6 Tips For Great Food Photography During Vacation

If you’re a foodie, then restaurants and traditional pubs are the first locations you hit on vacation. While you are there, you probably take advantage of the ethnic cuisine and photograph different, exotic dishes. But do you know how to do them justice? These are just a few tricks for great food photos:

1. Pay attention and focus. It’s hard to get sharp food photos when you’re not in a studio. The only way to get them right is to find the perfect combination of shutter speed and DoF. Don’t go any slower than 1/60th sec as a general rule or increase your ISO to get back some of it, but remember that you might end up with a lot of noise. If you’re going for a shallow depth of field, then choose the maximum aperture you have (small f-number) but if you want sharp pictures, choose a small aperture.
2. Experiment with angles. Don’t just shoot from above like any rookie. Choose an interesting angle or even place the camera at eye level.
3. Shoot with RAW. You have more information in RAW mode, enough to allow you to post-process the image better afterwards, especially to set the white balance correctly.
4. Don’t just capture the plate! It might work for a coupel of photos, but shooting 100 images with food on a white plate? Boring. Set up everything – from ingredients to knives and accessories. You can even include the chef and document the preparation.
5. Choose your lighting. Natural light is the best when it comes to food photography. Beautiful colors are showcased better in the daylight, just avoid placing food directly under the sun. It will burn your colors, like a flash would. Position your plate under an umbrella or window and take advantage of those cloudy days.
6. Portrait and landscape. Depending on the composition of the plate as well as the medium where the photo will appear, decide beforehand if you go with portrait or landscape mode.