How To Take Food Photos That Look Truly Delicious (2024)

Food photography is as old as photography itself; fruits like pineapples and peaches were among the many first subjects in early daguerreotypes. Within the twentieth century, the rise of food magazines, cookbooks and, eventually, food bloggers meant pictures of delicious-looking dishes proliferated.

Still-life pictures of consumable products help ecommerce retailers construct brands and drive sales. A tantalizing image of focaccia with a sprig of rosemary can effectively promote a bottle of olive oil, while a steaming bowl of Sichuan noodles can boost the appeal of a chili crisp condiment.

So, what does it take to capture mouth-watering food photos? While knowledgeable DSLR camera or mirrorless camera will help, you don’t necessarily need expensive equipment. Whether you’re a marketer, entrepreneur, small business owner or foodie, simply following the photography fundamentals below will enable you capture fascinating food pics. 

Find out how to take food photos

Taking really good food photos is greater than pointing and shooting. Whether you’re generating easy smartphone snaps  otherwise you’re knowledgeable food photographertaking high-quality food photos with a flowery camera, certain basic principles apply:

1. Select your background

Select a complementary surface that attracts attention to the food. Seamless backdrop paper focuses the viewer directly on the topic. Styling food with tableware, linens, and a number of props can educate recent customers about your brand world and edible products. 

For instance, Ghia photographed its non-alcoholic apértif in a stemless glass with a totem foot against a plain, white background. “We desired to do a glass that felt prefer it was luxurious, but in addition very approachable,” says founder Melanie Masarin on the Shopify Masters podcast.

2. Get the lighting right

Lighting can enhance the textures of food products, set the mood, and forestall unwanted shadows. Soft light adds a good illumination, whereas hard light can create harsh shadows. Use a big, soft light source like a frosted window or a softbox (a typical kind of light modifier) to forestall shadows. Or, take the food outside in natural light. 

For instance, this photo for olive oil brand Graza’s steak and eggs with chimichuri recipe employs natural lighting from an angle to focus on the finished dish.

Certain foods profit from various light directions during a photoshoot. Top lighting works best for plates of food or tablescapes, easy front lighting is sweet for social media posts, and side lighting can add drama to individual ingredients or products. 

3. Compose your shot

Too many elements can pull attention away from the food. While setting a major dish in the middle of a shot may feel natural, it doesn’t all the time produce probably the most eye-catching image. Follow the rule of thirds and divide the frame into three equal sections, horizontally and vertically, then place the major subject somewhere along the grid to attract the viewer’s attention. 

Different angles work for various dishes, so it’s essential to seek out one of the best angle on your food. For instance, a side shot of a slice of Floof Cotton Candy showcases the colourful layers of the cotton candy cake.

4. Stabilize your camera

Steadying your camera on a tripod or camera stand will prevent camera shake and blurry images. Clarity and focus are especially essential for foods with interesting textures—like tea cakes dusted with powdered sugar, or fried tofu with a crackling crust. Use a tripod with a geared head—akin to the Manfrotto 405—for precise pan-and-tilt adjustments. A camera stand helps capture different angles by facilitating easy vertical or horizontal movement. 

For instance, Fly by Jing highlights the varied colours and textures of food on this overhead shot promoting its hot pot. Food photographers often use overhead rigs or boom arms to stabilize cameras for overhead shots like this. 

5 food photography suggestions

1. Experiment with lenses
2. Play with light filters and modifiers
3. Practice focus stacking
4. Use a color checker
5. Monitor your images

For giant brands, food photography involves a creative team that typically includes an art director, food stylist, prop stylist, food photographer, and digital tech. In contrast, small business owners and merchants often fill these roles themselves. Consider the next tricks to take higher pictures of your food:

1. Experiment with lenses

Different lenses change the look of the image. Macro lenses have an extended focal length and the next magnification ratio compared to plain lenses, allowing close-up shots. This is useful once you’re trying to focus on details like a selected ingredient or an interesting texture.

A probe lens, akin to the Laowa 24mm f/14 2x macro probe, has a protracted, skinny barrel that captures angles which are otherwise unattainable. For instance, you’ll be able to pass this lens through small openings, just like the center of a donut.

2. Play with light filters and modifiers

Soften any light source by adding layers of diffusion between the source and the set. Skilled photographers use diffusions like LEE Filters’ Opal Frost, but a bedsheet can work in a pinch.

