Hello again! Today's article will talk about a topic and field that is fairly new to me. Food photography! I have always been fond of trying out new food places and what they have to offer. It is an interesting field for me so far and trying it has been very fun. In this article, I would like to share some very simple things that I focus on while photographing food, things that I have learned from trial and error.
When I'm photographing food, I always imagine what I want the picture to look like beforehand. I always want the viewer to look at the image and be hungry. It should be mouth-watering. Since it is a new field for me, I do make some mistakes. For example, in the picture above, the spoon below the pizza is reflecting the image of me trying to click the picture. It is a small mistake that can sometimes ruin a picture. The picture above was clicked with an iPhone 13 on settings as such - ISO 50, Aperture f1.6, and the shutter speed of 1/900. Mostly when I am clicking pictures even with my camera, I try to keep the ISO and Shutter speed the same and mostly mess around with the Aperture. Capturing pictures of food is new to me, so here are some things I try to keep in mind.
The angles; each food and dish has its own shape and size. According to that, I adjust my camera angle. Take the photo of the pizza as an example. I photographed it from the top, because it looked good that way and showed the whole dish. If I took the same picture from the side, it wouldn't look that good because of the flatness of a pizza. I did take a picture of this same pizza from the side though, with just one small difference. I lifted up the pizza to reveal the amount of cheese stretching out, therefore adding some volume and shape to the picture.
This is why I keep the camera angle in mind. Another thing I keep in mind is the subject. The amount of the subject on the plate is also important. If I put too less food or too much food on the plate, it might look quite weird on the camera. Putting the perfect amount of food is very important. Also, including unnecessary elements can ruin a picture. For example, the mistake I made in the photo given below was leaving in the knife and the fork. It takes away some of the essence. My goal was that when someone looks at this, they just want to dive in and devour it, and the fork and knife take that away and look very unnecessary.
The lighting is also another huge factor that affects how the food looks in a picture. It is a huge part of one's artistic intention as it can decide what textures to highlight and what to sort of fade out or blur out. I, as a photographer choose to work with natural lighting as I want my photos to look natural, while some others get special lights to get the best out of a picture. The choice is yours. I've tried as well before, just the basic colour correction techniques like messing around with the exposure, saturation, sharpness, and I'm also not that experienced at it as well, but I think that's out of what I am doing to do right now, which is actually just getting my hands on the camera and sharing my experiences.
By the way, all the photos in this article are from my portfolio so feel free to go check it out and explore. The next article will delve into portrait photography; photographing people and my experience with it, which will be coming out on the 4th of September. Please fill out the feedback form and tell me what else you would want to see more on the website! Thank you so much!
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