You’ve whipped up tasty desserts that receive star billing among your friends. You’re famous for your creative dishes in your community. You have a passion for creating food your family loves. “Hey,” you think, “I could become a food blogger!” After all, your great at cooking so how hard could it be? It could be harder than you might think. What captures your eye when you first visit a food blog? Usually it’s the amazing pictures of food. Here are four tips to help you develop the skills needed to capture the perfect shot.
1. Pay attention to the backgrounds.
This is especially important with time sensitive food shots because if you mess up and discover the shots are wrong after you serve the food you’ll have to make a new batch. I speak from experience on this one! Most of us tend to concentrate on the subject at hand and ignore what’s going on behind. I’ve had perfect shots ruined when I discover an item in the photo that does not belong, like a cat’s tail.
2. Take photos of the food from many different angles.
When I began taking food photos I just snapped one shot, hoped for the best, and stuck it on my site. Now, I snap pictures from several different angles, overhead, eye level, from the sides, because each view changes the perspective of the photo. It also gives me room for error if the first five or ten don’t turn out well.
3. Enhance, don’t engulf the food.
Use props and garnishes wisely. The main focus of the picture should be the dish you have created. The garnishes and props can add a finished look to a photo, but you don’t want them to become the main focus.
4. Find a good editing software.
As much as we try to make the best shot possible, sometimes the photo may need a little help with composition, cropping, or color adjustment. That’s where the magic of editing software comes into play. If you are like me and want to save on costs, a good free editing software is pixlr.com. It has many of the same features of paid software and is relatively easy to use. Edit: I now use the paid version of pic.monkey. ($33 a year.) However, a free version is available.
Inspired? Intrigued? That’s where the new Food Blogging for Dummies by Kelley Senyei comes into play. Kelly, the creator of the popular food blog Just a Taste, offers detailed suggestions on how to choose and create a blog, design tips, how to find a niche, how to make recipes searchable and how to enhance your blog with superb design and photography.
What are your biggest mistakes with photos?
You might also like:
Do You Make These 4 Blogging Design Mistakes?
4 Costly Mistakes New Bloggers Make
3 Tips For Beginning Bloggers To Build A Better Blog
I received the book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
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Thanks for the information. The dummy books are great! Thanks for the site information too. I have a blog that was built for me and now I don’t know where to start. I wish there was a book for that somewhere. Thanks for the picture tips!!
I love the dummy book. This looks like another one that I need!
I have done the taking pictures and discovered they were not good after the meal was gone. I have learned to make extra for one plate for pictures and nobody can touch it until I confirm the pictures are good. Great post.
Great tips! Especially about the many angles!!!
Great tips! I love the dummy books. I’m a dummy ::)
I don’t blog about food, but I really do need help taking better pictures for my blogs.
What awesome tips! I’m ordering this book from Amazon with a gc that I got recently! Score!
These are great tips!! I too had to learn from trial and error to take LOTS of pictures!
You know how you can tell if someone’s a blogger? When their camera’s memory card contains 55 photos of the same slice of cake. 😉 All good tips indeed – food photography has gotten a lot easier since I got a better camera last year. I’m still not in the DSLR club (Someday soon!), but my point and shoot has a lot of features meant to emulate that and it really helps. Now my technique can focus on making the food look even better, rather than just trying to get the darn camera to take a photo that isn’t blurry. 😉
Another way you can tell if someone is a blogger is when their kids see food and say, “Is it safe to eat this or do you need to make photos?” 🙂 I’m not in the DSLR club yet either. I have a Sony point and shoot but I am hoping to upgrade eventually!
Awesome and useful tips! I have been struggling with my photos. Bought a wonderful camera, got expensive software.. but I am still not having an easy time of it. Thanks so much for the book info, I need to grab that!
I think your photos look great, Dawn! This book does have three chapters of useful hints on photos though and they have really helped me.
Thanks times 2 Pam! 😉 I really appreciate the compliment and tips!
thanks for sharing about the editing site i need to try that out!
Thanks for the tips! I’ve been trying to do more recipe posts so this is helpful 🙂
Great post, I have been working on recipes to feautre on my site. I take horrible food pics, never really thought much about snapping from dif angles though.
Ooooh. Love it! I’ve been on the hunt for a good software. I have to try this one out!(I also like the tip of taking pics from diff angles)
I found out about Pixlr last summer when I took the Sears Grilling Photo class through cbias. She recommends it in the book too. I’ve been using it for eight months now and it has really helped with the edits. The price is right too. I love free!
Saw this post at the PERFECT time! I’ve been working on taking pictures of food more. I have a great camera, but needed your tips to get the most out of my pics! Tip #2 is what I really need to work on!
These are all wonderful tips! Thank you for sharing them.
I’m trying to do more recipe posts, so I want to check this book out! I love to cook, so I want to share some of my recipes.