Traveling is food for the soul and it’s through local cuisines that you’ll get to know the people and their culture.

Taking pictures of food has become an everyday sight on social media. But to truly catch the beauty of food and of the viewer, you should learn how to capture it well.

Keep reading to discover the best food photography tips and tricks, even as you travel.

By the way, here you can discover the best apps for editing your travel photos.

The 5 Best Food Photography Tips

Taking the best food images when you travel is easy if you’re familiar with the basics of food photography.

The composition, lighting, and angles can do wonders for your food photos if you follow the tips below.

Food Photography Tips #1
Make Natural Light Your Friend

Finding good food photography lighting is a must when you take photos, especially inside a restaurant.

If you can, get a table next to a window for the best natural light. If not, use your camera settings to illuminate the meal or remove anything that casts shadows on the plate.

If you’re outside, you can find the best light by moving the plate around. Another option is to change your position until you get the perfect shot.

Food Photography Tips #2
Style the Food and Table

To get mouth-watering food photos, you’ll need to get creative and play around with the composition a bit.

For example, move the objects on the table around to create a clean, yet tasteful image. If the food is not visually appealing, style it a bit with your utensils or condiments.

Food Photography Tips #3
Take Photos from Different Angles

Switching the angle can make or break your food pictures. By angle, we mean getting up on a chair to take a bird’s view photo or bending down below the table to take the best-focused photo.

These tips are perhaps ideally not applicable for restaurants– although it’s your shout – but if you’re on the go, you can always use elements in your environment like stairs to catch the best angle.

Food Photography Tips #4
Focus on the Food

With food photography, the main focus should be on the food and its texture, layers, and colors.

Whether you take an overhead photo or a normal one, the focus has to be on the dish, blurring out the background.

Professional and phone cameras all come with macro settings that you can use to zoom in on the food. This option is best for taking close-up pictures of desserts, slices of food or smaller dishes.

For meals like pizza, casseroles, and multiple-course meals, you may want to use bird’s eye view photos.

Food Photography Tips #5
Use Post-Production Software

Your camera can’t always catch what you see with the naked eye. This is where post-production apps come in handy.

Enhancing the saturation, clarity, color correction, and brightness is a great way to create top-notch travel food pictures. Be careful not to overdo it and keep your images as realistic as possible.

For example, if the lighting wasn’t good, you can correct this by removing the shadows to get a crisp photo.

Also, if the colors of the dish were vivid in real life, but the photo doesn’t do them justice, you can enhance them using Photoshop, Snapseed or Lightroom.

Take Amazing Food Photos on Your Next Trip!

Whether you have a professional camera, or you like to take photos with your smartphone, these tips will help you snap the best pictures of your food.

For more food photography tips and tricks, check out our photography blog.

Author

Hiya, I’m Maud. I’m an English girl who's moved to Berlin - because who wouldn’t fall in love with a country which has words like ‘Kummerspeck’ hidden around every corner... I love traveling and finding out the quirks of each country - and what better way to remember them than on a postcard?

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