Proud Photography Blog

Professional photographers say that “If you can shoot food, you can shoot anything.” The main cause for this is the insufficient time you have to actually take your shots. From the time food is kept on the table its look starts deteriorating. Steam stops emerging from it, ice cream begins to melt, shiny food stops shining and so on. At times a photographer has time to take only 5 or 6 pictures before the food stops looking its best.

Food photography is one of the toughest fields to work in. In fashion photography the model can be asked to keep changing the pose until the photographer is satisfied. In scenic photography the suns angle takes time to change and the change may be for the better. Portraits are posed and the human subject is amenable to changing his position as needed. But with food the photographer has to make use of what he gets. He can’t tell a master chef to make another dish because the first one looks stale after a few minutes.

They say three things make a great dish – the taste, the smell and the look. You can describe the taste and smell, but you can’t actually convey them. The only one that can actually be given to a person not present at the table is the picture of the food and often this means more than all the words telling us how it tastes and smells. Imagine a cookbook without pictures. Or an advertisement for food products. It just won’t work.

Here are some tips to help you take great food photographs.

•    Find one aspect of the food you want to highlight and focus on that. Is it the glistening cut on a joint of meat? Or the steam rising from a bowl of soup. Make these types of things you focal point and let the rest of the picture just support it.
•    Use soft lighting. Over bright or harsh lighting can make the food look artificial – almost as if it has been painted.
•    Minimize the shadows. Food photography does not require a dark area to counter point the light ones.
•    Play around with depth of field for changing the accent of the photograph.
•    With multi colored dishes, play around with the lighting to balance to reflection from bright colors (red, yellows etc) and dark ones (browns, greens etc.)

Okay since you have only a few minutes to think about and do all this, you need to have a mock up ready in advance. Have the plates, cutlery, glasses and everything ready and in place and have everything set up just the way you want it so you can save time when the food arrives.

There are few “tools” every food photographer should have ready with him:
•    Dulling spray to educe the reflection from polished silverware
•    Super glue for holding items that slip off place.
•    Toothpicks for holding sandwiches and the like together. The toothpicks can be later removed with editing software.
•    Cotton swabs for cleaning up minute crumbs and spills.
•    Tweezers for placing small item in the middle of large complex dishes