Tips and tricks to use this thing right.
You will find almost anything online, you will even find free tips on how to improve you photography. Any blogger, especially food blogger, will like some free advice. The following links all have a “10 tips on how to improve” list and they are all very similar. Nevertheless, it is work reading through them all.
The Serious Eats Guide to Food Photography
Photojojo’s The Ten Tastiest Food Photography Tips
Photoble’s 10 Food Photography Tips to make it looks tasty
The most interesting thing I read was about what not to photograph: “Know what not to shoot. Some things will just never look delicious, no matter how hard you try. Meals that are all the same color and brown sauces are best left alone. And tasty though they may be, we defy you to make a haggis look good.” Think about it! Monotone foods don’t make great pictures because nothing sticks out. I’d like to argue that you can make haggis look good, maybe not as good looking as fresh strawberries, but nevertheless it should be possible.
The last pictures I uploaded here were of soups and both are quite monotonous: lentil soup is mainly brown with some specs of orange (carrots) and white-yellow (potatoes). The colour of Soljanka ranges from red to orange which also doesn’t make it easy for good pictures.
Brown soup, not the best for a picture.
So what to do?
Personally, I decided to go ahead anyway and take pictures. If I post a recipe I want my readers to see what I made so they understand who it should look like. It might not look all too delicious to some people but others hopefully enjoy it.
You can try to enhance the pictures by adding some little details:
– have a nice plate that contrasts the food (this rule is true for all pictures)
– use a nice set up with napkins, maybe a spoon
– add colour to the dish by adding fresh herbs like parsley or dill
– make sure your lighting is good, use natural lighting if possible
A lot of the same colour, the white sour cream helps, a little.
Taking food pictures is certainly not easy and I envy many of those food bloggers out there who have great lighting and lovely set ups for their food. I can only say that I am gradually improving and lists like those above certainly help for you will think about how you take pictures. Sometimes I am a bit depressed though because my results are just not that crisp as others, or the set up is not so sophisticated. On the other hand, I try and I believe that is what counts.
Happy photographing!
Baking in Saskatoon 