8 mobile phone gourmet photography skills

Lead: In the era of smart phones, everyone can record the beauty of life with their mobile phones, but how to shoot enviable food with their mobile phones? I booked a high-end restaurant and was ready to punch in, but I couldn't take attractive food photos. Before considering changing your mobile phone, consider whether there is still more room for improvement in your camera technology. Mastering these eight points will surely make rapid progress!

1. Choose food that is worth shooting and bright enough.

It sounds natural, but few people actually do it. Think about it, professional photographers will go to places worthy of taking pictures to take pictures and make compositions, and they will also take beautiful madou, but they rarely take ordinary ugly scenes and rarely take models that do not conform to the public aesthetic. This is also because photographers pay attention to material selection. They know that some things will not look good no matter how they are shot.

As far as shooting food is concerned, it is easy to shoot colorful food, such as Japanese seafood and sushi, or western-style cakes and afternoon tea, which are all colorful foods. When shooting the buffet of western-style buffet, you can also take pictures with a plate of colorful food.

▲ Western buffet is easy to find bright food to take pictures. (Mobile phone shooting: Oppo N3)

2. Pay attention to the light source and use natural light.

The light source for shooting food is also important. Without light, there is no image, and the quality of light will also affect the color of photos. You will find that the colors you see in the sun are the brightest and most saturated, and so are the foods. The reason for this difference is not only the difference of light source and light quality, but also the difference of "color development"; Color rendering indicates the percentage of colors that can be presented. The color rendering of sunlight is 100, while that of ordinary fluorescent lamps is only 60 ~ 75.

In order to create an atmosphere, most restaurants use yellow light as the main lighting. Even after color temperature correction, the light quality and color rendering are still far less than sunlight. Therefore, if you eat during the day, you might as well find a window seat or an open-air seat. Colors from sunlight are still the most abundant and saturated. However, the glass curtain wall of some buildings will cause color deviation, so pay attention to the white balance setting when shooting.

▲ Choose a window and shoot with natural light, you can get rich and saturated photos, but pay attention to the double color temperature inside and outside. (Shooting with mobile phone: HTC one E9+)

3. Leave the picture blank appropriately

Shooting food does not necessarily need to completely fill the picture with the subject. In fact, proper blank space can highlight the center of gravity of the photo and cause visual focus. If you are reading a magazine, most of the beautiful food photos leave a certain gap to make the picture more focused. The blank mentioned here does not mean pure white, but refers to things that are subjective and monotonous in composition, such as white plates, tablecloths, napkins and so on. It is best to use white plates, especially for western food, which usually uses larger plates. The white part of the plate can also be used as a reference to correct the white balance.

▲ If the picture is properly left blank, you can focus your vision on the key points. (Mobile phone shooting: Oppo N3)

4. Don't try to cover everything in one mirror.

There are so many delicious foods in front of me that I really want to film them all, right? However, this is often not necessarily good-looking. There are many reasons, such as the picture is too messy, the theme is unclear, the picture is unbalanced, it is difficult to get a clean composition, and the wide-angle lens of the mobile phone is too serious. Some people say that photography is the art of subtraction, which can also be used to confirm this view.

A "Manchu-Han banquet" is not as good as carefully composing every dish, not only "shooting as little as possible", but also cutting some dishes moderately. For example, the food in the disc is a good object to practice, because people's brains have a strong impression of round things. Even if a third of the circle is cut off, they can still imagine a complete circle. The food that stands out from the picture after cutting will give people a feeling of fullness.

▲ Although not all the images are taken, the food outside the picture gives people a feeling of fullness. (using mobile phone: iPhone 4 shooting)

5. Counting stools is beautiful.

Quantitative aesthetics is applicable everywhere, as well as in the field of food. When shooting small and large quantities of food, you can choose layered, split-lens or overhead shooting to make the picture full of brightly colored food. Applications include buffet meals, or afternoon tea cupcakes and so on.

▲ When the quantity is large, try to show this advantage. (Mobile phone shooting: Oppo N3)

6. Close-up shallow depth of field

The application of shallow depth of field in shooting food is absolutely beneficial. In addition to making people feel professional, it can also highlight the theme and create a sense of existence in front of food. Of course, it is not easy for a mobile phone to create a shallow depth of field, but as long as you pay attention to shooting food as close as possible, if you have the function of manual focusing, you can pull it to the nearest distance first, and then move the mobile phone to focus on the composition.

▲ Shallow depth of field can create a sense of existence when food is close at hand. (Using mobile phone: Samsung Galaxy S6)

7. The white balance is correct

Wrong white balance setting is a mistake that many people will make, which will not only make food pale, but also make photos look bad at all. There are many ways to make photos look yellow, not only to see whether the automatic white balance of the mobile phone itself is accurate, but also to save photos in post-production. Of course, the most important thing is light source. If you can rely on natural light, it is the best way, and try to integrate the white disk as the basis for post-correction.

▲ The right color can make food feel more delicious. (Shooting with mobile phone: HTC one E9+)

8. Unique theme and significance

"Not just taking pictures of food" is another meaning of taking pictures by mobile phone, because life can be taken everywhere, so there is more room for taking pictures by mobile phone. Pictures can talk, or have meaningful themes, which can give food photos more meaning.

▲ "How to express the photographer's sense of poverty in a picture"

Your lens group compares toast with bananas. Although the subject is "food", it makes the whole picture interesting through special topics.

▲ "Today's midnight snack is decided to be this! 』

Without bright colors and prominent food, the effect of adding pudding to instant noodles is quite noticeable.