Make Your Food Look Simply Lip Smacking with these Infallible Food Photography Tips!

Food should not only be sumptuous, it should look delicious if not mouth-watering. This is where food photographers come in. The primary responsibility of the food photographers is to make food look delicious. It is a branch of commercial photography which serves various restaurants ( to create their menus) food magazines, cookbooks as well as advertisements involving fast food or gourmet food.

Professional food photography is a collaborative affair, involving not only a food photographer but an art director, food stylist , prop stylists etc. Top notch food photography aims to spread curiosity and desire about the food product. It cannot stimulate the taste buds of the customer but can definitely act as a visual appetizer. In this essay we shall address some Do It Yourself (DIY) tips and tricks to make food visually even more appealing and sumptuous. If you follow these tips you are sure to make your audience hungry!!

• Make sure that the freshest fruits and vegetables are picked. Digital enhancing can only do so much to make your food look crisp and edible. If the fruits and vegetables come across wrinkled or damaged, it will put off your viewers.
• Using simple lighting techniques like using soft and diffused light from behind to make the food ingredients glisten, or to use images of steam or smoke prominently will make food look much more appetizing. You can use artificial techniques like  placing microwaved  water-soaked cotton balls directly behind the food.
• Plates, spoon, and other cutlery, napkins etc.  can be used as supporting props. Use non patterned cutlery so that the focus remains on your food. Do avoid over cluttering.
• Before and after shots work great with food which does not have extraordinary visual appeal.
• As a food photographer, you can play around with various angles and shoot images of food from different angles.
• If photographing ice cream, you should scoop the ice cream ahead of time and put it on dry ice. Use a straw to blow away the ice vapour without melting the ice cream. You can also use the straw to melt some strategic portions of your ice cream, ensuring that it photographs have a fresh visual appeal.
• Sometimes messiness  can indeed be an effective  food photography tip that boosts the visual appeal of food. For example, images of a half eaten cookie, or pizza indicates that someone has already enjoyed eating a particular dish and so can you!
• Do not overcrowd the subject or the star dish with too many props as it will drag attention away and act as a useless distraction.
• Do not touch the food if it has been styled by the stylist. If you have any input, communicate it to them.
• Be quick and prompt as the food looks best when it is fresh out of the pan or out of the oven. Food might melt, become discolored, wilt etc, so photographing it while it's still fresh will ensure that you get the most crisp and appetizing images. Which brings us right to the next point.
• Prepare more food than necessary if you are attempting food photography. Extra food should be used as ‘’dummy food’’ and all lighting and angle, close up experimentation etc should be performed on the dummy food before you move on to glorify the star dish.
• Have some vegetable oil in hand and lightly brush the food so that it glistens attractively.
• Close shots of the most appealing portion of a dish can give a detailed perspective of the ingredients which have been cooked.
• It is not necessary that you have to photograph food directly from above, shots taken from lower angles for food such as large tiered cakes will make them look appear more striking.
• Sometimes showing a hand stirring the pot make the images look more familiar and identifiable to the viewers.