Food Styling and Photography

"When you look at food you have two eyes, when a camera looks at it, it only has one."

-Delores Custer, food stylist

A couple weeks ago I attended a food styling and photography class.  It was put on by the Portland Culinary Alliance, a professional organization of which I am a student member. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this class, but I knew it sounded exactly like something I should do. 

The Fox Foodie is coming up on our one year anniversary, and wow! have we come a long way from January 30th 2010. My writing has improved, my recipes have improved, I have been trying new places and attending new events, but the most obvious change is that my photographs have improved greatly. 

If you don't believe me check out some of my very early posts such as this one or this one. And then look at the photos I upload now. Hopefully you will notice a dramatic difference. 

I am convinced that good photos are one of the easiest and quickest ways to make your blog look professional. If you look at the very best food blogs, you will notice that they have the very best photos.  Sometimes people can even get away with being so-so writers, if they are excellent photographers.

I do not claim to be an excellent food photographer by any means, but I do enjoy it and I love learning more about it. In fact you would be surprised and perhaps appalled if you saw the camera in which I take all of my photos with. Let's just say it is a small point and shoot and it is nearing its fourth birthday. Yeah, I am in desperate need of a new camera.

But as you can see, it doesn't take a professional and expensive camera to take good food pictures. Of course, as any amateur food photographer would wish, I do hope to get a Canon Rebel in the year 2011...

In my year of blogging and photographing food I have learned that it takes two things to produce a good photo of food. Lighting and visual interest. 

Lighting is by far the most important, as it can just as easily make great food look bad or OK food look great. I avoid using my camera's flash so much that you would think I was afraid my food would blow up with the click of a button. The flash usually makes food look gross, so avoid using it (at least it does on inexpensive cameras such as mine). See my example below. I just took these two pictures of the same cupcake only minutes ago.

 This picture is on my dining room table with the curtains drawn, using artificial light: my camera's flash.

 This picture is taken on the same dining room table within a minute of the other picture, but with the curtains open using natural diffused light and no flash.

See the difference? It's huge isn't it??

I also mentioned that visual interest was another component to a great food photo. Visual interest can be added in many ways. Some of the ways I like to add visual interest are:

• Camera angle. By showing the food in a different angle, or by not centering the food in the photo you can make your food look a lot more interesting (see the cupcake example).
• Dishes. White is usually best for food, but not always. Experiment with different shapes and colors of dishes. Add a fork or a napkin to add more interest. 
• Background. Switch up background color or area. Hang a colored tablecloth behind the food or set up a mini "scene" behind the food.
• Camera focus. I always use my macro setting, that is until I have a camera that uses a macro lens. Using this setting I can choose to focus on different areas of my photo.

Getting back to the class that I took. It was put on by two very highly regarded professionals in the field: photographer John Valls, and nationally renown food stylist Delores Custer.  Delores Custer has authored one of the best food styling books on the market, Food Styling, The Art of Preparing Food for the Camera.

Some food styling tips that Delores gave are:

• When photographing coffee, add bubbles with liquid detergent to add visual interest
• Let condensation develop on glasses of cold drinks
• Photograph a turkey before it is fully cooked, this is when it looks most presentable
• Let the cheese melt on your chili! Don't take the photo before everything is as mouthwatering as possible
• Cut onions into semi-circle wedges, not full circles
• Know which colors complement each other
• Blue and green suggest cool
• Borrow ideas. Look at food magazines, cookbooks, and online to see how people style and photograph food
• Use the right props, such as cooler white colored plates for cool food and warmer tones for warm food

John Valls, photographer, gave these suggestions: 

• Start with the end in mind
• Be objective about your photography
• 45 degree angle usually shows more texture
• Use a small bowl to make product look bigger (for example if you are selling chickpeas and want to make them look huge and delicious, use a small bowl)

 John and Delores working on my salad

The last part of the class we were given free reign in the kitchen to create a salad with a partner. We were provided with a table full of fresh produce in which to make our salad. We all had brought dishes from home, and my partner and I created a Greek salad that you see photographed on this blog post. We were told to use our cameras to photograph the salad. We also had a light box that we could use as well.

The photograph John took of my salad up on the projector

At the very end of the class we could take our salad to the two professionals and let Delores make any changes to our salad and John would photograph it. In the end I couldn't believe my eyes. The salad that I created looked like it came out of a magazine! It is amazing what good styling and photography can do for an ordinary salad!