Saturday, November 1, 2008

Having Fun With Food Photography


Imagine that you are looking at picture of a scrumptious pork fillet, mouth watering steak and a glass of iced cold grape juice. How do you feel? Hungry?

That is what successful food photographers can do. They can trigger your hunger by just looking at their pictures. Isn't it amazing when you can do the same? Let's start by looking at the tips below:


1. Lighting

Lighting is very important in food photography. When you have the right lighting, it will seem like the dish is asking the viewers to feast on it. So, it is very important that you look at the surrounding and experiment your picture with as much natural light as possible.

There will be time that the surrounding light can't really illuminate the dish. When that happens, you will want to consider using a flash. Then, you need to control the intensity of the flash. Remember that you want to highlight the essence of the dish and get your viewers hungry instead of disgust them with an all brighten up dish.

2. Presentation

Imagine a plate of pork chop with its broccoli scattered around and the sauce flooding the plate. Do you still have the intention to dig into it? Most likely you will wonder how a chef can present that for dining.


So, take your time to arrange your dish. It must be visually attracting before someone will actually have the desire to eat it. When you are photographing a burger, you will want to get the stuffing out of the bun and that is how the fast food chains advertise and get you to visit them.

And when you are photographing a dish, experiment your picture with and without the cutlery. How does that feel? Sometime, the cutlery will enhance your picture and sometime not.

3. Out of focus

Creating shallow depth of field on your dish will keep your food in focus while the background blurred. Your viewers will automatically pay attention to the food and it would trigger their urge to eat.



However, the compact digital cameras in the market now are unable to adjust the depth of field. It is true that you can create the effect with photo editing software later. Still, the picture will not look as natural as when you are using a DSLR camera to capture the picture.

As much fun as talking about food photography, you will start to feel hungry. Unfortunately, that is the side effect of looking into this interesting topic.

By: Michael Wong



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