Tips for getting started with food shooting

Lead: I have heard a friend who also likes photography sigh with emotion: If you can take good photos of food, you can take good photos. ? However, not everyone will take a bulky SLR camera to dinner every time. It is even more exaggerated to bring a reflector or a homemade light source. In fact, in daily life, an iPhone and a small card machine can practice shooting attractive food at any time. Here are some tips for photographing food:

First, find the best light source.

Lighting is a big problem when shooting food indoors. Many indoor restaurants have dim lights and yellow colors, which will make the whole photo too noisy, underexposed or grayish white, and the food taken is not as attractive as it looks to the naked eye.

Shadow is also the enemy of shooting food indoors. When the camera or mobile phone approaches, my shadow is also reflected on the food. Professional photographers can use reflectors or artificial light sources to solve this problem. When we shoot everyday, the best way is to adjust a variety of shooting angles.

Tip:

Sit as close to natural light or bright as possible.

To adjust the white balance setting of the camera, you can use white paper as a calibration tool to adjust the color of the paper in the viewfinder to the closest white.

Use the various filters of the photo application to create different effects.

Shoot in natural light using the Hipstamatic of iPhone.

Use Instagram to shoot in warm but insufficient light.

Second, the shooting angle.

Frontal shooting

The most traditional way to shoot food and the whole picture or enrich the scene is to shoot parallel to the plane where the food is placed.

Side shot

Side shots are especially suitable for hamburgers, sandwiches, cakes and other foods with more vertical levels. Where the light is poor, you often choose to shoot from the side, so it is not easy to leave a shadow in the picture.

Slant shooting

The oblique side shot can not only capture the whole picture of food, but also avoid annoying shadows. Of course, if you want to highlight the theme and avoid confusion, you can use the shallow depth of field effect.

Photography: Moriza

Third, composition skills

In composition skills, the most important thing to shoot food is to highlight the theme and avoid clutter. In daily shooting, you can consider the following composition methods:

Central layout

The most commonly used layout. The circle mentioned here is not a complete circle, but a layout with the center of the picture as the center and scattered around, or? Symmetrical layout? . Generally speaking, it is to put the subject in the center of the picture. This composition is also suitable for square photos taken with iPhone photo apps such as Instagram and Hipstamatic.

Photography: Neil Conway

Photography: cooking, etc

Irregular layout

There are many subjects in the picture, which can be composed by the golden section method of photography, or the subjects can be placed at will without following the routine. But the main thing is not to make the whole picture unbalanced.

For example: an ordinary daily shooting, but the black cross on the right is missing, and the whole picture is left.

Example: seemingly disorderly arrangement, but the golden section composition method is not strictly adopted.

Photography: yarn management

Trigonometry is not strictly used to avoid the imbalance of the picture.

Four, close, close again.

A famous photographer once said: If you don't shoot well enough, you are not standing close enough. ? This standard also applies to food photography.

Give up the whole food and focus on the details, that is, enlarge the part that can be seen by the naked eye, so the photos taken are often more creative, vivid and interesting. This kind of photography is not only realistic, but also subjective. If you want to upload different food photos on social networks, you can try to be close to the subject and show the details.

Using the large aperture of SLR camera can highlight the main details. Now the card machine has a good macro function and can also shoot at close range.

For example, the texture of fruit can only be displayed if it is close to the camera.

Photography: Nick salter Marsh

Five, solid color background or shallow depth of field highlights the theme

No matter what food you shoot, you can find a solid background, and it won't be too bad.

Example: The background color is in sharp contrast with the food color, creating a retro and cheerful atmosphere.

Photography: Pink sherbet photography

But many times the dining scene is messy and there is no relatively clean background. You can use shallow depth of field to highlight the theme and blur the messy background.

Photography: Nohendra ruslan

Photography: Dennis Wang

Techniques for shooting shallow depth of field:

If it is a SLR camera, we can adjust the aperture (such as f/2.8) or increase the focal length (such as 200 mm);

If it is a small DC or card machine, you can set the macro function to shoot as close as possible, and you can also use the same method for mobile phones such as iPhone/Android.

IPhone/Android photos can be artificially blurred by using Instagram, Snapseed and other applications that can simulate tilting and shifting.

Start taking high-quality food photos today.