FOOD PHOTOGRAPY –

EVERYTHING YOU NEED

TO KNOW
-By Shikhar Suryan
INTRODUCTION:
Food photography could be defined as a skill or passion
of a person where they try to click the magnificent images
of the food to make them more eye-pleasing and
appealing. It is a part of a still life and commercial
photography.
Many people choose this as their career to show their
skills to the still life related photography.
In this article we’ll be looking some of the necessities that
make you to do this as your passion.

EQUIPMENT NEEDED FOR FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY:

1. Tasty Food:
Obviously you’ll be required a food item which
will be tempting and appealing to your eyes and
stomach. So order any food item of your choice,
either it could be piping hot food or it could be
cool breeze food and start clicking various
pictures of it. And yes after that don’t forget that
to eat, yummmmm…..
2. Reflectors & Diffusers:
Reflector is supplied with a vinyl pouch by
which it can be folded and stored inside and can
be carried easily.
It could be of any colour like black, gold, white,
silver but each colour reflector has it’s own
property, eg: gold colour will give sunny warm
glow and produces a natural, golden fill that is
great for warming indoor lightings.

Diffuser is a translucent material which place

between the source light and the subject to soften
the beam of the light. It is used to make the
photo of your food not so bright and will give the
actual result after clicking the photo.

3. Tripod:
A tripod is very necessary for clicking up your
photo if your hands are not stable, but it is
always recommended that you’ve to carry a
 tripod for the best results. Tripod can be either
very compact that will be easy to carry or it can
be as big as of your height.
Tripod is a kind of a stand with three legs with a
holder in which you can attach your device
whether it’s your smartphone or digital camera
or even a DSLR to click best photos without
having any kind of blur. It is best for having the
stability of your photo as well as your device.

4. Sifter:
Uhmm, it’s not a tool required for the
photography, it is just used to refine the flour and
if you want to take a photo where you have to
show the flaws of the flour this could be the best
tool ever for your photo, trust me!

5. Camera:
Obviously again, you’ll need a camera to click
the photos but mind that the camera should be
descent which means it should have good counts
of megapixels and have enough aperture for light
 entering because these are the only factors which
will provide the best photographs of your food.
If you don’t have enough budget to purchase
flagship cameras like Canon 80D or Sony Alpha
you can begin with your smartphone itself. In
today’s time, smartphones are very capable
enough to capture professional like photos. Can’t
believe this? Open your camera application and
switch to pro mode in that where you can see
various settings like white-balance, ISO, focus
etc.

6. Storage devices:
As you’ll be taking various photos of the food
which you’ll have to store it somewhere as these
photos will be taking a lot of space in your
current storage. So it is advisory that carry an
extra SD-Card (It could be standard size or the
micro size) to carry/store all of your photos in
one go.

BASIC PHOTOGRPHY TIPS AS A BEGINNER:

 1. Try to capture your subject (food) under natural
lighting. If you think the lights are strong then you
can use any kind of cloth as a diffuser to make the
beam soft. Try to avoid the built-in flash of your
devices and there are so much of lights already.
2. You could look to different rooms of that particular
location don’t be get too dependent on one room and
it’s lighting only. Try to analyse yourself that where
you could find the perfect lightings for your photo.
3. Before the arrival of the food, try to analyse it’s
shape, height, width, and colour. Then place the
camera to the position where it could capture more
highlights, texture and details.
4. Play with some angles; try to keep your camera at
various angles to get more sharp and focused image.
5. Placement of your subject (food) with right
foreground and background; try to keep solid colour
background for less distortion in the image and you
can play the with some basic ingredients and keep
them as the subject’s foreground.

CONCLUSION:
If you’re looking into this very seriously, then you
should have the pre-requisite knowledge of the things
that are mentioned above.
Try to start while being economic, don’t try to
purchase flagship equipments if you’re a beginner.
Seeing this world is very eye-pleasing to all of us, but
if we have to make it our memory, we have to
capture this world not only from our eyes but with a
photographic device also.