Tips For Taking Fabulous Food Photos

When I started this blog a few years back, the photos that accompanied the recipes were… horrible. I mean, really, really bad. Cel phone photos, mostly, which improved marginally when I moved from a BlackBerry to the iPhone 4. I went through a Hipstamatic phase where all the photos were shot with some kind of a filter.

But when Pinterest came on board, and I started to realize the importance of “drool-worthy” photos, I invested in a proper DSLR. After all, we do “eat with our eyes” first. Recently, I’ve been reading books and blogs about how to take better food photos.

Today, I interview Elizabeth Nyland, whose blog, Guilty Kitchen, I’ve been reading avidly since I fortuitously bumped into her and husband, Adrian, at Clive’s in  Victoria a few years back. Liz is a profesional chef, blogger, mom of two, hard-core crossfitter (is there any other kind?), Paleo, self-taught food photographer, and, I’m proud to say, has just been offered a cookbook deal. Her cookbook, Cooking With Coconut Oil: Gluten-Free, Grain-Free recipes for Good Living will be published in January, 2014.

I asked her for some tips on how to take beautiful food photos.

What’s the most important thing to consider when taking photos of food for your blog? 
The composition of the photo is truly the most telling part of a picture. Besides colour, subject, contrast, the depth of field and other characteristics of photos, the composition is what really draws you in and tells your eye (and brain) where to look.  When the main subject is in the center of the photo, there is nowhere else for your eyes to travel. They go straight to the main subject and there is little left to do, which is why most portraits taken at family BBQs by your uncle Bob are kind of boring to look at. Everything is in focus and the only thing to look at is dead in the center. When you take a photo with the main subject using the “rule of thirds”, then the photo truly begins to tell a story, draw your eye in different directions and becomes truly interesting. The rule of thirds is a simple concept, though many people have no idea what it is. If you took a grid (like a Tic Tac Toe grid with nine squares, made up of four intersecting lines) and placed it over the area you wish to photograph, the points at which the four lines would intersect are the best places to have the main focal point. This leaves interesting white space and leads to more creative focus points.