Photographing food?

wonderer

wonderer

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So my partners sister is creating a website for her cooking business and has asked me to take the shots of her food for the site. I have never done food photography before so im looking for some basic must dos and :nono:.

My way of thinking is to use natural light as much as poss, large aperture for a decent dof and remove any distracting things from the background? Anything else i MUST do?
 
backlighting works well, try to work above 50mm and if you're going with natural light have lots of reflectors

I shot image 5 here with a softbox behind and a little to the left with a white reflector for fill

also pay a lot of attention to detail for stuff like dirty plates and dirty tables and tweaking the food
 
food photography is one the most demanding of the commercial photography disciplines. Its not so much shooting what's in front of you, its shooting to make the person looking at the photograph want to buy/eat/cook the food that often includes producing the illusion that's what is in front of you is the tastiest, juiciest most sumptuous food you ever ate. the skills involved are intricate, there is a separate profession called "food stylist"
 
As Richard says, it's a very demanding speciality. In fact, the photographer is probably secondary to the food stylist, who can only work with what he/she has. The food itself needs to be absolutely perfect and is generally undercooked.

People who photograph food well are highly skilled technicians (the art side is taken care of by the food stylist) who are at the very top of their profession and who are very well equipped with a very wide range of specialist lighting tools.

Yes, you can produce results without this knowledge and without anything except natural light and reflectors, but although this kind of setup can be OK for some kinds of food, the results will always be bland, and bland photos don't sell products. This article, by a very skilled commercial photographer who specialises in photographing citrus fruits but does a lot of other kind of food photography too, may help.
 
The only thing I can remember about food photography is that they used a tampon dipped in hot water behind the plate to create the effect that steam was coming off the food and it was still hot
 
brushing pastry with oil to create a nice sheen is another trick.
 
hepburn said:
brushing pastry with oil to create a nice sheen is another trick.
Click to expand...

Hairspray is another one. I had a friend who worked in cooking for Mother's Realm magazine yonks ago and she told me that pretty well all the food photographed was inedible..A cherry pie for example would have cherries added after the crust had been baked stuffed with cotton wool to give it an un realistic bursting with fruit look:cuckoo:
 
All the food I photograph is definitely edible and I don't think anyone looking at the picture apart from the people who set it ,up really notice if there are three peas or four in front of a piece of carrot! The rest of us just look at it and think - why does the burger/cake/whatever-they-are-advertising-or-I-am-buying never look like that.

Take a look at receipe books and magazines and study how they lay things out, many in the UK seem to be getting more rustic looking and the US more clinical looking at the moment.

Always try and use the freshest produce you can but don't remove all the marks/blemishes or it can look plasticy.

Lighting is very important and reflectors and mirrors can be very useful. The last one I did (here) had one light reflected off an umbrella and a small reflector to get a bit more light in the side (plus some late afternoon natural light as I was shooting in the conservatory). One of this set, slightly different from those posted, has already sold.
 
I ate my last set :)

Not kidding, it was carrot cake, nom nom nom.
 
Hi
Food images in all photo's are there for one purpose , to make you want to eat it
we know you eat with teeth but you eat a lot more with your eyes, all the plate,s
must be spotless and no dirty tables.
have a go and best of luck.
 
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