Photographing Food

Like many people, we are always taking pictures of our food in restaurants and they usually turn out quite well, even though we just use our phones. Then we come home, recreate a recipe from someplace that we’ve traveled and take photos of the dish that we’ve created. We almost always dislike the pictures of our own dishes. We have read about different techniques from using a south facing window, how to plate the dish, color contrasts, etc., but still they just don’t seem to photograph well. Obviously, we don’t expect our food to necessarily look like it was prepared by a chef, we are only home-cooks and not classically trained.

Prime Rib with Yorkshire Pudding
Moroccan Chicken
Homemade Chili

We have heard that people don’t expect photographs of food to look perfect, like those from a magazine, and that a little messy can be just fine. No one has ever complained about our food pictures, other than ourselves, but we find that we are forever trying to improve at it. Maybe we are trying too hard, perhaps we should just sit down with our dinner and take a picture with our cell phone instead of taking them with our camera.

Herbed Cornish Game Hen with Pancetta
Roasted Lamb
Breaded Tilapia

If anyone out there has some great advice, we would love to hear it. Just like we aren’t professional cooks, we also aren’t professional photographers, so if there are some simple tips, we would love to hear it. Maybe we are just being too hard on ourselves, but want to continuously improve what we do. Do any of you struggle with taking photographs of food or anything else?

Pique Macho
Tender Duck Breast

15 thoughts on “Photographing Food

  1. I think you’re photos look good. I have been struggling lately with using my camera versus using my phone. I even got an app to make my phone more like a real camera.

      1. ProCamera. It was about $5 but you can play w the color, aperture, focal points, iso… there are quite a few tutorials out there on it as well.

  2. Your photos look pretty good. A friend of mine suggests holding the iPhone in a vertical position with maybe a slight angle. Her photos look luscious while mine look like something destined for the waste bin. And then there are some dishes that just aren’t photogenic no matter who takes the photo.

  3. Your photos are stunning. Just like you, I’m always trying to improve my food photography. There is a Facebook group called Food blogging, photography and videography where there are some amazing bloggers sharing their awesome tips and tricks. I recommend you to join that group if you haven’t already 😊

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