7 FOOD

PHOTOGRAPHY
SECRETS
F O R M O U T H -WAT E R I N G I M A G E S

C RA IG KIND ER
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Hello and welcome, fellow food lover.

Over the past decade and a half that I’ve worked as a professional food photographer, I’ve been lucky enough to work with
some very talented chefs to bring images of their creations to the world. The way they put together combinations of tastes
and textures to create something new and wonderful astounds and inspires me. Asparagus with Feta and Macadamia
Crumble? Yes, please. Clove-infused cream? Don’t mind if I do! Beetroot Curry? I’m paying attention.

However, getting these flavours to sing on the page is another matter. It’s surprisingly easy to make the most mouth-
watering dishes look as un-inspiring in photographs as Gran’s chops (no offence Gran). If you don’t put the right conditions
and photographic measures in place, you
simply can’t create food photography that
does delicious cooking justice.

If you are in the professional food

business, whether as a restaurant owner,
cookbook publisher or food promotion
agency, you’ll know it’s essential to have
outstanding photographs of your dishes
that make customers desperate to eat
them.

We’ve all heard the saying ‘We eat with

our eyes’ and with the growth of image
focused social media, this is truer today
than ever before. We live in an increasingly
visual world with ever-shortening
attention spans. At current reckoning,
you have about 3 nano-seconds to catch
your customer’s eye before they are onto
the next item in their social media feed or
magazine. If you are in an industry where
your selling point is the stand out nature
of your food, you must get your food
photography right.

In my 15 years of working as a professional

food photographer, I’ve boiled down 7
key factors that need to be in place to
create mouth-watering images that make
your carefully created dishes look even
better than they taste.

Read on to find out about the 7 elements

that I always pay attention to, to ensure
my food photography results in images
that make people want to eat.

Craig Kinder
 7 F O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y S E C R E T S F O R M O U T H W A T E R I N G I M A G E S

1 It’s all about

the lighting
If you know anything about
photography, you’ll know that we
photographers go on and on and on
about lighting. Yes, we are a boring
lot but with good reason: Lighting is
the key factor that can make or break
your shoot!

Natural daylight is the optimum.

You know that amazing atmosphere
and drama that high end restaurants
create with dark drapes, cozy corners
and low lighting? Trust me – it can be
a killer for good food photography.

It’s a food photographer’s job to create

the right light to show off a dish at its
very best. If the optimum light doesn’t
exist, I need to either find it or create
it.

Carefully controlled lighting can make or break a shot like this.

The light we are looking for needs to come from one direction,
preferably from diagonally behind the food. We don’t want
to wash out our food with a flood of bright sunlight (living in
Australia’s sunniest place this is a frequent challenge I face!).
What we are looking for is a soft directional beam of natural
window light – but this doesn’t always occur naturally.

Left: Directional light creates highlights and shadows, giving the

three dimensional effect in a two-dimensional space.
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Too much light?

If the location where I am taking the photo has a flood
of light coming through a window, I can change it into a
directional source by putting up blacks on the windows.
I can also soften harsh sunlight using scrims to diffuse
it.

I always pack professional blacks and scrims in my site

photography toolkit, however if you don’t have these
you can do a ‘McGyver’ and copy the effect with some
common items such as large sheets of black cardstock
and translucent white fabric or shower curtains.

Before and after: using scrims and blacks to

help control the amount of natural light.

In this shot, diffused lighting creates

much softer highlights and shadows.
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Light coming from

the wrong direction?
If there is some light available but it’s
coming from the wrong direction, out
comes my food photography trolley. I
can simply ‘flip the set’ by turning the
trolley around so the light comes from the
opposite side. I can also use reflectors and
mirrors to redirect the light - these need
to be positioned carefully. It’s one of my
assistant’s jobs on professional shoots to
hold these in the right position, but if they Magic arms at work
are otherwise occupied, my secret weapon
is magic arms.

