Food for Her World Vietnam magazine.
Food styling by Dang Phuong
Photography by Mads
Food for the World Vietnam magazine. Photography by Mads • on Flickr
We all love good looking food…
Food photography? So, what makes it look really good? I love to cook and make tasty food. But, great cooks also have a skill with presentation. It is the presentation which really makes great food shots too.
Food photography seems to be centred on three things – good looking food composition; great light and picking the right focus/centre of interest. Duh! Wait a minute, isn’t that pretty much photography summed up all over? OK, I jest. There are some specific ideas and techniques involved. Good food photography seems to require a particular approach.
Here are some introductory points for good food photography. You should look to achieve…
- Experience with small-sized and table-top compositions.
- A working knowledge of lighting at the table-top scale.
- Simple natural light from one source (window).
- Able to use reflectors/black cards to shape the light.
- Simple centre of interest in the shot.
- Carefully chosen depth of field.
- Very simple, but rich backgrounds.
And with the food itself…
- Natural and where possible bright colours.
- The colour mix should work together.
- Avoid odd clashes of colour.
- The food combinations should be simple and few.
- Focus on the main interest.
- Avoid highlight bokeh spots where possible.
- Try to emphasis the texture of the food (lighting).
- Use simple but eye catching cutlery and plates.
- Avoid cluttering the shot with too much food.
- Give the food a big/deep background.
More after this…
Book recommendation:
From Snapshots to Great Shots
Simple advice on lighting including great diagrams. The pictures include camera settings. Excellent advice on setting up a table-top studio which was also inexpensive to do. Lots of tricks and techniques like the pros use. Great presentation ideas.
Food Photography Tips – Video
In this video we look a range of ways to look at and shoot food. It is a great introduction to food photography basics. The video uses graphic images for a broad introduction to the art of angles, framing and creating drool inducing food photos.
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Photokonnexion Photographic Glossary – Definitions and articles.
Composition
Light and Lighting – Resource pages on Photokonnexion
Natural light; Sunlight (A ‘Glossary’ entry)
Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)
Damon is a writer-photographer and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training courses in digital photography.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.
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