Tips for taking better food photos

Tips for Taking Better Food Photos
Whether at home, in a restaurant, or in your studio, these tips will help!

Most of the food photography I do is "run and gun". Just like you, I go into restaurants, order a dish, and shoot in whatever conditions the place allows. Even when I shoot food for print, sometimes with the full cooperation of the kitchen, I can be limited by being in a crowded restaurant with bad light and an anxious chef. There's no controlling the environment or minimizing the chaos. So I've tried to perfect the run and gun method over the years and am sharing my tips and techniques here.
Every day hundreds of thousands of food images are uploaded to the web. Many of them are not so good. With the popularity of Instagram, Yelp, and others, lot's of folks like you are trying their hand at food photography. Cool! Make em' good! It doesn’t take thousands of dollars worth of equipment or tons of studio lights to take great food photos. Mostly it takes time, patience, and a little know-how. Here are some simple tips to help you start getting great food shots.

#1. Don't Be Lazy!

7/26/2018

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Here's what not to do as a food photographer

Don't be that guy (or gal)! Courtesy of Yelp

I know, I know... you already thought of this. But look around the web or on Instagram and see how little effort some people put into taking food shots. By just putting in a few minutes of thought and a smidge of practice, your images will improve dramatically. In a restaurant, get off your butt and move around if you need to. Ask for a table close to the window if there's still daylight outside. Use natural light if

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#2. Take Your Time

7/25/2018

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Here's what not to do with food photography

Take time to make sure you are focused. Blurry shots never work!. Photo from Yelp.

Rushed = sucks! Your shoot starts when you walk into the place. Pay attention to details (Tip #6). Are you taking one shot or going to tell a bigger story? Order wisely. Take a shot and then take the camera down from your face. Study the dish. Now take a different shot. IS IT FOCUSED? CHECK AGAIN! Then shoot your dish from another angle (see tip #8 ). Breath. Recompose. Shoot again. Even after you learn decent composition skills (Tip #9), you don’t always nail it on the first shot. Sometimes you don’t know until you get home and look. As your skills improve it won’t take as long and even now you don’t have to shoot until your food gets cold. But, take your time. Spin the plate and look. Would that red tomato look better in

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#3. Use Adequate Equipment

7/24/2018

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This is a typical bad phone shot (from Yelp) Newer phones are getting better photos but many still offer exposure problems. Trying to shoot good photos with a bad camera is like trying to write poetry with a broken pencil.

This tip is no brainer. The camera on your phone may not be the best for taking food pics unless it is a recent model. If you want to be a good food photographer, get a decent camera (or newer phone) and learn your camera settings! If you’re not familiar with how your camera works or what shutter speed, aperture, and ISO control, consider taking a class or looking it up online. Those three things that are most important here and they don't take long to begin to master if you practice. Getting consistently great photos means having a camera that can take good shots and the knowledge to use it.
You don't need thousands of dollars to get a camera that takes good food photos. Check your budget, do some research, and get a decent rig.

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#4 Color Matters

7/23/2018

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Learn complimentary colors in food photography

Browns and blues are complimentary colors and with a splash of red make for a pleasing color palette.

Good color = better food photography. Take a few minutes and learn about simple color theory including complementary colors. Browns and blues typically go well together. Reds and greens often go together. Reds almost always photograph well so if you have a dish with red

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#5. Make White Things White

7/22/2018

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The left picture's white balance is too warm, rendering an orange/red tint. The right side is the corrected WB

Without getting too technical, white balance has to do with the tone of your photo. You've seen those shots that look like they have an orange or blue tint. That's a white balance problem. Most cameras come from the factory set on auto white balance (AWB). Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. So, if the tone (not exposure) of your shots is off, adjust the white balance to make the whites in the photo white.

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#6. Get Involved

7/21/2018

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I saw the sushi chef preparing this dish and simply asked if I could photograph him. A process shot can be so much more interesting than a shot at the table. It gets your viewers involved in the food prep. If the kitchen is busy or off limits, forget it. But it never hurts to ask. This is where you gotta have your chops down in operating your camera! Shutter speed and depth of field matter!

Ask questions and have a sense of curiosity about what you are eating. Pay attention. See if you can talk to the chef, the owner, or ask your server. Educating yourself about the process of how your food was made will help you take better food photos. Plus, sometimes if you show

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#7. Know How to Use Depth of Field

7/20/2018

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Know what depth of field (DOF) is (and isn’t). This kind of goes along with tip #3. If you want your photos to look professional, you need to know how to control foreground and background blurring (Bokeh). Adding too much blur, in other words leaving key elements out of focus, is for amateurs! Control what your images reveal to guide your viewer's eye to what you want them to see.
Check out this meatloaf photo . It's hard to know where the photographer wants us to look. The lighting is okay, but nothing is really in focus here except one little spot of red in the middle. It's a cool composition but poorly executed because the depth of field

Meatloaf. Courtesy of Yelp.