These little gizmos are articulating metal Reflectors enable directional

arms with clamps at either end. You light to be bounced into
shadow areas, so the details
can attach one end to a structure such
remain visible
as a table or doorframe, and clamp your
reflectors or mirrors into another. They’re
not only handy when you don’t have a
spare assistant, but great if you need to
position something awkwardly down low

No natural light?
As a last resort, if there is no available
source of natural light, you can use a
constant source of artificial light from
professional quality photographer supplier.
Many photographers work with strobes,
but I find that continuous lighting is better
at mimicking the qualities of daylight and
showing off food at its best.

However, food really does look at its best

in natural light so I go to great lengths to
avoid a situation with no natural light at
all, including changing locations to access
better light.
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No prizes for guessing the

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key ingredient in this dish.

The key ingredient takes centre stage

Food photos are not just about beauty, they are also about context and appetite. For example, when flicking
through a cookbook to choose a recipe, we don’t often choose what we want to eat based on the words in the
recipe - we choose with our senses and emotions.

It’s important to make the key ingredient the focal point of your food photo. If the recipe you are shooting is for
Sophie Zalokar’s “Watercress leaves and emulsion, flaked hot smoked trout, yoghurt and mustard seed biscuits”
you want to see some nice generous chunks of smoked trout as a central feature. Can’t you just imagine how
complex and flavoursome that meat would taste? Viewers skim information more and more quickly these days,
and they need to instantly recognise when a dish is something they would like to make or eat.
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Sometimes highlighting your key ingredient involves
working closely with your client to ‘tweak’ their dish
for photographic purposes. In this image from Sophie
Zalokar’s Food of the Southern Forests cookbook, the
hero ingredient is broccoli. The recipe calls for the
broccoli to be cut into long florets which in practice
would be tossed among the other ingredients.
However for the image we needed to ensure that the
F O R M O U T H W A T E R I N G I M A G E S
key ingredient was instantly identifiable.
So instead of following the recipe to the letter, Chef
prepared a whole head of broccoli which is dressed
with the other ingredients. The light in the photo
is directed to gleam off the stem of the broccoli,
showing how tender and fresh it is. Now – doesn’t
that make you want to eat your greens?
Composition and focus
are also important in drawing
your viewer’s eye to that one element
you most want them to notice and
think – yes, I want to eat that!
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3 Speed is of It’s not hard to imagine why speed is important in an exciting

shot like this.

the essence
Timeliness and speed are of the essence in food
photography. You may have heard the old tales
of food photographer’s tricks such as using
hairspray to make baked goods stay glossy and
fresh under studio lights, or substituting PVA
glue for milk to stop cereal going soggy.

The reality is that most chefs wouldn’t dream of

letting you represent their food in this way (and
I wouldn’t want to shoot it!). Instead of using
smoke and mirrors, what professional food
photographers need to learn to do is to work
quickly and accurately. The longer prepared
food sits on a plate, the less enticing it will look.

When I shot Chef Alain Fabregues’ (of The

Loosebox Restaurant fame) Degustatation
cookbook, I had between 30 to 45 seconds to
shoot each dish before his delectable French
sauces started to separate. Because I hate being
sworn at in a language I’m not proficient in, of
course I worked fast!

Delicate dishes like these are designed to be consumed

immediately and need to be photographed accordingly.
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The basic quality needed to be able to shoot very quickly is to be

extremely organised. You must have your lighting sorted in advance,
your props ready, and the correct lens on you camera. Very often,
I will request chef gives me the same kind of bowl or plate that the
dish will be served in so I can prep for the camera angle and check
reflections in advance.

I need to know exactly what the dish coming out will look like in
advance to get this all right. It’s ideal if I can have a ‘dummy’ version
of the recipe plated up to prep the photo.

