5 Ways to Take Better Food Shots for Instagram
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October 14, 2019
The Great American Cuisine
November 4, 20195 Ways to Take Better Food Shots for Instagram
Who hasn’t come across an image of food before that looks sooo good that it sets off immediate cravings?
Food in the 21st century is now a visual affair. Just serving good tasting chow these days just doesn’t cut it anymore.
But taking great food shots isn’t for everyone. If you’ve tried to recreate a beautiful photo seen on Instagram before, only to have it result in a pic you’d prefer to hide on (or delete from) your phone, then this is for you.
Here are 5 easy tips to better Instagram food photos!
Pay attention to where you sit (or stand)
Why? Because lighting is everything in photos. If the place you’re going to has a great overhead light, or if there are seats by the window, you’ll want to sit there.
Of course, your seating options need not necessarily be limited to the aforementioned two examples. Pay attention to your environment and where best will offer ideal lighting for your photos.
One thing you should definitely avoid is your camera’s flash. Most tend to be over-the-top and produce washed out colours in your photos.
Shadows
While lighting is important, shadows are too.
Obviously, you don’t want any shadow of yourself ruining the picture. But you can turn this annoyance into your advantage. As with above, pay attention to your light source and simply stand opposite to it. Sometimes, placing your food at the edge of the table helps to minimise the annoying shadows casted on your food.
When done right, the shadows give the photo a natural dramatic effect that will automatically make it 10 times better – all by just taking the photo from a different angle.
Angles
So you may have seen a really nice top-down view photo on Instagram. You try it but it doesn’t produce the result you were going for.
Just because a particular angle looked great on social media doesn’t mean it works for all shots. Experiment with angles and different shot types.
Sometimes, the ingredients are a dish’s main star. And you’ll want to highlight this with a close-up bokeh shot, instead of a top-down one.
Arrangements
There’s so much to explore in terms of the arrangement. Think of the spaces within a frame when you’re making a flatlay shot. Sometimes, just bringing in a human element in your photos helps a lot too!
Whether it’s a friend’s hand holding a fork, ready to eat, or a knife in the midst of cutting open a beautiful poached egg, it will bring a different dynamic to your photo!
Don’t be afraid to do a little editing
In an ideal world, every photo you take is all Insta-ready – brightness, colours and sharpness are all perfect.
Apps like Snapseed and VSCO allow you to do just that. Natural lighting, while nice, still comes with the risk of washed out photos, especially on a particularly sunny day. But it’s an easy solve by tweaking a photo’s colour saturation to ensure the dish’s colours are faithfully captured.
Be careful though – you won’t want to over-edit them. The result would be very fake-looking photos that are more grotesque than gorgeous.
