5 Tips on Making Your Food Pictures Yummy

Nowadays, people take pictures of just about anything. There are countless photography subgenres dedicated to the weirdest of things. But perhaps no other genre causes so much fascination as food photography. 

Just imagine – pictures of juicy stakes, mouth-watering fruit and berries, colorful cupcakes, and freshly baked bread. These photos will evoke the strongest emotions since their subject matter is so deeply rooted in our basic needs. But still, you won’t get far on just the general theme of the photos alone. In order to call your food pictures real photography art, they have to have artistic merit and look really good. In this article, we’ll give you 5 nifty tips on how to make your food photos truly gorgeous. Let’s dive in!

1. Use Natural Light

Sure, you might be tempted to use professional studio lighting equipment, and it would work really fine if you were shooting plastic food (like the one they use for movies and commercials). But since you are taking a picture of food you can actually eat, use as much natural light as you can get to shoot it. When shooting, you don’t have to be constrained to just your kitchen. Move around the house to find the best-lit spot. You can also use a white sheet on your window – this will make the light softer.

2. Be Careful with the Colors

Just because some colors are bright and pleasant to look at, it doesn’t mean that a mixture of them will look good. Some hues belong to the opposite side of the color spectrum, which means their combination might be just unbearable for the eye. So look for the colors in your picture that would not contrast, but complement each other. Another idea is to use only one really intense color in your picture, keeping the rest of them subdued. 

3. Experiment with the Set-Up

Remember – you are not just taking a picture of an entrée. You are creating art. That means that whatever frames said entrée really matters. There have been countless examples of how a poor setting ruined the whole photo. So it would be wise of you to first think through the whole composition on a sheet of paper. Then, make sure to have all the surroundings go together in terms of colors, textures, and overall look. 

4. Invest in a Tripod

What to get a perfectly clear shot with no haze and blur? Shoot with a tripod. Apart from the obvious no-shaking-hands-holding-the-camera advantage, a steady tripod will also help you play with various angles of the shoots and be bolder with your composition.

5. Try Every Angle Possible

Never stop after you’ve taken just a couple of shots. Try any angles and depth possible, until you quite literally can no longer hold the camera. Every new angle can reveal something new and amazing about your set-up, and you won’t even know it until you try. 

6. Bonus Tip

Even if, despite all your clever planning and meticulous shooting, some of your food pictures came out less-than-stellar, there is a way to fix them in post-production. Image editing can save even the poorest of shots, granted you know which programs to use. 

If you are an Apple user, you can fix your photos with Photoshop Express Photo Edito‪r. This Adobe app comes with a set of all basic image enhancing tools, along with awesome filters and effects. With it, you can crop and rotate your images, color correct and sharpen them, and much more. 

In case you have an Android-based mobile device, you can go with Photo Editor Pro. This app is equipped with all the editing tools you might need to fix your photos – cropping, sharpening, and color grading tools. Besides, it has tons of filters that you can use to stylize your food photos. 

If you prefer desktop software, direct your attention to PhotoWorks. This smart photo editor uses advanced AI to automate most edits. With it, you’ll be able to crop your pics with various presets, sharpen or artistically blur your images, remove odd objects, boost colors and fix the dynamic range – all of this in just a mouse click or a slider drag. 

Hopefully these food photography tips have awakened your appetite for art. So don’t waste another second and put them to good use and create pictures that will make people drool just by looking at them.