Once the dish is placed on the table for photographing, you need to
have your tweezers and garnish (and your expert food stylist) ready
very close by for quick positioning. Cotton buds are my secret weapon
for quickly removing unattractive smears, while a small bottle of Above: having expert assistance in the
white vinegar is indispensable for cleaning up fatty residue on a plate. studio helps get through time-sensitive
Attention to these details is essential - it’s amazing what you will notice images more smoothly
in a photograph that isn’t apparent in real life.

Getting shots like these right are achieved by rehearsing the shot with stand-in dishes.
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A great food stylist is

4
worth their weight in saffron
An experienced food stylist is a professional food photographer’s best friend. If Chef is not keen to re-plate
food to suit the fussy parameters of food photography, insist on commissioning an experienced food stylist. I
always work with stylists that have decades of experience because in the worst case scenario, the elements of
the dish can be supplied and the food stylist replate the food.

Food styling simply can’t be learnt in a book, or even from Instagram - it needs to be learnt in a kitchen. This is
why some of the best food stylists have apprenticed or trained in restaurants and really understand food. They
are quite unrelated to stylists in fields such as fashion or interiors - that is, they don’t just focus on trends or
retail styling. There is a big difference between a fashion or interior stylist and food stylist and you really don’t
want a cushion chucker on your food shoot!

Many of the food stylists I have worked with have a wagon full of props including plates of different textures
and sizes, wooden boards, serving implements, napkins and more. Props and textures help set the mood and
context of the finished shot and careful selection is important. In fact, props can really help tell the story of
your food – for example organic materials like wood and hand thrown stoneware help bring out the story of
slow flow food, while sculptural serving-wear says high end dining.

Chef Anna Gare, right, working on a dish with food

stylist Ursula Nairn, and some bloke with a camera, left.
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My personal bug-bear is chrome kettles and pans which are terrible for creating bad reflections. In contrast I’m
a big fan of non-reflective surfaces with texture and an organic feel, such as hand crafted ceramics and wood.
Some unusual props that have featured in my food photography include old wooden gates, rusted car doors
(often found at tips) and even canvases layered up with paint.

A great food stylist is practical, self-effacing, and more concerned with making the food, rather than themselves,
look good. They always seem to have pins, tweezers, paint brushes, sponges and scissors on hand to make sure
a recalcitrant dish looks the way it needs to.

Beware of trying to pick a food stylist online. I’ve found that the best ones don’t have business cards because
they are rare as hen’s teeth and get more work than they can handle through word of mouth. I’ve had the
disappointing experience of working with stylists picked by clients on the basis of their great online presence
and marketing. Being a good food blogger or marketer is an entirely separate skill set to food styling. When
choosing your specialist food stylist, always get recommendations from people who know the industry.

Above: Occasionally you get to meet and photograph the

legends of of the food industry. Here, Nobusan is in front
of my camera.

Right: Good food stylists have a wagonload of props of

varying textures, sizes shapes and colours to set the mood.
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5 Selective
focus, lens
choice and
Notice how the background
elements have drifted out of focus
here? It’s achieved through your
lens choice and aperture setting.

composition
Lens choice and selective focus
together create the mood on
the page. The mood of each
photograph should contribute
to the statement you want your
food to make. For example, if
you are photographing a wildly
colourful salad but want to create
a sensual, calm feeling in the
photo, selective focus can help
tone down some of the busy-
ness in the image and allow the
viewer a more zen viewpoint on
one beautiful element.

You can use a variety of lenses

depending on the effect you are
trying to create, including tilt-
shift lenses, 50mm prime lenses
or a macro lens.

My most used lens on a food

photography shoot is my Canon
Macro Lens EF 100mm f/2.8,
because I find it gives the crisp
detail needed to show the texture
of the different ingredients in a
dish.
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In technical terms, selective focus means using a limited depth of field to focus sharply on the components of
a dish, while letting the other parts blur slightly into the background (without being unrecognisable). When
choosing what to focus on, remember the ‘key ingredient centre stage’ rule, or viewers will be confused.
Selective focus takes your viewer’s eye to a specific part of the image, by choosing what remains sharply in
focus and what fades out, while the out-of-focus elements create a mood for your photo.