So as to add visual interest, you should use a North Star filter that adds multiple streaks of sunshine from a degree light source, which may create a blinding effect on a cocktail glass or candle. You may also use light modifiers akin to nets and flags to remove light or feather it in certain places.

3. Practice focus stacking

Focus stacking employs a pc to mix multiple images with different areas in focus, leading to a composite with enhanced detail. This system might be useful in macro food photography—particularly for extreme close-ups where it might probably be unattainable to focus every item in a single capture. 

Skilled cameras have large sensors and a shallow depth of field to facilitate this feature. Phone camera users can try it with focus stacking apps akin to FocusStacker on iOS.

4. Use a color checker

Appetizing colours are especially essential when photographing food, but they might be difficult to get right. A color checker, just like the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport, is a tool that appears like an eye fixed shadow palette with little squares of color—each with a precisely calibrated, measurable value. While you place it in a photograph, it might probably enable you ensure color accuracy in a while within the editing process, keeping food items as near life as possible. X-Rite offers a Capture One and Adobe Lightroom plug-in that reads the colour patches to calibrate your camera for faithful representation. 

5. Monitor your images

Plug your camera right into a computer via USB so you may have a bigger screen to review your work while taking photos. Software like Adobe Lightroom and Capture One support the most important camera brands. These programs also directly transfer your images to your computer, eliminating the necessity to import after the shoot or refill memory cards. Viewing your images immediately on a bigger screen will assist you to spot issues so you’ll be able to correct them straight away.

What settings should I exploit for food photography?

Manual mode enables consistency from shot to shot by controlling the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance. In case you don’t use a DSLR camera, apps like Halide can enable you control a few of these settings in your phone:

Aperture

Aperture controls the quantity of sunshine that reaches the sensor by opening and shutting the aperture ring of your lens. A wider opening, which allows probably the most light in, has a lower f-stop value (the ratio of the focal length to the aperture’s width). The f-stop value has a major impact in your depth of field—how much of the foreground and background are in focus. The upper the f-stop value, the larger the depth of field. A low f-stop value, akin to f/2.8, corresponds to a large aperture opening and produces a really shallow depth of field. A high f-stop value, akin to f/22, has a much greater depth of field. 

The more you stop down your lens (i.e., the more you increase your f-stop number), the more focused the foreground and background can be. Nevertheless, attributable to the phenomenon of diffraction (when light waves bend after passing through your lens), fantastic details will get less sharp. For food photography with a full-frame DSLR, a mid-range aperture like f/11 will produce the sharpest photos, offering a balance between a transparent foreground and background and fantastic details. 

Shutter speed

Shutter speed is the period of time your camera’s sensor is exposed to light. A slower shutter speed, akin to 1/fifteenth of a second, allows more light but will blur any motion you’re attempting to capture. When using natural light, you’ll need to make use of a slower shutter speed. A faster shutter speed, akin to 1/1,000th of a second, will freeze any motion within the frame. This works best for motion shots, like pouring a beverage from a glass or showcasing the bubbles in a carbonated beverage.

Check the manual for the camera’s flash sync speed. A worth of 1/200 second is common. A faster shutter speed will reduce the quantity of ambient light—akin to overhead lights or light from a window—that reaches your photo. When using flash for food photography, block out as much ambient light as possible to maximise control over the sunshine’s shape and direction.

ISO

The ISO setting adjusts the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor to light. A lower ISO value, akin to 100, allows the smallest amount of sunshine and produces the bottom amount of visual noise, or clutter, making it ideal for brightly light outdoor scenes and when using flash. Visual noise looks like random discolored specks in your image, which may smash the looks of colours and deep shadows. 

A better value, akin to 3,200, is more light-sensitive but produces more visual noise. For food photography, it’s best to make use of the bottom value you’ll be able to for the quantity of sunshine you wish. Check your camera manual for the native ISO—often between 100 and 200—as this may yield one of the best quality.

White balance

Different light sources have various white balance values, measured from warm to chill on a scale called Kelvin. For instance, an incandescent lightbulb has a price of two,700 K, giving off a warm glow, while natural light on a cloudy day can have a price of around 6,000 K, which a camera perceives as cooler in tone. You will discover the white balance that works best on your scene in your camera’s menu items.

Avoid mixing warm and funky lights when composing your scene, as this can be difficult to paint balance in your photo editing software. In case you plan on using daylight or flash, turn off any artificial lighting.