Top Tips for Taking Creative Food Photos

Fancy yourself as an Instagram pro, but worried your less-than-perfect photography is letting you down? It’s true that the tips we’re about to share with you will apply to almost any subject matter, but we say they’re much best when put into action on food, glorious food!

So, if you’d like to up your game when it comes to your food photo-taking skills, read on for some of our top tips.

Upgrade Your Gear

Sure, you can have ‘all the gear and no idea’, but you could also have all the gear and all the ideas! You don’t need to spend a fortune on photography kit, but if your mobile phone is due an upgrade, consider opting for one with a great camera – that is, if taking fab photos is your thing.

Now, practice, practice and practice some more! You won’t become a pro overnight, but it will help a lot if you read and re-read the instructions that came with your phone or camera.

Ensure Your Food Looks Its Best

In order for your food-based creations to look the part on Instagram or other social media channels, ensure the food you’re capturing looks its best to begin with. If that Italian dish/cake/smoothie isn’t your best effort, why would you want to snap it?

These mini cupcakes, though, well…they look delicious!

If your meal just doesn’t look good, wait until the next time you’ve cooked it before you share it with the world. Once your food is looking its best, it’s time to share it. Moving onto our next tip…

Set the Scene

Miranda Gardley over on YouTube offers some brilliant advice in this Instagram food photography video. The photography whizz suggests to set the scene by ‘telling a story’. Don’t just grab your meal and hastily snap a shot. Instead, gather some of the ingredients that went into making it and arrange them in an arty fashion around your dish, as below.

You can already see how this splash of colour – the vibrant red of the tomatoes and the intense green of the herbs – adds more interest to what might have been an otherwise fairly bland photo.

Try a Close Up

As well as making use of quirky backgrounds – a rustic-looking table (as above), or even a bright, white freshly-painted wall (you can simply hold up a colourful smoothie and photograph it this way), you should also consider how to best take your shot. Some photos will work well when the detail in the food has been brought out; like the sesame seeds as seen on this sushi roll, below. Do you agree?

Play around with the settings on your camera or phone and don’t forget to take a few photos; you may not capture the perfect, Insta-worthy snap straight away, after all.

Don’t Forget to Edit!

So, you’ve taken your best shot against the best backdrop – now what?

Don’t forget to edit your shot – a little help with the brightness, for example, may go a long way to boosting those likes on that photo. Plus, make sure you remember that Instagram’s photos display as a square shape, so be aware of this when taking your photographs, as you won’t want to have to cut anything out of that carefully curated shot.

Do you have a food photography tip or two you’d like to share? Pop on over to our Facebook and Twitter pages and impart your knowledge on the masses!

Until next time…