5 Essential Ingredients for A Stunning Food Brand
Does it look as good as it tastes?
In a series of 5 blogs I will try to tackle the main obstacles that you may encounter when taking and using brand photographs of your food business.
First of all, I want to discuss what is probably your main question: How can you improve your food photography? The simple answer is: by getting your lighting, angles, styling and retouching right. This is easier said than done. In the current fast-paced environment of social media, businesses feel pressurised in getting as much content up, in a very short time-space. Good photography takes time.
Food Photography Lighting
A good way to start is by identifying a spot that has good natural light. Natural light is best to start with if you are new to photography and if you rely on a mobile phone or a simple camera for your photography. Artificial light is very yellow and will make your food look like it has been out of the fridge for days. One point I cannot stress enough is not to use flash! It really ruins your photo. Stick with the light that is already there instead. A good natural light source will also avoid blurry images. Which brings me to the next tip. Try to keep your phone or camera as steady as possible to avoid camera shake. This is easier said than done. If you have a tripod, use it :-). I’m not great for using a tripod but it really pays off in poor light conditions.
Food Photography Retouching
Colour management is another essential part of food photography. The colour in the photo, that comes straight out of the camera, is not always true to life. I use post-production to make the colours pop. Instagram has quite a good range of editing tools for manually retouching the photo. Try playing around with the saturation and contrast tools.The colours are a bit more saturated in post-production to make the dish 'pop
Sandwich on a board with on a brightly patterened table cloth and a yellow teapot - Personal Brand Photographer Dublin
Food Photography Angles
The last thing I would like to add is to play around with different angles: take photos from above, 45 degrees, etc. There is no perfect angle. It all depends on the presentation of the food. A stacked dish does not look good when you take a photo from above. Whereas a cup of coffee does.
I would love to hear how you are getting on, feel free to send me your photo if you would like some feedback. My email address is: karin@janssen-photography.ie
