11 Ways to Take a Better Food Photo on Instagram


Credit Devin Yalkin for The New York Times

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Their Instagram photos are a rainbow of heirloom tomatoes, and yours are dark and grainy. Theirs elicit pangs of hunger, and sometimes envy. And they almost always leave you wondering, “How did they shoot that?”

Well, the pros do things a little differently than you do. Here are a few simple tips that will immediately improve your Instagram food photos.

Focus on the Food 
 


We mean that literally. It may sound like basic advice, but there are more fuzzy photos of In-N-Out Burgers on Instagram than there should be. Steady the phone to avoid shaking the camera, and focus on a point near the center of the dish or its most enticing detail, like the interior of a sliced layer cake.

Compose the Photo


While Instagram now supports vertical and horizontal photos, the medium is still very much square. Take a moment to frame the image. Try the rule of thirds.

Start thinking like a food stylist. Wait a minute for the ice cream to drip. Take a scoop out of the cobbler or lasagna and leave the full fork on the plate. Ruffle the cloth napkin near the dish. Experiment with utensil placement.

Fill the Frame



Get close to your subject, so the photo brims with food.

Shoot in Natural Light


Natural light allows for nuances in a photo that a phone flash does not. If you’re shooting your big baking success, take it to the window in your home that provides the most light. If that light is harsh, consider hanging gauzy curtains to filter the bright light. You can illuminate the shadowed portion of your dish with white poster board. To do that, have someone else hold the board so that the dish sits between it and the window, which will reflect more of the light onto the dish.

Use Your Friends’ Phones, Too


There are moments when you will be compelled to try to shoot your dinner in a candlelit dining room. You will most likely fail. The light cast by the flash on your phone will not flatter the food. But if you’re dining with friends, you can have them turn on the lights of their phones and point them toward the dish while you take the picture without turning on the flash. They can even diffuse or reflect their phone lights with lightweight white napkins. That said, be considerate. No one wants to dine next to the party that turns on the floodlights for every single dish. Use this trick sparingly.

Try a Different Angle
 
Stand up and take an overhead shot of your food, or duck down to meet your plate at a 30- to 45-degree angle from the table.

Don’t Be Afraid to Move the Plate Around


Follow the light. Sometimes you need to put that platter on the floor to make the best picture. (Don’t do this in a restaurant.)

Shoot With a Camera


Many of the best photos on Instagram are shot with cameras, not phones. Cameras with manual settings offer better control in low light, which describes just about any restaurant after dark. You will have to use your desktop computer to crop the photos to size (1080 pixels by 1080 pixels). Email the photo to yourself and save the image to your phone. You can upload it from there.

Use a Postproduction App


Color-correct photos on the fly using an app like Snapseed or Afterlight. These photo editing programs give you some of the benefits of Photoshop. You can tweak the image’s brightness, warmth and color saturation, but you don’t want to change them much — just enough to make the image pop. Don’t go overboard with the postproduction changes. The food should look edible, and not like a product of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Develop a Style


Pay attention to the kinds of images you like, and your favorite photos of the ones you’ve taken. Try to continue in that vein as you hone your style. Some people live to like supersaturated, high-contrast close-ups, while others desire the cool, blue hues of a Kinfolk table. The followers of our NYT Food account are partial to the eye-popping, the drool-inducing, the unfathomable mash-up.

If you’re keeping a daily diary of everything you eat, you may want to reconsider shooting every photo on the only orange plate in your kitchen. If the process of cooking is your thing, turn off the stove before snapping an aerial shot of your mussels lest your phone fog up with steam. If this is a brag book of your restaurant meals, by all means pepper your feed with It-list dishes.

Keep Shooting


If you’re serious about becoming a better photographer, you need practice. Take three or four or even a dozen photos of the same dish. Review them and pick the one you’re happiest with to post on Instagram.

As you take more photos, you’ll become more comfortable with your phone’s camera features, learning the benefits and limitations of the camera. You’ll also come to understand which foods are photogenic and which ones are not, how to adjust your framing or stylistic approach on the fly, and the time of day when your home gets the best light. Those are the details that will help you make beautiful images. 
 
Source: New York Times, 18 Oct 2016
By Sara Bonisteel

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