Food Photography 101

My name is Patricia and I spend a lot of my time shooting for Me:Mo, your friendly neighbourhood restaurant social media agency. In this blog I’ll take you through some basic steps and tips to create your own food photography. Just to give your ‘grammable breakfast more purpose, that’s why we really do it, right?

Restaurants and social media go hand in hand – Usually the first pit stop for any restaurant reveller, the quickest way to get first hand images of what could be on offer but also what’s the best dish. This is important for many people, especially if your restaurant is a particular place to be ‘seen’ you secretly want to order the most photogenic dish on offer. And this is what our job here as content creators for restaurant social media are for.

So, here we are, welcome to the food photography 101 making your own images fit for your restaurant social media channels… I’ll take you through how I created my shots from a few recent shoots for Hungry Donkey and Trader Vic’s.

LIGHTING – This is absolutely fundamental to creating the right sort of atmosphere for the kind of shoot restaurant you’re shooting for and will always be different. For example, with Trader Vic’s they are a bar and restaurant but pretty tricky in terms of lighting due to them being underground with no natural light! This is when the trusty flash gun comes to the rescue. Not always suitable for everything, but at Trader Vic’s their style is fun, energetic and a little bit silly so this quality of light suits their brand and look. Having naturally lit, wholesome looking shots would not suit and look out of place. Whereas for Hungry Donkey, she sunshine worked in my favour to create a dappled effect and made my photos look as if we were in in the height of a Greek summer and not in Spitalfields, London.

ANGLES – This is also a particularly important element and different angles work better for some dishes than others. For example, dished with height won’t work or do it justice shooting from a birds-eye angle i.e. a burger. However flatter dishes like a pizza which actually for many food photographers in one of the hardest dishes to shoot because it only really works from a birds-eye angle and therefore not allowing much room for creativity. A sure-fire way to create consistently strong imagery is to not allow for dead space within the shots whilst also not looking too over crowded or staged. The main aim for successful images for use on restaurant social media is make the photos look realistic and relatable as well as looking delicious!