When it comes to food photography, your goal is to capture the dish as well as possible while making sure it looks appealing. You want to entice the viewer to order or crave that dish. If you are new to this genre, here are a few tricks that may help you craft a better shot.
Coming to you from Skyler Burt with We Eat Together, this videos shares six tricks that he uses to improve his food photography shots. While two out of the six tricks are in fact done in post with editing, they are pretty simple techniques with masking done in Photoshop that most users should be able to do. Two of these tricks shown are to give off the appearance of a fuller dish so you don't have to make or waste as much of the food. Unless you or someone else on set plans on eating the dish afterward, then it's not much of an issue. The first tip may not always apply depending on what surface your items will be placed on, but if it's not perfectly balanced, you can use a piece of a paper napkin or another object like Burt used to give the needed tilt.
Which was your favorite trick used in the video? What is your favorite food photography trick that wasn't shown?
Really good tips. Thanks!
Great tips if you are doing food photography for fun.
However if you are doing it for professional clients you need to check local laws. In some places it is considered misleading advertising to use non-food (or food that isn't normally in the dish) to bulk up the dish and make it look better/bigger than it would be in real life.