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Making the most OUT of Food Photography!

Posted by on August 5, 2012

Hey Food Bloggers!

Welcome to Minnesota Girl in LA.  Hey potential foodies, and those that just love to capture photos of their food.  I have recently taken a great deal of interest into food photography.  Although I’d more than call myself an amateur foodie, I have been questioning what makes a GREAT food shot.

There are a variety of issues that arise when it comes to taking photos of your food, and how does one even get that ONE good shot out of many.  Well, today, I thought I would give you some advice on making the most out of your food photography:

1) Get CREATIVE with your ingredients

One of the things I truly love to do is capture all the ingredients of my recipe.  I usually take a shot like above.  However, by looking through a variety of food blogs, I’ve realized this is where you, as a food blogger, can become really creative.  Utilize some of the ingredients as your background.  Put the sliced up tomatoes and cucumbers next to your frying pan.  Cut some of the lettuce and put it atop your potential burger.

2) It’s all about how YOU crop your shot!

When it comes to food photography, you want to keep it simple.  That means, when taking your shot, keep your shot tight as possible, and fixated on the food.  The more stuff that becomes apart of the shot, the more that is taken away from your shot.  Simplicity is best.

3) Get comfortable with angles.

Play around with different angles when it comes to your food.  Take a shot vertically, take an above shot, take a shot horizontially, or get in front of your shot completely.  Each angle will give a different perspective to your food.

4) Have fun with the background!

This is where I have seen the most success with a lot of food bloggers I read on an ongoing basis.  They add little details to the background.  It may be a fun placemat, icing on the side of the plate, or even a mixing bowl, or the simplicity of a cutting board.  Think of the recipe you’re making, think of what really makes this recipe stand out and utilize those pieces in your shot.  Trust me, you will love the way your picture will come out!

5) It’s all about the LIGHTING

Piece of advice: use natural light if you can.  This is seriously where you will get the most out of your shot.  However, if you’re like me, and you do the majority of your cooking during the evening, and there’s a lot of artificial lighting around you, know how to work white balance.  If you need to know more about white balance, please check out my post here.  

6) Environmental Shots

One of my favorite things I find from food blogs I read on a regular basis is how they change it up.  Meaning, they show us their experience of shopping at the store, or how they pick their ingredients out at the farmer’s market, or perhaps it’s the environment of the restaurant they just went to by taking pictures of the staff creating the meal, or the food trucks they’ve just visited.  It’s those environment shots that make the food blogger become human, and there’s a beauty to it.

7) Shallow Depth of Field

If you need to learn more about aperture and what is does for you and your shots, please check out my article.   A shallow depth of field will fixate on  your food in the front, and blur out the background in the back.  It can be a pretty awesome effect especially when it comes to food.

However, before you go out and buy that shallow depth of field lens, please know, that the lighting around you can affect the turn out of depth of field.  If you shoot in a lot of low light settings, it will be hard to go below a f-stop of 4.5.  Again, shallow depth of field works best in natural lighting settings.

8) PicMonkey is your friend.

All of the pictures above all received borders off of picmonkey.  This site has become my savior with some of my photos in blogland 😉

In the end, just have fun.  I know, as kids, we are taught never to play with our food, but when it comes to food photography, playing is the only thing that makes sense.  😉

If you have any questions you’d like me to answer, please ask them below, and I will either answer, or find the answer for you!

And I want to leave you with a list of some of my all time favorite food blogs:

Smitten Kitchen

Shugary Sweets

What Megan’s Making

Bibi’s Culinary Journey

Jolly Tomato

Gluten is my Bitch

 

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