How to Take Food Photos 📷
Everyone eats with their eyes first.
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Everyone eats with their eyes first.
Last updated
Was this helpful?
High quality food photos are essential to attracting new customers. This guide will show you how to take the time and intention to plate your food beautifully and capture it—we promise it'll pay off! High quality food photos can mean the difference between a diner skipping your menu or becoming a lifelong customer.
Below are some photography tips and examples to help you get started 👇
Find a spot near a window with diffused natural lighting. You’ll want to set up your plate so that natural light is hitting it from as many angles as possible.
If you have to take the photo at night, try to avoid colored/yellow lights - and no flash, ever!
When taking photos of food, always think about which angle to shoot from to make the most of the subject. Shooting from above is often the best choice to capture the full frame.
Another good angle to use is the 3/4 angle (25-75 degrees). You can usually show the front and surface of the dish, as well as the sides for more depth. Also best used for tall foods.
Use light, dark, or textured background (wooden surfaces work great) to make your food pop! Light colored tablecloths, parchment paper, marble/granite counters look good behind full plates of food.
Clean up clutter out of the background.
Props can make your photo more interesting by telling a story and showing context.
Strategically plate your food so that it highlights your dish's best qualities and looks neat. Make it look as appetizing as possible!
Make food look bigger and plate fuller with medium/smaller plates.
Clean the plate of smudges/untidy details.
Add garnishing such as parsley leaves or chopped herbs, lime wedge etc to help with this.
Hold your phone steady to avoid blur. May take a few tries, so take several.
No flash!
Wipe the lens to make sure there are no smudge marks
Hold down a spot on your viewfinder to lock focus To prevent your iPhone's camera from attempting to grab a different subject in the frame, it can be incredibly useful to lock your focus point on your current subject.
Blur the background using 'Portrait' mode
Photo editing app
Iphone:
Android:
One more thing. Make sure your dish description clearly gives extra information about your dish (ingredients, special preparation methods or origins). Something as quick & simple as this can do the trick: "Lamb shank cooked in finely chopped onion, leek, scallions, chives, herbs and dried lime with basmati rice."
Specify quantity and portion sizes if applicable. If you make sauces, tortillas, pastas, etc from scratch, definitely make that known.
--- Questions/comments? Feel free to message 'Kenji - Foodnome' on Slack :)
Turn HDR on for higher quality photos ( for android)
More tips for iphone photography -------->
Quick article about importance of food photography for marketing -------->
