Food photography tips for bloggers

Food PR and food photography have recently gained popularity.

The art of food photography is a synergy of many things really. It involves your skills as a photographer, which in itself is a fusion between skills with a camera and your understanding of lighting. But it also involves culinary abilities as well as presentation skills. Culinary skills is not an absolute must have. You can always take help from family or friends to conjure something up. But presentation skills are very important. This is a specialized skill, much like photography or cooking. If you are serious about making a career in food photography you can either hire a specialist food stylist, which can be expensive though, or pick up a few skills of your own. As a food photographer you may not have a complete mastery over all of these skills. But certainly it does not harm you either to possess some knowledge. It is only going to improve you as a food photographer.

Natural light is wonderful. Being a natural light photographer I always prefer to shoot with it if it’s in abundance. In an open airy kitchen light is usually abundant. But not all photographers have access to a large open airy kitchen. If there is a problem with shooting inside the kitchen, bring a table out on the patio or garden and shoot under the open sky. Alternatively, you could use a large window in the living room. I would still use a few accessories like a couple of light stands holding up a diffuser cloth. It works to reduce the intensity of light. In other situations you can use artificial daylight balanced lights. LED lights produce soft, white light which is ideal for that purpose. I would also use a diffuser, white cloth and some props. More on that later.

Contrasting lighting can be achieved by positioning the key light slightly away from the subject of your photo and preferably placed at a steeper angle. I personally prefer placing the light a little towards the back of the food. This does two things really. First it creates a glistening reflection on the top of the food, which is perfect for certain items like crisp French fries, grilled chicken etc., but it also tend to pop the colors. But above all it increases contrast in your images.

If you don’t have too much of artificial light don’t worry. As already stated, natural light is good enough to start making excellent food photos. At the most you need a large window which preferably do not receive too much of direct sunlight. Direct sunlight isn’t suitable for photographing all types of food, except when you need to deliberately get some high contrast going. A large window is the ideal source for a diffused light source. Diffused source is ideal for soft, shadow-less images.

The camera angle can accentuate or deflate an image very easily. So, it is important to get the camera angle correct. There are two choices really. Going in from a steep angle or going in from a low angle.

Larger items like a cake or a club sandwich or a burger can be shot from a low angle, accentuating their size. When shooting a club sandwich or a burger you need to keep in mind a couple of things. Shooting from top will almost always focus on the top layer. That means the fillings and the other layers never get any attention. That’s not something that you would want.