Hi, my name is Samuel Medina, I’m a hobby photographer and I love taking photos of almost anything. This is my first post and today I want to share with you, the tips and tricks that I’ve learned to make your food photos catch the eye and make people want to try that specific dish. Lets go! (examples at the end!)
1. Light.
The most important thing in photography.
Avoid using flash. Smartphones are getting better in low light conditions, but using flash is a NO. Your photo will look flat, the color and texture will distort, the shadows will look terrible and it wouldn’t look appetizing at all. Is preferable to take it without flash and later compensate the exposure with an app.
Always use natural light when possible. It makes food look more tasty, fresh and natural. Colors look realistic and volume and textures are noticeable. In low light condition watch out for motion blur.
2. Angles.
As people, food also has angles where it looks better.
Don’t take the photo so far from your subject, it will be more difficult to catch the attention.
You can try almost any angle you think looks tasty. Close ups are the best, you want to make people think they’re smelling and tasting the food. Shots at 3/4 are also a good option because it prints a sense of deep, and volume. You can try shots from above to give a general view if the table and other dishes looks good together.
3. Background.
Less is more.
Avoid capturing other people, dishes, things (smartphones, keys, napkins, etc) in your photos, all of them will be distracting.
The simpler, the better. Clean your scene (as mentioned above) before shot. Look for solid color backgrounds when possible, if not, try other tricks, which brings me to…
4. Focus.
Yes, use that portrait mode on your phone.
Avoid using general shots, as what you want to show is your specific dish.
Use portrait mode (is not just for people) to get that bokeh effect, blur the background and pop up your food even more. Also look for sharpness. Less distraction, more tasty.
5. Edit.
Time to get some apps
Stop!, look at your shot one more time, is it tilted?, is it blurry?, is it discolored?
A little help always come in handy when shooting. there’s a lot of apps that can help you tweaking the colors, crop, zoom, sharpness, etc to make your photo look perfect. I personally recommend Adobe Lightroom or Snapseed, but almost any app (even the native one on your phone) could do a good job.
Keep this in mind next time you try a new dish and wanna share it with the world!, also, don’t forget to tell us why you liked it and why you wanna share it.
Here’s some examples:
Hope you liked it! Keep shooting!