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  • Tips for Taking Better Food Photos
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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.
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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  
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.
The best angle for food photography
Some dishes lend themselves to an overhead (helicopter) shot, especially when there is interesting geometry like this pic. There's nothing wrong with it, but try other things. It can lack dimension. Shot at 90°
Tips for photographing for your food blog
Soupy dishes or anything in a bowl will benefit from higher angles to encompass the dish. Shot ~ 60°
How to photography taller dishes like hamburgers
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°
Tampa food blog photos can include restaurants in the background
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.
Instructions for food bloggers in Tampa
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.
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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.