Nowadays, more and more people like to take pictures of food. In addition to taking pictures when dining out, sometimes when cooking at home, it is perfect to take a photo as a souvenir. Here are 10 practical tips for photographing food. See if they are helpful to you.
1. Do not use the camera’s built-in flash
The light from the built-in flash is too hard and will cause strong shadows. At the same time, the light directly hits the surface of the food, making people feel very greasy.
2. Use a tripod
The advantage of using a tripod is not only that the shutter setting can be more flexible, but also that after the camera is fixed on the tripod, your hands can be free to concentrate on arranging the food being photographed. In addition, some tripods with a central axis that can be placed horizontally allow you to easily shoot vertically. After all, it is very tiring to bend down to shoot vertically!
3. Push up ISO
Telephoto lenses are sometimes used in food photography, and the vibration of hand-held shooting will be more obvious. Therefore, the shutter speed cannot be set too slow without a tripod. So don't be afraid to push the ISO higher sometimes to achieve a faster shutter.
4. Add some props, but not too many
When photographing food, in addition to photographing the food itself, you can also try to add some props to accompany it. These props can be the raw materials of food. If you want to make it simpler, you can also put some tableware and water glasses. But be careful not to put props awayThere are too many, but remember that the purpose of food photography is to draw the viewer’s attention to your food first, and then to the other props used to accompany it.
5. Don’t use too fancy utensils
Similar to point 4, overly fancy utensils will distract the viewer’s attention. Therefore, you need to avoid using utensils with too many patterns to display food. If you don’t think of using that color of utensils, a pure white dish is already very useful.
6. Try Top Shot
Many people are used to photographing food horizontally because this is a comfortable position. However, you can also try shooting vertically. Not only can this avoid the cluttered background, but it also leaves more space for the photographer to add text captions in post-production.
7. Crop phase is okay
Sometimes when shooting, you don’t have to insist that the entire dish be in the frame. Cropping some of the utensils and props can allow the photo to focus more on the dishes.
8. Use a telephoto lens
The lens most commonly used by the author of the original article is Baiwei, which is a 100mm macro lens. This lens can easily create a shallow depth of field to highlight objects, and also has a macro function for close-ups, making it very versatile.
9. Open the aperture wider
In response to point 8, open the aperture wider to create a shallow depth of field and highlight the food. It is also convenient to use a faster shutter speed to avoid camera shake. However, when photographing long-shaped food such as fish, be aware that an aperture that is too small will cause the food to leave the depth of field. Some food photographers use a tilt-shift lens to keep the food within the depth of field.
For information on how to use the Tilt-Shift Lens, you can read this article: A simple image to understand the principle of the Tilt-Shift Lens
10. Keep your food fresh
Fresh food can increase the appetite of viewers, and the main way to keep the fresh appearance of food when photographing is to maintain the luster and shape of the food. Commercial food photography involves coating food with oil to increase its shine, or using fake food to maintain the shape of the dish. But of course you can’t do this when eating out, so the most important thing when shooting is speed. For example, meats such as beef that turn dull quickly, or noodles and noodles whose soup is quickly absorbed, you should hurry up when shooting!
