Food photography tips

Everywhere you look these days, people are busy taking photos of their lunch or dinner and posting the results up on social media – some look great, but others look rather unappetizing!

So, how do you get great looking photos of your food using your phone camera? In this article, we’re going to look at how to improve your smartphone food photography in a few easy steps. From styling your food, to lighting, composition and post-processing, if you follow these tips you’ll be well on your way to creating food photos that will be the envy of your followers on social media.

 

Think About Lighting

Before you even start to take photos of food, you need to plan, and that involves taking the light into account. Food tends to look best under natural light, so to get the best results, you need to be shooting next to a window that doesn’t have direct sunlight on it.

Professional food photographers tend to backlight or sidelight food shots, as this gives a nice contrast and look to the food. You’ll need to place your plate side on to the window for side light, and the back of the plate to the window for back light.

Under no circumstances be tempted to use the flash on your phone’s camera to light a food shot! Flash is harsh, tends to make food look flat and greasy, and leaves a hard shadow round your dish, as well as adding color casts that can be hard to get rid of. Professional food photographers do use studio flash or flashguns to light food, but they have them diffused and controlled, so the results are a whole lot better than you will ever get with built-in camera flash.

Food Styling

Yes, food styling is an actual thing! Some people even make a career out of it. All those great food shots you see have been carefully styled to make them look good. There are all sorts of tricks the food stylist’s use, from acrylic ice cubes to using white glue instead of milk because it photographs better.

You don’t have to go as far as the pros, but take some time to arrange the food on the plate so it looks appetizing. Make sure there’s no ugly drips or splashes of sauce on the edges of the plate, and if you’re using props like cutlery or tablecloths, make sure they’re clean and look harmonious together.

 

Use a Camera App and Professional Presets  For Your Phone

Your built-in smartphone camera does have limitations, so consider using a dedicated camera phone app to take your photos with. Adobe Lightroom mobile is a popular choice, if you use MyPhotify ProProduct presets.

These LR apps allow you much more control over how you shoot your photos. You can manually adjust shutter speed, ISO, white balance and other settings when you shoot using these apps.

Here are a few other MyPhotify presets you might find useful.

 

Try to Shoot in RAW Format

If your phone has the capability to shoot in RAW format – and a lot of them do – then I would advise using it instead of JPEG. Pro photographers usually shoot in RAW format because it is totally uncompressed, and contains all the information from a photo. JPEG format is compressed, and is called a ‘lossy’ format because the camera discards some of the image information to enable the compression. This is why JPEG file sizes are much smaller than RAW format files. Also, when you shoot JPEG, your camera adds things like sharpening and saturation boosts to your photos automatically. RAW format files have also had nothing applied to them in camera; you retain total control over what adjustments you make in editing, and you can edit things like shadows and highlights that you can’t do with JPEG files.

Use a Tripod in Low Light

You can get specialized tripods for your phone to keep the camera steady while you shoot. If you’re shooting in low-light situations, hand-holding your phone will result in blurry photos, as the shutter will need to stay open longer to capture the image so it’s correctly exposed. To get sharp, professional-looking photos, invest in a phone tripod. They’re not expensive – you can buy a smartphone tripod for around $10 on Amazon.

 

Check Your Background

Before you start taking photos, look at what is behind your food and in the frame of your phone camera. A plain background with no clutter is best to showcase the food. Check the color of your background – is it too bright and overpowering? Can you change it, or move to a different position?

Are there dirty dishes or other things in the background? Either remove them, move your food, or change the angle of your shot so that they are not in the photo.

 

Composition

How your image looks has a lot to do with composition, and it should be balanced, with all the elements in the shot working to create a harmonious photo .

Your phone camera probably has a ‘rule of thirds’ grid that you can overlay your shot with to help composition, and we suggest using it.

A quick explanation of the rule of thirds grid in photography is this: The camera screen is split up into 9 squares, with three lines running vertically, and three lines running horizontally. Where those lines intersect, along one of the lines or just above one of the horizontal lines is where you want to place the items of interest in your photo, as these make the most aesthetically pleasing composition.

It may be easier to visualize if you think of a typical landscape photograph. The horizon is not often placed in the middle of the image, it is usually in the bottom third or top third. If you laid a grid across most landscape images, you’d find they normally stick to this rule. The same goes for portraits. The eyes are usually placed at or just above the top third grid lines for best composition.

So, try to use the gridlines on your phone to place food or other objects at one of the intersecting lines, and see what difference it makes to your shot.

 

Leading Lines

Another compositional tool to use is leading lines and diagonals. Leading lines are subtle or not-so-subtle straight or diagonal lines in an image that draw our eye to the main subject, in this case, food.

Think of good food images you are drawn to look at. Do they have a serving spoon or cutlery placed in the image that draws your eye from the edge to the food? You can use serviettes, cutlery, tableware or other props to create leading lines in to your food.

Diagonal shapes in photos are also pleasing to the eye. That is why the serving spoon or cutlery etc. is often placed at a slight diagonal in the image. The diagonals often come out of one of the bottom corners of the image and lead towards the main subject. Sometimes tableware or props are placed to make a loose triangular shape or shapes in the image. Square plates are often turned so that a corner is facing the camera.

Look at your favorite food photos and try to deconstruct them. What makes them good? Why is the composition visually appealing? Can you use some of these ideas in your food photos?

 

Controlling Focus

You need to put the main focus of the image on the food, as our eyes are drawn to look at what is in focus. If you have a bowl of soup and a slice of bread, for example, you would focus on the soup instead of the bread – unless the bread is your main subject. Place the focus point of your phone camera on the spot that you want to showcase.

Don’t Zoom – Get Closer Instead

If you use your phone’s zoom function to get in close and fill the frame, you’ll end up with very poor image quality when you look at it closely. Try to get in closer to your subject if you can instead. You can crop later in post-processing to keep your image quality and resolution high.

Editing Your Images

Most images will always look better for a little adjustment after they have been taken, even if it’s just to correct exposure, color and contrast. Your phone will have a built-in editing suite, or you can use an app to help crop and adjust.

If you you want to go for professional food photo on mobile phone, you can then use powerful image editing software Lightroom app and MyPhotify presets.