Food Photography
If you’ve viewed any of the recipes on this site you’ll have seen the photo’s of the dishes I have taken. Photography has been an on and off hobby of mine since I was a teenager but taking photos of food is something new to me so I’m not entirely happy with the results I’ve achieved so far.
In an effort to approve my ability I did a bit of a search on google and was a little surprised to only find a handful of sites that could help me. But I did pick up some simple pointers so I thought I would share them.
- Get in close, make sure the food is the feature of the photo. If you’ve got a picture of a plate in the middle of a big dining table then the food is going to be lost.
- Shoot quickly, most cooked food will start to lose it’s visual appeal within minutes of being served up. Take the time to set up the photo before your food is ready so all you need to do is plonk the plate down and press the shutter
- Try and use natural light. When your taking close ups of food, the flash is likely to reflect and create unwanted shadows from the dish and surrounding surfaces. I do most of my cooking after dark so for the moment I’ve been using the flash. When i get a chance I’m going to experiment with a few different other light types and see if I can improve my results
When the budget allows I will get myself set up with a digital SLR, but for now I’ll have to make do with my little compact camera for my food photography.
Food Photography Links:
Flickr Groups
Professional looking food photography
Update: I’ve just found a another excellent link for food photography.
Matt Bites has an excellent tip that involves drinking wine to help with your pictures !
[...] A while back I posted an article about food photography. I hadn’t realised until now but the amount of photo’s I’ve posted (and the number of posts) on this site has dropped significantly and I think I’ve worked out why. [...]