In terms of composition, styles change. Birds-eye views and shadows are in fashion one year. The next, it’s the
turn of the Donna Hay styled shoot with high key images flooded with light, and bleached out soft backgrounds
shot front on. If you’re still not convinced that fashions come and go in food photos as much as any other areas,
have a look at any cookbook from the 1970s!

Creating a consistent mood, or look and feel, for a series of photos such as those to be used in a cookbook is
critical. Every photo selected will need to look like it fits as part of a set and tell the story of the food and its
creator.

Composition is partly about what’s in fashion. At left, the overhead bird’s-eye or “hungry diner’s” view. At right, a
more high-key image, with a soft, neutral background. Consistency is the key on a shoot.
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6 Wait for the We review images with Chef

as soon as they’re shot to make
green flag sure they’re happy to move on.

I mentioned before the need for

efficiency and speed in taking great
food photos, but this doesn’t mean
rushing between shots.

When you have finished shooting one

plate, before moving on to the next
dish, make sure Chef, food stylist,
client, publisher and art director
– anyone with decision making
capability who is present at the shoot
- are all 100% happy. If they are
not, reshoot immediately. Delayed
reshoots are bad. They are a headache
for everyone involved and don’t make We do all that we can to avoid the situation where a
you look professional. If redoing is scene like this needs to be reshot on another day.
needed, the best time to reshoot is
right now.

In order to check that all decision

makers are 100% happy with each
shot before we move on, I always take
my recently calibrated Eizo screen
on shoots. This allows everyone to
experience the true colours of the
photo - you can’t do this on a laptop
screen. If you are shooting ‘on
location’ or don’t have these tools in
your repertoire yet, at least show the
decision makers the pictures on your
camera’s digital display.

When you hear the word ‘next’ on a

cookbook shoot, it’s like music to your
ears!
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Post-production
7
The number one rule of post-production is that food needs to look real and stimulate the appetite. There is no
point applying colour filters, sharpening or other post production wizardry that takes food away from realism.

To correct a common misconception: you can’t make a bad photo look good in post-production. ‘Can’t you just
photoshop it?’ is a question that makes everyone in visual fields, from photographers to book designers, wince.
The answer is no. It needs to be a well exposed, sharp beautifully lit image to start with. If you start with a bad
photo, you’ll end up with a bad photo with post-production effects: rubbish in, rubbish out.

However, that’s not to say post-production is unimportant to the finishing of your photos. Often I can selectively
enhance the brightness, darkness and colours of different components of a dish to make them stand out.

Batch colour processing is not a good idea. You might save some money but you’ll degrade your photos. Each
photo should be treated as its own entity.

Post-production tools like Photoshop help refine details, but they can’t make a poorly shot image more palatable.
 7 F O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y S E C R E T S F O R M O U T H W A T E R I N G I M A G E S

Control the light

A parting shot Centre on key ingredients
Work quickly with food
These are 7 core elements I recommend to every food photographer who Style the shot to suit the food
wants to create mouth-watering images: Think about your lens
Check with Chef
Edit sparingly

Of course, that’s not all you need to do to rise to the top of your field.
Other factors in your success include:

• Creating a network of likeminded professionals – chefs, designers,

publishers and the like – who have the same standards as you.
• Contributing to supporting and developing talent in your field, whether
working with young up and coming photographers (perhaps as an
assistant) or taking an active role in your local industry association.
• Getting out of the studio and into restaurants, food vans, small bars and
seeing (and tasting) what is happening in the food sector in your local
area.

