Our streets are filled with attractive posters and hoardings featuring various food items. For many years, food has been used to advertise many products including itself and companies or hotels making them. A cookbook will have no takers if it’s done without photographs of the foods being features there. Cookbooks are filled with mouth watering photographs of foods taken in various angles and arrangements. All this tells us that food photography is a genre that is here to stay and one that one can’t go wrong with if taken as a business as long as the skills and tricks are well mastered.

Food photography is still photography that aims at photographing foot items in a way to make them appealing and attractive for use in advertising, cookbooks, menus and ingredients. Photographing food requires special skills and techniques since dealing with foods is challenging due to the way they lose their visual value quickly. Here is a short munch into this delicious genre of food photography.

Special tricks and skills

Amateurs and laymen often think that photographs of food seen in various commercial platforms are taken minutes after food is cooked and placed on the table. The truth is some of the food is not even real and most of it is enhanced using other agents and tricks. Successful food photography is done in a studio where light can be controlled or it can be done elsewhere but the setup should be very well designed to allow proper lighting on the subjects.

For an amateur, you don’t need to try chasing the quality of food photographs as seen in those lifestyle magazines. You can start with a simple homemade studio and use available food items like fruits and vegetables to begin with. However, later on you will need a few more additions to your armour. The first thing you will need is either a food stylist or knowledge of food styling. You may have the less appealing food but the way it’s arranged can win the day for you. You will also need a director or assistants thought this is just a luxury for a beginner.

Probably what you need most is the knowledge of how to enhance and photograph various food items. For example, if you are photographing glasses filled with cold beverages or even bottles, you will need to show condensed droplets of water on their surface. This is done by spraying them with water, dulling spray, corn syrup or glycerine, whatever you can get. If you want to show steaming food, there are chemicals available for that purpose though you can also improvise by hiding smoking agents like steamed clothes or cotton wool at the back of bowls, cups or plates being photographed. There are many other tricks and techniques that you need to learn if you want to have great photographs.

Lighting

One of the major requirements for any still photography is proper lighting. Studio set up will be ideal for food photography though you can of course improvise yours at home. You can use soft light and eliminate shadows or you can use various lights to include shadows and improve the texture of your photographs. There are instances where you don’t have such lights in which case you need to manipulate your camera and utilize natural light to do the job.

Angles

According to Ajay Kurian, a food photographer based in Kerala, angles separates the amateurs from professionals. By amateurs he meant crude photographers who had little knowledge of photography. Angles can change your photography in an instance. Avoid using the same old overhead angels. Try taking your photos from sides or by going a little low to capture your food at interesting angles.

Props

Unless otherwise instructed or intended, it is always advisable to use props along with main subjects. However, don’t fill the table with props until the main subjects lose prominence. Sometimes even a table cloth can be enough or just a paper cloth or salt sprinkler.

Final word

Food photography is a tasty genre that can be very rewarding. As a business it can put food on your table till you die but you need to master it to succeed. It is advisable to Google for more information on food photography and look at various food photographs taken to get an idea on how you can perfect yours.

	Quick read: Food photography is still photography that aims at photographing foot items in a way to make them appealing and attractive for use in advertising, cookbooks, menus and ingredients. One of the major requirements for any still photography is proper lighting. Studio set up will be ideal for food photography though you can of course improvise yours at home. Try taking your photos from sides or by going a little low to capture your food at interesting angels. Unless otherwise instructed or intended, it is always advisable to use props along with main subjects.

Photos by Nathan Gitonga