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#8. Get The Correct (Not Always Right) Angle

7/19/2018

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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

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#9. Composition Matters

7/18/2018

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The subject of this shot is the Bucatini Alla Vaccinara in the bowl, but moving it over and including flat ware makes the dish look ready to eat. Using the rule of thirds added interest and context.

Should your subject go in the middle of the shot (not usually), be shot from above (see tip #8), or shot using the rule of thirds or other compositional elements? Along with the angle at which you shoot, placing the elements in the frame to make an interesting composition takes some experimentation, and experience . Do you want to shoot the dish alone, with flatware in the

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#10. No Diagonal Shots!

7/17/2018

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C'mon people. Please, be careful with such odd angles! Image from Instagram

No diagonal camera angles!! It’s a pet peeve of mine. I’m not sure why people shoot food and drinks with their camera cocked sideways. It looks ridiculous. For food photos, stay flat unless there’s a compositional reason not to do so. Concentrate on the XY axis, not the Z axis. Do

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#11. Add A Human Element

7/16/2018

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How to make your food blog photos better

Adding hands or other human elements to a shot adds interest and helps viewers connect with what's happening.

Add a human element like hands, a server, or kitchen staff. You can use your hands or someone else’s. It gives your viewer something to connect with. But, be careful. People move! So you need to watch your shutter speed to keep them from blurring.

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#12. Shoot to Frame Size

7/15/2018

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Here's a typical shot taken with a phone in a 16 x 9 aspect ratio (it's oblong). If I later need to crop this photo to use it in portrait orientation (tall instead of wide) for a publication, I'm out of luck. I need to think about what size and shape photo I need before I shoot. Sometimes it's best to shoot both tall and wide if you aren't sure what the end use is.

Shoot to frame. All that means is to figure out in advance what the final image size (aspect ratio) needs to be and make sure your image fits. For example, most DSLRs shoot in a 2:3 aspect ratio (frames are 2 inches tall and 3 inches wide. It's how you get a 4" x 6" image ). Some phones shoot in a 16:9 aspect ratio with newer phones going to 18:9. If you are posting to places like Instagram, it only accepts 1:1 aspect ratios (square). If you try to pack an 18:9 photo into a 1:1 format, things can go terribly wrong. You can still shoot with an 18:9 (or any

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#13. Filter Wisely (or not at all)

7/14/2018

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Adding a blue or high contrast filter to food might be creative, but it doesn't reveal the food very well. Image from Instagram

Photo filters on different photo apps like Instagram and online photo editors can be fun. They can also enhance the look of your images in a positive way. But use them judiciously. Unless there’s a reason to turn the white rice blue or fade the color in an image, take it easy on the

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#14. Eat to Shoot or Shoot to Eat?

7/13/2018

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I traveled 45 minutes on a scorching hot summer day in July to eat corned beef and potato latkes at Barney Greengrass Deli in Manhattan. I researched restaurants before going to the city and mapped them out in advance. It was an awesome experience with great food and New York attitude. These kind of experiences keep me motivated and looking for more.

One of the driving forces in my food photography is the wish to gain new experiences and eat new things. I eat to shoot. I will order and eat something because I want to shoot it. I make it a point to go to new places and try things out of my comfort zone. I look on the menu for things I haven't tried and dishes that will make a great food shots. It forces me try get new

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#15. How to Stay Motivated

7/12/2018

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Taking a class, traveling, using a new piece of equipment, and starting a blog are some different ideas on how to stay motivated and find new ways to shoot

It's easy to lose interest in photography and that's okay. I get it that everyone is not as fanatical as I when it comes to shooting.
But when I ask some people why they don't shoot more they say they just don't have the time. Then I ask them if I were to give them $500 every time they went out and shot, would they shoot more. Most people grin and affirm. That's a motivation issue not a time management problem. And no, I'm not sending you 500 bucks. If you want to stay interested and motivated, here are some ideas.

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#16. Practice. A Lot. Have Fun!

7/11/2018

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Now go take some good food photos! Practice, practice, practice. I say it all the time to students. If you want to be a better photographer you have got to take a lot of pictures. It’s like any other art form. You want to be a good writer? You have to write a lot. If you want to be a good painter, paint and paint some more! Perhaps the most important tip is to have fun! Get together with others, join a foodie meet-up, or invite people over for a scrumptious meal and a night of food photography. Go on picnics with colorful food (and great natural light). If this becomes a chore, put the camera down for a while and come back. Now go create!

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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!

© Chip Weiner. All Rights Reserved. The use of any of the content or images herein without the express written consent of the copyright holder is prohibited.

Tips for Taking Better Food PhotosWhether at home, in a restaurant, or in your studio, these tips will help!

Tips for Taking Better Food Photos
Whether at home, in a restaurant, or in your studio, these tips will help!