Above all being professional and pleasant – not a ‘spoiled artiste’ to work
with – and delivering what you say you will, is a make or break factor in
succeeding as a food photographer. At the end of the day, no matter how Above: Rick Stein with
talented you are and creative your vision is; if you are unpleasant to work a copy of our Sri Lanka
with word will spread and your clients will vote with their feet. Food book at Margaret
River Gourmet Escape.
 7 F O O D P H O T O G R A P H Y S E C R E T S F O R M O U T H W A T E R I N G I M A G E S

About the Author

193.5 × 256 SPINE: 28 FLAPS: 0

Craig Kinder has 23 years’ experience

SRAI
LOVE
[REMEMBER TO COOK WITH
TASTE BETTER.]
AND EVERYTHING WILL

as a professional photographer,
including 15 years as a specialist food Sarogini’s

LANK

Daniela e Stefania
photographer. He loves to shoot food

FOOD
from paddock to plate; work with
inspirational and energetic chefs and Since My Kitchen Rules we’ve been all over Australia
and have met so many wonderful, talented people.

passionate food producers and get der Our taste buds have broadened, our knowledge of food
Craig Kin
Photography
and cuisines has extended, and our love of cooking
has deepened more than we thought possible. Our lives
revolve around family and food – and now we want

away for surfing safaris in Australia

to share our cooking with you too! Saporito!

ISBN 978-1-74258-505-5
DANIELA E STEFANIA XX

9 781742 585055

and Indonesia.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CRAIG KINDER
SAROGINI KAMALANATHAN

UWA_Saporito_Cover_AW_RR.indd 1 16/12/2014 4:49 pm

must eat Russell Blaikie

Craig’s photography portfolio includes

must
For years the award-winning Must Winebar has offered a sophisticated
dining experience through its skill in matching a carefully curated wine

over 20 cookbooks featuring celebrity

list with sublime French bistro food – food that is carefully sourced from
long-trusted regional growers and suppliers.

eat
Now Russell Blaikie and his dedicated team show us how to create nearly
two hundred of Must’s authentic dishes at home, from a light frisée salad
or classic steak frites to a stunning bouillabaisse. All the mouth-watering

chefs including Curtis Stone, Ben

hallmarks of the French bistro are here – fresh crunchy baguettes,
rich charcuterie and plump oysters. When paired with the perfect wine,
resistance is useless – you simply must eat.

O’Donohue, Russell Blaikey, Anna

Gare and Theo Kalogeracos, as well
as countless food-focused advertising Russell
campaigns. ISBN 978-1-921401-67-1

ISBN 978-1-921401-67-1
Blaikie
9 781921 401671
photography by Craig Kinder
9 781921 401671

Craig is based in Perth, Western

MUST_cover_AW.indd 1 20/7/10 1:41:25 PM

Australia with fellow photographer,

wife Emma, and their two daughters.
Their air-conditioned photography thE sEarch for thE PErfEct PiZZa continuEs

studio comes equipped with a large

theo kalogeracos

kitchen and commercial refrigerators EvEr sincE my first book camE out i have been writing new recipes, ideas, and experiences
hoping to get a chance for a second book, as in the first book the main focus was on PiZZa.

at their clients’ disposal. Craig also

there is a lot more that goes into making pizzas, and there are lots of ways of making them.
i am still searching for the perfect pizza, and i have found some good ones around the usa.
theo kalogeracos
and i have been inspired. so in this book there are recipes for cup cakes which i have turned with photography
ISBN 978-1-74258-353-2
into a pizza, there’s a recipe for slow cooked pork belly which goes on a pizza which was inspired by craig kinder
9 781742 583532
by my trip to vegas one year, there are loads of dough recipes, and there’s heaps of fun.

works nationally and internationally to

so come with me on the next part of my adventure to find the perfect pizza.

immortalise food in pictures. As well as shooting

highly-regarded
cookbooks, Craig
produces food
photography for media
Connect with Craig and advertising, working
with corporate clients,
www.craigkinder.com.au restaurants, tourism and
food associations.
hello@craigkinder.com.au

Craig Kinder Food Photography

@craigkinderfood

@craigkinderfood

Craig Kinder Food Thanks for reading!

Craig Kinder (Perth, Au) Craig Kinder