What comes to mind when you think about your most favorite food's aroma, flavor, and texture? You get that mouth-watering experience because it triggers the same emotional response associated with that dish. As a food photographer, you need to make your audience experience that emotion with every food photograph.
Food is a language that speaks across borders and cultures. Then why limit food photography to just clicking pictures of food? No, it’s much more than just a photo. It is a blend of artistic brilliance and creative storytelling that guides your palette through every layer of the dish. To convey the essence of food, you need to give the complete picture. How can you make the audience feel the food just by looking at it? What would you need to build a compelling story of the food you’re presenting? How to photograph food to make the audience feel the flavors burst in their mouth?
Asking such questions can make the difference between a photographer who’s just clicking food photographs and someone who understands professional food photography. Let’s take a look at some food photography basics to keep you on track to become a leading food photographer and build your target market.
To learn food photography, it’s not always about having the best equipment or the most. Your equipment is just a tool to express the talent that you possess. With that being said, having the right equipment and the perfect setup for the job just makes your job less cluttered.
Here are five photography equipments that are crucial for food photographers looking to begin their professional food photography career:
- Camera
A point-and-shoot camera should work just as well as any high-end model until you get the hang of it. Know your camera in and out; go through the user manual; use the macro setting and practice!
A Nikon DSLR or Canon DSLR is pretty much the same. Choose the best camera available in your price range and always go with personal comfort over everything else.
- Lens
When it comes to food photography, you’ll want to look at fixed lenses. The lens won’t do the zooming, so you’ll have to move around to get better close-ups. But this means more control to you as you’re constantly clicking from as close as possible.
Manual is the way of the food photographer. Lens aperture and focus are your best bet at capturing crystal clear images. Your skills at focusing on the image will give you a better picture than the AF.
- Light Modifiers
Light modifiers are used to control the way light behaves in the photograph. A diffuser distributes light evenly onto the subject of the image. They are placed between the light source and the subject.
A reflector, as the name suggests, reflects light onto the subject. This is what we call the fill light. Any plain reflective surface will do. White surfaces are generally preferred, but even metallic surfaces can be used.
- Tripod
Tripods may seem redundant at first but believe me, that's the first thing you should master on your own. Shaky hands and blurry photos are common when you’re getting to know your camera. The tripod will keep your camera steady, giving you that low shutter speed with a clear, focused image.
- Photo Editing Software
After you click the picture, you’ll want to color-correct, contrast or set filters to give the right feel to your picture. Adobe Lightroom is the photo editing tool you’re looking for. The user-friendly interface makes food photographers choose Lightroom over Photoshop.
Now that you got your gear all sorted, time to get into the part where the magic begins – Photography!!
Getting the best picture is the goal here. You’ll need to keep 4 things in mind to get this done.
- Lighting
- Angles
- Outlook
- Composition
Leaving out all the other equally important aspects of food photography, let’s start with the most basic and critical one.
- LIGHTING
Understanding light exposure and how it interacts/affects your photograph is the backbone of photography. Without appropriate lights, all your photography skills just go down the drain. Every food photography tutorial begins with them talking in length about the camera lens, the shutter speed, aperture, etcetera. But the bottom line is that you need appropriate lighting.
Photographers always like to shoot in natural light as it gives some breath-taking pictures. You have the option of reflectors and diffusers to control the lighting and get bright, upbeat photos.
- ANGLES
Bright lighting alone does not guarantee that your photograph won’t look any different from a random mugshot. Angles are the frames of your mind. Every angle tells a different story. The angle you choose to shoot from depends on the subject’s most appealing aspects. If your subject has some height to it, you might want to consider shooting from a straight or slightly tilted 45-degree angle to best show off its defining factors.
- OUTLOOK
You may fill your frame with loads of items that you think will enhance the image’s main subject or just go with minimalist imagery. Either way, just remember to follow the Rule of Thirds. The way you frame your photograph (how and where the objects in the picture appear in the frame of your picture) tells the audience what to look for in the picture. How you represent your frame can be the difference between a great food photograph and something you’d walk by unnoticed.
- COMPOSITION
Keeping a check on the composition, positioning, and supporting colors is a great way to ensure a perfect frame and boost your credentials as a food photographer among your peers.
These technical pointers are great to keep in mind, especially when you’re suffering from poor angles, blurred pictures, or dull color contrast.
In any case, practice is the key to fine-tune your skills as a great food photographer. But can you change how your picture looks with the very next one you click? For that, you need some off-the-chart food photography tips where you can just start your own food blog photography or make good money with professional bake photography.
After spending hour after hour going through food photography tutorials, we’ve put together some of the most amazing tips and tricks that cut the learning curve and rank you as a photographer who knows his stuff.
Style Always Speaks for Itself
Sometimes, the dish’s visual appearance may not give the audience the right idea about the taste, texture, or flavors that come with it. So how can you make them feel it, you say? Add some ingredients used to make the dish into the picture, giving a clear-cut idea of the taste.
- Placing red chilies beside a dish that may be spicy or some lemons to add freshness to the image.
- Cutlery that complements the food makes it look ready to be devoured
Keep your Colours Smooth on the Eyes
It’s important to check the effects color combinations can have on the final outlook of the image. Remember, color can be used to draw or divert attention.
- Keep an eye out for Red-Green color cast reflections
- Mat boards are crucial to highlighting your food
- Keep background colors to a minimum
Food photography is a unique skill in photography itself. That being said, anyone can become a professional food photographer. To explore more on being a food photographer or if you just need a start, join Strikingly and build your target market. Keep it sleek Keep it simple and let your picture do all the talking.
Image taken from strikingly website
You can become a master food photographer but what do you do with all those pictures? You need to find a way to sell them. And your best bid at doing this is by setting up your very own website.
Can I build a website to earn off of food photography?
Now, this may sound like a lot of work. But trust me, it’s the easiest thing you’ll be doing here.
Building a photography website is pretty straightforward once you know who you’re targeting.
You can access the website by creating a Strikingly profile. You can also sign up with your Google or Facebook account which lets you sync accounts for smooth business transactions.
You can get a domain that is basically an online address for your business. This will be the name that appears on the address bar as the URL. Strikingly offers a $24.95 domain credit for a year if you will upgrade to any of our yearly plans. So get your free domain right now!
Image taken from strikingly website
Now, as a food photographer, you have tonnes of templates you can use to create the type of website you need. Whether you want to build a cake photography website or a portfolio to freelance your skills, strikingly can help find the right for you.
Image taken from strikingly website
You would want to change the background, layout, images/videos, text, and various other features in the website. Strikingly reduces this hassle by simplifying otherwise complicated tasks like sending emails and newsletters or analyzing site visitor details. With Strikingly, all this is done by the click of a button.
Image taken from strikingly website
Strikingly gives you the freedom to personalize every aspect of your food photography website. You can use the widgets on the screen to customize every page, the Add-ons to help your clients to connect to you.
Image taken from strikingly website
Once you’re done you can push the publish button to get your website online and start your journey as a professional food photographer.
The features are endless. Join Strikingly and get your free account on strikingly right now and begin your career in professional food photography.
