Festive Food Photography with a Phone
Waiter: “Is there something wrong with your food, madam?”
Customer: “No, it’s delicious. Why do you ask?”
Waiter: “Well, it’s just that you haven’t photographed it.”
Before social media was a thing, food photography was the realm of the professional photographer, shooting for restaurants, packaging, magazines and cookery books. Now it seems that every other image on Instagram is of mouthwatering cuisine, home bakes, healthy and colourful poké bowls, and everyone is a would-be food photographer.
If you’ve ever tried to take a picture of your food in a restaurant or of a masterpiece you’ve cooked up in your kitchen, you’ll have discovered it is not as straight forward as pressing the shutter and instantly producing a magazine-worthy shot. The image often looks flat and uninspiring, the light is wrong, and it just isn’t doing the dish justice.
I’ve been photographing food for about ten years and know full well how much goes into a seemingly simple shot. You need to know your way around your camera or your phone, have an understanding of how to work with the light, how to use props and accessories to style the image, composing it so that it looks real and not staged, and editing skills to enhance the final photo.
However, I also believe that food photography can be accessible and affordable to anyone. I have a very good camera and some expensive lenses and do use those for my professional work, but you can achieve amazing results with a phone camera. There is a still a learning curve and you must be prepared to put in the practice, but I know it’s possible because I’ve done it and I’ve taught many others to take fabulous food shots too.
The delicious festive images featured in this masterclass were all shot on a table at home, using a phone camera and just natural light. There are no fake ingredients nor trickery, everything is edible and was consumed enthusiastically by family members, friends and neighbours, as soon as I’d said, ‘it’s a wrap!’. Read on to discover my top tips and pro techniques to help you with your festive food photography.
It's all about the light
The wrong light can totally kill a photograph however pretty the food is or however long you’ve spent arranging props. The first thing you should do is switch off any electric lighting if you can. Choose a spot next to a window so that you can use the natural light spilling into the room. Avoid areas where the sun is shining directly onto the table.
For the shot of panettone muffins, I set everything up on a table right next to a window, which is to the left of me. This lights the food from the side, highlighting the textures and creating soft shadows to the right, preventing the shot from feeling too flat. You can see the subtle shadows of the scissors and the paper.
Before I choose any dishes, plates, props etc., I decide the mood I want to convey and the story I want to suggest. This is key to making the photo more inspirational and attractive to people. The panettone muffin shot conveys homemade, freshly baked, suggests they may be a gift, feels clean and airy and has a bit of a Nordic vibe.
When you’re photographing from above, use Photo Mode on your phone camera and hold the phone as level as possible. iPhones have a white cross and a yellow cross that overlay one another once your phone is level. The crosses appear automatically when you shoot from above.
Overhead shots suit flatter subjects like biscuits, cakes, bowls of pasta etc., but taller dishes like this stack of profiterole rolls should be photographed from the front.
Decide whether you need to shoot at eye level, as is the case in the profiterole image, or from a higher angle. Try a few different ones and see which works best. I prefer to use a tripod when I’m photographing food so that I can keep the phone in a fixed position. It’s also helpful once you start adding props.
Create a mood and tell a story with props
This is a very decadent dessert that tends to be served on special occasions, so I’ve chosen props that communicate that. The cake stand elevates it to look like a centrepiece and the ribbons and baubles lend a festive feel. Keep the styling quite simple to let the dessert be the hero of the shot. Don’t underestimate how much faffing (a food stylist’s favourite word!) it takes to curl the ribbon perfectly and place the baubles in exactly the right spot!
Colour is extremely important for setting the mood and making the shot feel balanced and pleasing to look at. Festive reds and greens would have felt more playful but less sophisticated and would have required a different backdrop. The bronze and brown tones of the props work perfectly with the profiteroles and the backdrop and give a sophisticated feel.
Once you’re happy with the styling it’s time to take the shot. I would normally select Portrait Mode to create a soft-focus background, but I wanted to capture caramel sauce being poured over the profiteroles. The best way to do this is to use Live Mode, as this captures a three second video, from which you can select the best still image. Enable Live Mode by making sure the concentric circles symbol, top right on the screen, hasn’t got a line through it. Hold your phone steady, tap on the subject to focus accurately, adjust the brightness with the exposure slider (the little sunshine symbol) and tap the shutter button. Then find the image in your gallery and select Edit. Make sure Live is enabled bottom left on the screen and pick the best frame. To convert this into a still image just click on Live at the top to turn it off.
Keep it simple
These lovely, light cookies were shot at about a sixty-degree angle, which is the angle at which we view our food when we are sitting at the table. Notice how the gentle shadows from the plate, and the cup are now at the bottom or front of the image, rather than at the side. This time I used backlight, which means that I stood facing the window rather than sideways to it. Backlight reveals texture and shine on the top of food and is a very popular way to light flatter dishes.
The styling in this shot is minimalist and I’d recommend that you stick to a small number of props when starting out. There’s a simple story of someone enjoying a cosy moment, sipping an espresso and eating a cookie. Be careful not to introduce anything that pulls the eye away from the food, for example, a dark or colourful cup.
The food is the hero
As your styling confidence grows, you can start to introduce more props but take care not to overshadow the hero of the shot, the food. The candle, pine branches, wooden trees and baubles are the supporting act, helping to tell the story and set the scene. I like to imply that the mince pies have just been baked and are being enjoyed by someone. The freshly sprinkled icing sugar and the (carefully placed!) crumbs communicate that, and add texture and interest to what would have been an empty space.
Use Portrait Mode to blur the background and create depth. This will blur any Christmas sparkly lights into lovely soft circles and get rid of the wire between them. If your Phone camera has 2x or 3x zoom this will work better than the wider angle 1x option. When you shoot in Portrait Mode remember to click on the f symbol top right to bring up the depth slider at the bottom of the screen. This allows you to reduce or increase the amount of blur. You can also adjust this after you have taken the shot. Click on Edit and again on the f symbol, top left this time.
Hopefully these festive foodie pics have got your taste buds tingling and you're now armed with lots of useful tips to do your own festive food photography. And, of course, you get to enjoy scoffing the food afterwards!
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