Yielding to a popular claim from blog readers, today I’d like to spark both your culinary instincts and passion for photography by introducing you to 11 food photography tips and tricks.
Let me advance that food photography is one of the most difficult there is, it is a professional specialization. There are very few professionals dedicated to food photography, but generally few do it well. Normally those photos of McDonalds-like restaurants where giant, delicious burgers look crunchy, with the burger steak poking out of the side, melting those two squeezing slices of cheddar cheese with its heat? These are photos that require hours of preparation. In fact, in addition to the photographer, sometimes there is even the figure of the Food Stylist, someone independent of the photographer whose job is exclusively to “beautify” the dishes with a series of techniques and tricks that make food more attractive.
- Food photography is an uncompetitive professional field.
- But it generally presents many entry difficulties.
- Aspiring professional photographers generally prefer to photograph people rather than food.
Even with this difficulty, we can all be attracted to this type of photography (even if only in a personal and amateur way). If this is your case, today I offer you a series of 11 tips that you can start applying from this moment to immortalize those exquisite dishes that you love to eat. To liven up reading and open my mouth, I inserted the strange photograph throughout the article as a source of inspiration.
And will you tell me why precisely? What do I know . . . they were the ones who came to me hey, what are we going to do?
1- Be fast. Some parts of the dish can be damaged “visually” if you wait too long. For example, if the dish has melted cheese, it will harden in a short time and the dish will start to look less appetizing in the photo. Actually, you need to know what you want to photograph and how you want to do it before the dish is served, so you don’t waste a second.
2- Take care of the details. For example, if you are photographing meat on the grill, make sure these grill marks are clearly visible on the meat, this will make it more attractive.
3- Avoid excesses. Nothing is more disgusting than the image of a plate full of overflowing food. In food photography, small amounts are more successful.
4- Photography with natural light. Toujours. Il are no exceptions. Photograph in broad daylight and shoot near a curtain window. This will make your plate as important as it needs to be.
5- Play with depth of field. For that you need to have a lens like this and apply the technique that I have mentioned several times for portraits, but this time with the iron.
6- Focus on the point of the dish closest to the camera. This tip combined with the previous one of shallow depth of field will make the part closest to the plate look sharp, very sharp, while anything else going backwards will lose focus and sharpness.
7- Pull the level of the plate or almost. If you frame the photo from top to bottom, it will in most cases have an unattractive perspective. Instead, coming down almost to the level of the target and shooting it up close from there creates a greater sense of closeness and realism in the viewer’s mind.
8- Some foods look better on a piece of paper inside the plate, the salty or oily dishes do not allow this rule, but others like sandwiches, burgers, nuggets and others do, give it an authentic and very artisanal touch.
9- If possible, place your dishes on a wooden table. The wood looks great as a background in the photos of the dishes, transmits authenticity, tradition and simplicity.
10- Do not serve food in the best plate you have, nor bother to unfold this tablecloth with artistic designs that you have saved for special occasions. Remember that in the photos you want to take, the protagonist must be the food. Therefore, it is not interesting to spoil your moment of glory or divide the viewer’s attention between food, container, tablecloth, etc. People should look at the plate, not the tablecloth.
11- Muévete. No make the mistake of taking all the photos from the same perspective. Sometimes walking around the table and taking photos from different points of view can reveal some cool photos that, from the original perspective, didn’t seem so interesting.
As I said at the beginning, gastronomic photography is a whole professional career that requires great logistics and dedication, but there are times when, applying simple tips like the ones I mentioned (did you rate them?), You can be pleasantly surprised. , in addition to the delicious dish?