5 Tips to Improving Your Food Photos

Food photography is the most delicious type of photography; everyone knows that, right? Everyone loves it too! However, have you ever made a perfect cake that you wanted to share with everyone you know and yet you couldn’t really do it because your food photos did not do the justice to your cake. You took the photo but it was dull, unappealing, and did not really look as delicious… Well, the thing is that if you cook delicious food and you blog about it, you will want to capture it beautifully. To do that, here’s a few things you can do…

Breakfast Time

Linking up to

This and That @ DebDuty.Com

Shoot. Edit. Sumbit. @ Through a Photographer’s Eye.

Andi @ The Hollie Rouge.

Fabulous Friday

5 Tips to Making Your Food Photos Beautiful

1. Study cookbooks. Seriously, is there a better source of inspiration for food photos than cookbooks and food magazines? According to Wikipedia, “Food photography is a still life specialization of commercial photography, aimed at producing attractive photographs of food for use in advertisements, packaging, menus or cookbooks. Professional food photography is a collaborative effort, usually involving an art director, a photographer, a food stylist, a prop stylist and their assistants.” Food magazines and cookbooks employ an entire army to produce food photos for them. Therefore, they are your best friends. Learn from them.

2. Visit food blogs and study food photos. What do food photos you like have in common? These blogs usually have amazing food photographs. A great place to start is the Homies 2012 Best Food Photography Blog nomination.

3. Use herbs, lemons, limes, mint leaves, and other ingredients to garnish your food.

4. Add color! Adding contrasting or complimentary color to your photo will always improve visual interest, same goes for texture.

5. Use all the light you can get. Lighting makes or breaks photos, so improve it! I wrote a guest post for the Hollie Rogue Simple Ways to Improve Indoor Lighting a while ago, it has bunch of tips on ways to improve your lighting from picking the right room in your home to using external flashes. I also wrote about indoor light in Using the Light OR What I Eat on Weekends. If you do not have a reflector, cover a platter in aluminum foil instead and use it to reflect the light to your food.

Reflecting Natural Light

Now, I’d like to thank all you who shared your food photos with us last week. I really enjoyed checking out your food shots! Here’s how you can join Weekly Photo Stew on Thursdays. It’s so simple:

1. Make your photograph about food or beverages.
2. Tell us about that photograph: share a photo tip, recipe, or a story behind it.
3. Submit the URL to your food photo post or a specific Flickr image, not your home page or album URL.
4. Include a link back to my blog in your post or Flickr image description. You can grab the button below or use a text link.
5. Visit bloggers on your left and your right and leave some comment love.

<a href="http://www.crispphotoworks.com/category/food-photography-challenge/"><img src="http://www.crispphotoworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/weekly-stew.png" alt="Food Photography Challenge" style="border:0;weight:150px;height:150px"</a/></a>

Finally, tell me what kind of food photos you like the best, what do food photos you like have in common?

Mira Crisp

My name is Mira and I take photos. I've been taking photos since I was a kid but I didn't realize I really love taking pictures until a few years ago. I also blog, spend too much time at my computer and drink espresso. You are welcome to contact me or visit my Facebook page!