Mouthwatering Food Photography

Food photography has taken social media by storm.  From personal Facebook and Instagram posts to professional bloggers and restaurant sites, someone is posting pictures of delicious, mouthwatering food everywhere you look.  Believe it or not, there are tricks to mastering the skill of making a piece of Tilapia or a bowl of lettuce look so appetizing that you will change your plans for dinner in an instant and try to replicate what you see in the photo.  Try these tips for creating and taking your own mouthwatering food photos.

Keep It Simple The food is the main attraction in your photo, so you want the setting to be simple so that it doesn’t distract from the main event.  Use a plain tablecloth, clean table, counter or other plain background.  You can choose to harmonize your colors with the season or with the food by selecting plates on which to place the food that correlate with the seasons or holiday.  Just make sure that the color of the plates or bowls aren’t the same color as the food causing the food to blend in with the dishes.  

Lighting is Key It’s all about the lighting when it comes to food photography.  Of course, natural lighting is the optimal choice, but not always practical or available.  Never use your built in flash when photographing food.  This may cause a glare to appear in your shots.  However, you can try using a single light source like the Nikon LD-1000 LED Movie Light from Beachcamera.com to create a natural look with one set of shadows placed anywhere you choose.  You can use it to create a backlight perfect for showing off steam on those straight from the oven dishes.

Variety is the Spice of Life The same is true when it comes to photographing food.  Shoot from a variety of angles including from the side, from above or at a 45-degree angle allowing for different perspectives.  Take multiple pictures as you move around the food to see which angle works best.  Remember, when using a DSLR camera from Beachcamera.com, the number of shots you can take is almost limitless.  You can always delete the photos that didn’t turn out quite the way you expected.

Focus on the Food Depending on what it is you truly want to focus on in your shot, you’ll want to play around with your depth of field when photographing food.  When wanting to focus on a portion of the food, or a piece of the food, try a shallow depth of field.  This will result in the closest object being in focus while separating the background by blurring it out a bit.  Use a greater depth of field when you want a larger area of the image to be in focus, like an entire platter of food.

Step by Step Some of the best shots might actually come during the meal prep.  Let your viewers go behind the scenes and see what actually goes into making the final entrée by taking photos of each step as you go.  A great idea for the first shot is a grouping of all of the ingredients that will be going into the creation.  Set up a tabletop tripod from Beachcamera.com so you can capture all of the slicing, dicing and mixing along the way as well.  Take pictures from several angles of the food cooking on the stove or baking in the oven because sometimes these photos are more enticing than the final product. Use these five basic food photography tips, and you’ll be on your way to whipping up some mouthwatering photographs of your own in no time!