Food Photography: 5 tips to take good food pictures

This post about food photography is from a member of the Voyageer Contributor Team. Find out how to have your post featured here!

Well, I am sure that at least once you have typed #foodporn on Instagram looking for a place to eat in your city. For this, we have the food influencers/bloggers. We all love food bloggers and honestly, I don’t think we give them enough credits. Tell me that it didn’t happen to you ever to just watch a picture of a tasty food and the next second to crave for it and to think that you would love to go to that restaurant and eat that? It always happens to me, even more, I sometimes pick the place I will go to dine, based on Instagram hashtags, I never went wrong until now.

Ok, so, how do I prepare for my food photos? Even though I can’t call myself a food influencer, I am not even close to that!

Preparation is everything

Ok, so nothing is more annoying than a hungry table full of guests especially if they need to wait for you to take your perfect shot of the food. Therefore, your first mission will be a good preparation! Choose in advance what plate you will use, and which cutlery or glass you will include and of course if you want to add any other elements to your picture. Additionally, you should try to take some test photos to see if you enjoy your composition or anything needs to be changed to have the perfect shot. Nobody likes a dirty glass for example, so you need to have every detail in order to have the most attractive photo. This way, if well prepared in advance, you just need to get your meal and take the perfect one shot! Bon appetite!

A tasty styling

The perfect food shot needs to be stylised. For example, add a few drops of dressing instead of your normal serving dressing will make your food look better and once you finished with the picture, you can just add more, actually as much as you like. A brown stew will make you fresher by adding some green fresh herbs.

Choose for natural light

Nothing is better than natural light which will reflect brightly in your food. Tasty food photography demands natural daylight, so try to put your plate as closer you can to a window to enjoy this light. Don’t use the direct sunlight since that will create harsh strong shadows. Trick: A piece of foam or cardboard illuminates the shadows and there you have your perfect shot!

Experiment with perspective

A good perspective makes your food picture to tell a story which will make it more interesting, especially if that perspective is taken from above (also called flat-lay) These type of pictures score quite high on Instagram in terms of likes. But don’t stop here, play with the composition of your shot, go for a close up, take a picture aside, … Go for food photography from different angles and your perfect food shot is there, for sure!

Play with your food

A food picture that looks extra yummy? Play with your food! (Sorry mama, but this time it really works.) Cut a piece of your cake or crumble some of your brownie. Customized food looks a lot nicer!

Food photography: Getting started

Roll up your sleeves and fly to the kitchen! Keep in mind my 5 tips and make the perfect food shot. Do you want to bet that your picture will make everyone crave for your dish even though those are just some French fries?

Gabriela is a longtime expat (originally from Bucharest) and traveler, food lover and a constant day-dreamer and who is very keen to share her stories about traveling and exploring our beautiful planet. She is the voice behind “I am Foodie Traveler”, a collection of stories and impressions from her wanderings around the world.

Relatively new the blogosphere, but very passionate about traveling and storytelling, she wants to inspire others to travel and to see the world with their own eyes.

You can read her work at I am Foodie Traveler or get in touch with her on Facebook or Instagram and watch her adventures on YouTube.