Food Photography is fun, creative, challenging, and rewarding!! The Art of Food is amazing and is better left to be created by the professionals, a food stylist or a chef! The beauty of food only comes from experience and can be quite challenging to make it look appetizing in a photo! These photos were all styled by professional chefs for a cookbook that I had the honor of photographing, "Santa Barbara Culinary Art"!
The photography of the image can be tricky as well. First you want to keep the image and surrounding simple and clean, letting the food be the star. I find using natural, soft lighting gets the best results. Also you have to work fast and be prepared ahead of time for the food arriving to be photographed. Food can change quickly , best to get the shot quickly as it is presented. Playing with depth of field is also fun and creative with food, this can highlight the food or allow a component of the dish to be featured. Also the use of props can be used but should just be subtle and not take away from the star of the photo, the main dish.
And lastly, food photography is rewarding!! Not only do I get to take these fabulous images of food, I usually get to enjoy eating them afterwards as well!!! TASTY!! And as a bonus I get to to have my images in a beautiful cookbook that hopefully will inspire people to try and recreate these amazing dishes!
These photos were all done for cookbooks, but these images would look great on restaurant websites. If you are in need of food photography for a cookbook, restaurant websites, Zagat, Open Table, or just for your social media, give me a call. I would love to get artistic with you and help promote you and your business.
