Photo Tips

Want to get your photos posted on FoodGazing.com or other food sites? Here are some tips to help you take great food photos!

Lighting is everything!

- Don’t use your camera’s flash! Using a camera’s own flash will give your image a very flat and harsh look….like a snapshot.

- Don’t just set your camera on auto and hope for the best! Learn how to use your camera…aperture priority or manual will typically give you much better results when photographing food.

- Natural light is always good. Try using sunlight. Arrange your subject so that direct sunlight is hitting it from the rear left or rear right, then try holding up a piece of white paper on the opposite side as a nice diffuse reflector to help fill in harsh shadows. This single light source plus reflector technique can produce surprisingly good results! Try different positions.

- Now we said not to use your camera’s flash, but that does not mean that you can not use a flash at all. An off camera flash can yield excellent results, often better than sunlight since you have more flexibility in terms of light modifiers and positioning. If you own a separate flash unit, try getting a cable so that you can position it away from the camera and use techniques like the ones described on this page. There are a lot of creative options in this case. If you want to go even high-end you can get a remote radio trigger for your flash so there is no cable to restrict you.

Below are some images showing different lighting setups. A great way to learn about lighting is to find an image you really like and study it carefully. Where is the primary or “key” light located? Which way are the shadows falling? How diffuse or “soft” are the shadows? Once you really start to analyze how other photographers have lit there subjects you’ll start to get a feel for how to create better shots yourself.

The image below was shot with sunlight hitting the subject from the upper right, with a white reflector opposite. The reflector used was simply a piece of a white cardboard box. The camera was a Nikon D80 and the lens used was a 50mm prime.

The image below was shot with a single flash positioned behind and to the right of the cookies. A very simple setup. A white reflector was used opposite to soften the shadows (again just white cardboard). The camera was a Nikon D80 and the lens used was a 50mm prime.

The image below was shot with two Nikon speedlights with Elinchrom wireless triggers. The camera was set to manual and a flash meter was used for metering. One flash was mounted on a small softbox behind and to the left of the subject. You can see it illuminating the cheese from behind. The second flash was used to fill in the foreground shadows and to balance the contrast. Similar results could have been obtained with a reflector instead of the second flash. The camera was a Nikon D80 and the lens used was an 18-200mm zoom.

Some tips on lenses

You don’t need an expensive lens. You can use just about any lens as long as you are willing to be creative. For instance to get a narrow depth of field so that the subject is in focus and the background is blurred, try setting your camera to aperture priority or manual, and using a low f-stop. Most SLR type cameras include a depth of field preview button which will let you see the results of your f-stop adjustments prior to shooting.

Post Processing

Post processing simply refers to any image manipulation you do after the photo has been shot. Programs like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Apple iPhoto and Apple Aperture are often used for level adjustments, color balance, sharpening, etc. Here are a couple of tips:

- Crop your images to highlight the main subject. Remember that on a site like FoodGazing.com your viewers are going to be looking at a relatively small 250×250 pixel image. If the subject of your image is small, it is not going to stand out. When you are editing, try scaling down the window you are working in so that you can get a better idea of what the image will look like online.

- Sharpen your images but don’t overdo it! When you scale an image down it can help to apply some sharpening to make it pop out on the screen a bit. However too much sharpening will give your image an unnatural look and introduce artifacts. Keep it subtle.

Have fun!

There are a lot of great web sites out there that will help you take great shots as long. Above all experiment, be creative, have fun, and take a lot of photos!