Beginner’s food photography
I recently went on Aspire Photography Training’s Fine Art Food Photography workshop. I teach photography online, and think it is the perfect low-cost, convenient way to learn photography, but even I admit there is nothing quite like an in-person workshop for immediate feedback and hands-on learning.
Everything that the talented Joan Ransley taught me is directly applicable to food bloggers. I won’t give away all her secrets – I recommend you go on one of her courses – but I’m going to use the photographs I took at the workshop to illustrate a few basic principles of food photography for bloggers.
What do food bloggers want?
Food bloggers I think are driven by a desire to help people. To share recipes that work, to save people time in the kitchen, to teach new skills. Maybe also to share a strongly held belief in something, whether it’s sustainable farming, the joys of the slow cooker, or the health benefits of a gluten free diet.
Like it or not, these recipes, stories and benefits are going to sink without trace in the sea of other food blogs unless you can attract and keep an audience.
What food bloggers all want – need – is more readers.
And the first thing you need to get more readers, before you’ve even written your first how-to post, is an eye-catching photograph of the food you are writing about. You simply can’t have a successful food blog without stand-out, fabulous photographs.
Turn the flash off
Every food photography blog post you read will tell you this. It’s the most over-recommended and under-used piece of photography advice out there. On-camera flash makes hard shadows and unpleasant, high contrast images. Natural light on the other hand gives soft shadows and accurate colours.
If this photo had been taken with flash, the cherries would have been blasted with highlights, and the plate would have reflected the flash:
Know your depth of field
You cannot be a food blogger without knowing what aperture, shutter speed, and depth of field are. And how depth of field will change between lenses, and depending on how far away from your subject you are.
This photo has a very shallow depth of field, with an aperture of f2.8. You can see that the cheese knife is not all in focus – only the very end of the handle:
A larger depth of field is needed. This second attempt uses f8, but even this isn’t enough. I didn’t check my images at 100% on the back of my camera while I was shooting so I missed this. I should have used f16:
Have you tried to understand aperture and depth of field before, and failed? I’ve got 2 short videos that explain both in a way that you’ll understand, I promise. You can download both videos straight away here, plus a bonus shutter speed video:
Viewpoint
There are really only 3 viewpoints you will need – 1. “diner’s eye view” (as if you were sitting down about to eat); 2. straight down; and 3. straight along.
Styling
This is something that you can only learn by trying. You need to scour Pinterest for ideas, try to replicate them, then honestly and objectively see what you could have done better.
The benefit of going on a workshop is that all the styling is done for you, and you can ask questions as you go along. You’ll need a growing stash of plates, backgrounds and props, and the ability to build a set as you go along. This was the hardest part of the workshop for me. All the props had to earn their place in the final image, and it was difficult to create context and emotion without distracting from the main subject.
Including people and conveying emotion
The most useful thing I learnt was to use people in images to create a bond and convey emotion. It doesn’t have to be an awkward photo of someone eating – just the suggestion of a human element will lift your photo from a straight record shot to an engaging, memorable image that your reader can relate to:
Do you want an entire year of free photography lessons? Sign up here, and this time next year you’ll be shooting like a pro:
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