Food is an excellent and tempting subject for photography, and with an iPhone, you can achieve incredibly artistic outcomes. Beautiful food photography not just means to snap a plate on your table; there are specific rules of genre to follow to make your photos spectacular.
Instead of hassle up with Photoshop tricks, below are nine tips that are highly useful and effective to take beautiful and tempting food photos from your iPhone.
1. Use Neutral Backgrounds
The complimentary background is essential for food photography. It doesn’t matter if it’s messy or appealing; it should grab the attention on first sight. A neutral background doesn’t have to be dull or simple; it just emphasis on food.
There are three common types of backgrounds food photography:
- Dark backgrounds: for dense colored foods.
- Light backgrounds: for bright colored foods.
- Wooden backgrounds: for making an excellent backdrop with natural light.
Also, table cloths, tea towels, subtle patterns, vintage floral prints look good if used well. You can also include natural elements to give an organic look.
2. Go for the Right Angle
Shooting from the above angle is the option to capture arranged platter. It enables you to include every detail of food along with crockery. It is also easy to arrange all the elements on a single surface to shoot. It also eliminates all the distracting stuff from the background, and you can add multiple layers to balance the composition.
Side angles are ideal when you want to show inner details of food like a slice of cake. Just make sure you use a neutral background. Diagonal shootings are best when you want to add both angles to capture a three-dimensional shape of your food.
3. Care for Shadows & Lights
Light plays a significant role in every shot. Try to snap in natural lightning instead of artificial light to avoid color scheme misbalance. It will also help you to present colors accurately. Natural light will add natural beauty to the subject with a neutral tone.
Diffused, soft, and natural daylight is an ideal option to avoid excessive sunlight and harsh shadows. Also, natural light illuminating indoors enhances the composition of your subject. Shadows are also essential to include depth and create a visual interest in the photo. So don’t exaggerate it by dominating the picture. Avoid harsh light and shadows as it will flatter your subject and result in denser stills.
It is best to place your deflector on the side of shadow to reflect sunlight. You can also use a paper sheet to play with the scene and creating an envisioned image.
4. Take Care of Negative Space
“Negative space is important to highlight the subject in a positive manner” says Jack Thomas, Creative Head at King Essay.
Don’t fill the whole frame with stuff; let your subject breathe. Leave some space around with close up shots to make them look great. It will also increase the focus on your subject. Especially when you are working with dark backgrounds, negative space will make food look better.
5. Enhance Colors With Highlighting
The main issue with food photography is of exposure. It simply refers to the brightness of the image. To avoid overexposure, use highlights to set the brightness levels to see more detail in the brighter areas.
You can adjust brightness in an iPhone by tapping to set focus to the selected area and slide your finger up or down to make the image brighter or darker.
You may be likely to face the problem when you shoot for a robust contrasting image. The camera will struggle to maintain both details of shadows and highlights at once. So, either darkness will be underexposed, and highlights will get overexposed. To avoid this, you can adjust the highlights by setting the exposure to bring the details back in highlights.
6. Décor With Natural Elements
To make the photos more creative and unique, try adding some natural elements to décor. You can add dry ingredients, floral, leaves, or spoons full with colorful spices to be placed in the frame. You can also place ingredients as a visual recipe around your dish to add interest.
Add different piles of colored berries, nuts, chocolates, fresh herbs, and sprinkled spices to your frame to enhance décor. Non-food natural items can also be used to décors like utensils, and actively shaped dishes. Compliment the food with seasonal color schemes as well. Make sure they complement your food.
Like, you can use sunflowers to shoot for mangoes, or you can use chocolate and dried leaves with coffee. Yellow leaves add beautiful autumn element along with the vibe of pine cones, dried chestnuts, pebbles, and acorn. They can be an unusual combination of your subject.
7. Build Storyline
No way is better to tell a story than photos. It tells everything without words. The elements you add to the frame create an exciting timeline to draw the attention of the viewer at first sight. You can decide a storyline along with theme then add objects to tell your story. It can either be bold, modern, exciting, atmospheric, and dreamy of urban.
You can add laptops, snack platters, books, cameras, candles, or chunks of chocolates or even pillows to convey a specific message.
8. Use Hidden iPhone Camera Features
There is a variety of hidden camera features in iPhones to use it for great photos. You can adjust grind levels, exposure levels, focus dimensions, and even place different filters to create a striking and unique look for your subject. You can also use different capture modes to get the perfect short for every time of the day.
9. Keep It Simple
After talking about a lot of style elements, and adding different statements to increase the appeal of your food photo, we second the rule that simplicity is the beauty of art. This will help you if your subject has a bold, dense and deeper shape, color or you have to shot with an extremely contrasting background. A simple composition will create a strong impact.
“Simplicity is the best complexity a photographer can ever include in a frame” (Sophia Holbeck- Academist Help)
You can do this by placing your platter in the center of the frame with a strong background. Also, it is recommended to avoid bright colored and patterned utensils, dishes, and crockery to make them less competitive for distraction. Moreover, if you are shooting for close-ups, you don’t need any decorations.
Foreword
Photography needs creativity and passion more than technicality. However, the use of relevant tricks can make your photos outstanding among others. There are so many tips and tricks to use to improve your photos snapped from an iPhone.
iPhone photography may look smoother, but it needs the correct use of features when you dig deeper. You can use the above tips to make your photography more interesting and compelling. And once you have done with it, don’t forget to post it on your social media platforms to grab a decent amount of fans!
Author bio:
Liza Brooke is a qualified digital marketer and currently working as an SEO content writer and co-founder at Crowd Writer. She is aware of the quality content. Liza loves to keep her knowledge updated with the current trends in the industry.
