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  • Tips for Taking Better Food Photos
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#8. Get The Correct (not always right) Angle

Picture
Shooting a bowl of soup is different than shooting a tall dish. A bowl of soup is flat and needs to be shot from a higher angle than a hamburger or something with more height on the plate. This is where experimentation, creativity, and experience comes in. Overhead helicopter  shots (90°) have become very popular in magazines like Bon Appétit, where 90% of the photos are shot from directly overhead. I just don’t know why, except that it makes for a repeatable layout. Stale, but repeatable. (There goes my gig with Bon Appétit). Bottom line is, mix it up and understand what angle works best with different dishes, heights, and textures. ​Sandwiches rarely look good flat. Slice it at an angle and stack one half on top of or aside the other to see and shoot the cross section. As you stack it, lower the camera angle.
A good food blog includes good photographs
Some shots lend themselves to an overhead (helicopter) shot. There's nothing wrong with it, but try other things. It lacks dimension. Shot at 90°
Foodies need to know the right angle
Soupy dishes need higher angles to encompass the dish. Shot ~ 60°
Tall hamburgers should be shot low
Taller dishes need lower angles to help your viewer see what you saw. This burger shot from a higher angle would not have the same impact. Shot ~ 20°
The best food photography includes the best angles
Vanilla Bean Belgian waffles with bananas, strawberries and whipped cream. Shot at 0° along with in house art in the frame to show the character of the restaurant, also known as an environment shot.
Cut a sandwich in hlaf
Halving and stacking a sandwich, especially one with colorful ingredients like this Hummus and Veggie sandwich, makes for a more colorful and inviting image than a closed sandwich.
More tips for better restaurant photos
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Chip Weiner is a Tampa food blogger and an award winning freelance photographer specializing in portraiture, food photography and photojournalism . He has been a photography instructor for over 10 years and teaches Tampa photography classes throughout the year.  Have a suggestion for a food event or restaurant? Contact him here

For information on  photography classes and workshops, feel free to call me or look under the Tampa Photography Classes section of my website. Photo 101 is by far the most popular!  I also give private individual lessons on camera operation and making better photographs and would love to work with you one on one to make you a better photographer. Photography instruction gift certificates are also available. They make great gifts for the photo enthusiast in your life. Let's talk about what you need! 813-786-7780. See you in class!

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