Food Photography Tips & Tricks

[Reyed Mia (Apprentice, DIU)]

Food Photography Tips & Tricks

Food Photography Tips

1) Ignoring the instructions, we didn't bother microwaving the burger, it wouldn't add any colour and the bun would just loose it's bounce. A good solution would be to fry or grill it, but we only gave ourselves 20 minutes and we're lazy. Plus we don't have a frying pan in the office. Or a grill.

Instead, we covered it in BBQ sauce to improve the colour and make it shiny. It still looked too processed and tidy so we rummaged through the kitchen and found some instant coffee granules to add a charred texture. Yummm. (At this point it did start to look rather good!)

2)We also went a bit far and smothered BBQ sauce all over the top of the bun, because it was 'too white'. It sort of worked but it now had bit of a sticky appearance, oh well. Although by this time we'd had to wash our hands three times to avoid getting the camera covered in a coffee enhanced marinade.

3) Arranging the dish, we focused on the angle being photographed. The fillings were all shoved to the very front whilst the back was prodded with cocktail sticks to keep the lid in place. The whole thing was then hosed down with spray oil, which simultaneously looked 'fresh' on the salad and juicy on the burger and cheese.

We didn't leave the ketchup positioning to chance, it was fired strategically into crevices around the exterior. We won't pretend this was our first attempt, a lot of mopping was to be had, but generally we were looking for the sauce to keep its rounded shape without flattening or smearing. Beginners food photography tip – have plenty of kitchen roll to hand for mopping up spills and splashes.

4) Although you would normally see the dish from above, the human eye has a preference for seeing food dishes at an unusual angle. This stimulates an illusion of 'special' whilst showcasing all the best bits of the item you are photographing – play around with angles to see what works best for your chosen subject matter.

An important photography tip is to consider what's in the background. So we ditched the lunch plates lurching in the kitchen and positioned everything on a nice solid chopping board, with patterned napkins craftily posing as a fancy tablecloth.
Camera settings

5) The macro setting is by far the best way of picking up the barely existent unique textures of the even this mass produced burger. We banged out more shots than a tequila bar to make sure that at least one one was in focus, and did a lot of leaning on stuff to keep the camera deadly still until the shutter clicked closed. It turned out that the photographs needed to be taken from quite far away on the DSLR camera so the picture was destined for some brutal cropping (which isn't a problem on the higher quality photos – lots of pixels to play with).
Lighting

6) Considering we didn't have a lighting budget, we did everything we could to minimise our potential illumination issues; midday was chosen as the ideal time to shoot, right by a wall of windows. But it's still England, in November – so our photo thumbnails were consistent rows of greyish boxes. Luckily, there'd be one or two squares where there sun had peeked out for a moment which made the world of difference. Photographers aren't kidding when they say getting the right picture is a waiting game. One of our top photography tips is to pick a sunny day, put a table outside and take as many photographs as you can before the clouds roll in.

Source:https://thejobsmenu.com/Info/food/food-photography-tips-and-tricks