may be photographing food items really close-up such that the most minor flaws will show up. You need to be ruthless while buying food items, chucking away those with flaws.

Focus on Lighting

For appetizing looking shots and fine texture, backlight is important. This will also permit any steam to be discerned in the image. Smoke or steam will show up tremendously when lit from behind. At the same time, dramatic lighting need not be fancy.

Keep Things Simple

Remove stuff from the photo that you don’t need. Remove things from the table which are distracting and zero down to just one plate of food. In case, food that is cooked is unattractive, simply show only a portion. For instance, brown soup may not look visually stimulating, but in case shooting it is in your agenda, use creative props like silver cutlery. When you are in doubt, use the credo- ‘more is less’.

Use Interesting Props

Use simple but great props like raw ingredients, plates or cutlery. Stick to plates without patterns for food to stand out more.

Take Before and After Shots

Showing the steps for preparing a dish, starting from dicing ingredients to simmering them on fire and finally serving in a plate, makes for interesting photos. Show one shot before cooking and one after cooking or step by step images. This works well for items which do not look good after cooking. For instance, green soup cooking in the pot looks good but after blending, does not look so appealing; so, shoot while it is getting cooked.

Add a Human Touch

By including a hand stirring the pot or holding a plate permits you to reveal scale and add a human touch, which makes the image real and appealing to viewers.

Don’t Cook Totally

Even though vegetables and meat may have cooked well, they keep cooking after being removed from heat. Hence to keep them looking juicy and plump, remove them from the oven or stove a little early. Take the photos and then return it to the fire for remaining cooking time. This will avoid the ingredients in the dish from looking shrivelled at the end of cooking.

Let Plates Be Clean

The props and plates holding the food must be 100% flaw free, clean, and pristine. When you shoot up close, as required by most dishes, any imperfection will show up and make the dish look incomplete and messy.

Use Different Camera Angles

Attempt to shoot food items from different angles. Shoot tilted/ directly overhead/ into the plate or edge of table, etc. Get creative and try to display food items in a distinctive way which will appeal to your audience.

These are all some top tips for food photography.