The Secret to (and Two Methods for) Shooting Food

A top reason people love to travel is that they love trying the food in different countries, cities, and regions, so you want to come back with shots of the amazing dishes you had on your trip. The secret to great food shots is simply great light, and you get that by shooting during the day and asking to be seated either outside (under an umbrella or roof of some sort) or right by a window. There are so many lights in most restaurants, usually right overhead, with shadows going all over, and you can avoid all that by sitting outside or by a window. Now, here are two methods for getting great food shots: (1) Turn on Portrait mode (see page 44), stand up, and back away from the table until you see “Natural Light” appear in your viewfinder. You want the background out of focus, and you generally don’t want to show the whole plate—just a part of it (if you can’t get it composed like that, you can crop it later in the Photos app). You can either shoot down at the food from that standing position or get down low, so the food looks bigger and more epic. The other method (2) is the classic “iPhone from overhead shot straight down on your food” shot. Luckily, your iPhone’s camera has a built-in feature that only appears when you’re shooting with your iPhone flat like this (and, when you have the Grid feature turned on—see page 31), for example, straight over a table, or aiming straight up at a ceiling. Two little plus signs (+) appear in the center of your screen. Line those up, so all you see is a single plus sign, and now you know your phone is perfectly flat and your food shot won’t have some funky horizontal alignment issues. The difference, compositionally here, is you can get away with showing the whole plate, and even place settings and more, or you can just show a portion of the plate. As the photographer, you make the choice.