The team at Windowseat has worked with several major food-related and beverage brands over the years; and created images with a ton of talented product photographers. So much so, that we’ve picked up a lot of tricks of the trade, and wanted to share some quick tips for marketers posting to social in the category of #food #foodporn or #foodie. Here are 5 basic tips to remember to make a better food image.
1. Find Good Light / Turn Off Your Flash
Natural light is always a great idea. Shoot near a window with good sunlight during early to mid morning or just before sunset. This will create a look that’s comforting, warm, and soft. If you are shooting indoors, look for soft light or even shoot by candle light and edit with a cool filter instead.
2. Have Fun With Styling
Play with your food. Utensils, napkins, place mats, garnishes or ingredients, help make the picture. Try out some simple colored or textured backgrounds. Mix and match items, but always try and keep it simple. Which bring us to the next tip…
3. Use The Rule Of Three’s
An odd number of items work best when creating your composition, e.g. three cookies, or a cocktail, a dessert and a fork. Too many items and your viewer won’t focus on any of it. As always, some rules are made to be bent, and even broken.
4. Use The Rule Of Thirds
Think of a nine square grid over every photo being taken. Smartphones even have a handy grid built in you can activate. The goal would be to position items where lines intersect so they sit either left or right, and top or bottom of the frame. It’s more visually pleasing to the eye than if your subject is center in the frame. It also creates negative space for any text or graphics and artwork to be overlaid on the image if you are using in a layout. Again, you can bend the rules.
5. Create Depth Of Field
Food photos tend to look nicer if you create some depth to them. Depth is where part of the photo goes out of focus depending on distance between objects. This puts more emphasis on the subject while de-emphasizing the foreground and background. Play with a lower aperture on a DSLR or try a camera app like After Focus to select and blur to achieve a similar look.
There you have it. Some down and dirty tips for creating better food images that will get you some mouth-watering likes in your feed.
Mangia!