5 Food Photography Fixes
Overview
Food photography is different from other types of photography—it’s constrained by the limitations of what light if best for food, the textures and lifespan of food (eh-hem, ice cream melts, cheese congeals, cereal gets soggy… you get the idea)—but it also has so much more potential than some other types of photography because food is universal and it’s highly sensory.
In food photography, your goal is to create a positive sensory “pre-experience” for the viewer. If you want them to test your recipe, visit your restaurant, or click or tap the photo to learn more, you have to really put them in the moment—you want a mouth-watering depiction of the food so that people literally have to resist the urge not to engage.
“How can I make this look more scrumptious?”
This is the starting place for every great food photo shoot. Whether you’re shooting for your recipe blog or a restaurant, this is the question at the heart of the styling process, though how you apply it will be different.
If you’re a food blogger, the sky’s the limit on how you style your food. You can garnish with chives or chocolate swirls; you can slice that pie into eight pieces or three; you can drizzle or dollop or dip to your heart’s content. Why? Because it’s your creation that you’re sharing with the world!
If you’re a brand photographer shooting for a restaurant, the way you make the food you’re shooting look more scrumptious or decadent will differ because you’re capturing someone else’s creation to share with the world. They might not serve that dish garnished with chives or chocolate curls; they might slice that pie into sixths, not thirds; they might not ever drizzle, or they might charge extra for the dip. Therefore you’ll be relying on other tools, such as adding motion (see the tongue-twister below!), to make the image appear more scrumptious.
Dip, Drizzle, Pour, Sprinkle—Splash, Whip, Slice, or Stack!
When approaching any kind of session, your creativity will fall somewhere on the spectrum of, “I can think of absolutely nothing to do here,” to “I have too many ideas, I don’t even know where to begin!” On the days when your creativity falls short, I want you to use a tongue-twister I created for myself, which is, “Dip, drizzle, pour, or sprinkle—splash, whip, slice, or stack!”
When I use this semi-rhyme to get me started, I almost always can find an opportunity I had missed before to make the food appear more scrumptious. I can dip that lobster into butter sauce; I can drizzle those pancakes with syrup; I can pour the sauce over that spaghetti, or I can sprinkle pecans around the pie plate to show the fresh ingredients that were used to create such a rich flavor.
There are dozens of other words you can use to inspire yourself, as well, which I’ve included in a printable above—the top half is my tongue-twister, and the bottom half are “bonus” words for those times that the tongue-twister isn’t quite enough.
Here are some examples from some of my favorite food content creators on Instagram where sometimes they’re using more than one “scrumptious” word to set their food apart!
If you’ve watched the video, you know I touch on breaking bread—this image combines that concept with dipping and garnishing!
This image likewise combines dipping, dripping/stretching, and garnishing…
Here we get to see a different version of dipping—each side of the ice cream cookie sandwich was dipped in chocolate shell—and we also get to see a different version of “sprinkle,” because these have been sprinkled with (or dipped in) nuts.
Here we see a combination of “drizzle” (the honey-dipper), garnish (the toppings on the cake), and using 2-3X as much food as you normally would to create an effect of abundance!
This cheesecake has been drizzled with chocolate, but also a single slice has been cut—both highly up-leveling the stylization of the image!
Here we see pouring happening, but also a modified “spiral staircase” from our previous lesson (the parallelogram effect).
Modified spiral, pour
Notice how the end of the croissant, the newspaper folded to create a point, the spoon, and the spout of the creamer all point “in” toward the subject!
These cookies have been dipped in chocolate, then sprinkled with nuts! We’ll also be talking about this flat-lay style in an upcoming lesson…
In this image, the photographer shot “top-down,” but actually also sliced the cake so that she could change the angle of certain pieces, which is clever. Other details to note: Only half the cake is sliced, the top is garnished, and the whole subject in contained with the newspaper, which keeps the eye on the center of the frame.
Remember to Build on Everything We’ve Covered so Far
I put these lessons in a particular order so that when you reached a lesson like this one, you’d already have a firm foundation on lighting and compositional skills that will benefit you when styling specific subjects. Food is no exception!
When you’re photographing food, it can be easy to forget basic principles like know your subject (is it the plate of food, or the fork twirled with spaghetti? Is it the wine glasses guests are toasting, or the giant turkey on the table?), and it can be easy to forget to tell a story, easy to forget that you have many angles to choose from, easy to forget to check the background for people making strange faces or that wayward spoon that’s pointing out of the frame. Don’t succumb to these rookie mistakes—because they can ruin your food photos fast!
But when you use all these elements together… your food photos can be truly amazing!
Hello there! I’m your hostess, Alexis.
I’m the Original Subscription Photographer (& photo stylist) for creative professionals. I run my business in Portsmouth, NH. I’m super pumped to have you here!