Learn Food Photography & Styling Blog

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All the planning and thinking and positioning and the hard work will reward you now, only if you pick the camera and make a great photograph. So grab the camera and start shooting. Simple enough right?

Start Shooting

Yes it is finally the time to shoot. You have studied the subject, planned the photo shoot and arranged the food on the table and everything is ready to go. Shooting food photos is similar to other type of photography in terms of high level steps involved in the process. These steps are:

• Step 14 – Shooting the Picture
• Step 15 – Analyzing the Photograph
• Step 16 – Enhancing the Photographs

Below are each of the steps in more detail:

Step 14 – Shoot the Picture

Now that everything is set up, its time to put on your best show. But wait, don’t just pick up the camera and start shooting pictures. Review the basic elements that make a great photograph. When you start shooting the picture, keep these four elements in mind. Granted that there are more than those four elements that play part in making a great picture, but I think this should be a good start. As you already know, this too is a subject that needs in depth study. (We are just getting started friends, loads of posts are coming up. Stay tuned).

Step 15 – Analyze the Picture

Shot that photograph? How does it look? Is it the most awesome photograph you have ever seen? No? What is missing? Again think about the elements that make a good photograph. Check for dark areas on the subject for example. Can you take a better picture? Tethering is specially useful for analyzing photographs. Professional photographers shoot tethered and as soon as they click, the photograph appears on computer screen, making it very easy to see any imperfections.

Step 16 – Enhance the Picture

The last step in this process is to upload your pictures on computer and enhance the photograph. Photoshop or not is whole another debate. My opinion is that the first thing to do, is to capture the photograph, the best you can. Photoshop is called digital darkroom these days and using it is fine as long as you don’t turn your photograph into graphic art. I feel minor corrections like contrast, brightness, saturation adjustments are alright, however, cutting and pasting strawberry in a photograph where it did not belong becomes graphic art, in my opinion. So,  the line between photography and graphic arts is a little hazy in my mind when it comes to using Photoshop or other image editing tool.

Rest of the Guide

Complete Guide to Mouth-Watering Food Photography is 5 part series on improving food photography. Here are all of the parts of this guide:

• Part 1 – The Complex Art of Food Photography
• Part 2 – Understand Your Subject
• Part 3 – Plan for Making Great Photographs
• Part 4 – Set up the Stage
• Part 5 – Start Shooting

“But this isn’t ‘Complete?’”

… you may say. And I will have to agree. I will have to agree with you that this isn’t complete and frankly I don’t think anyone can squeeze and present the “complete” juice of food photography in five posts. Think about this as a first step to understanding the art of food photography. Each of the 16 steps can be further studied. In future posts, we will do just that – go deep into each of these steps.

Don’t miss these posts. Stay tuned. Understand Food Photography by subscribing to the RSS feed or by subscribing to email updates. Yes! Its all FREE!!

What’s Your Flow?

Do you use similar process? What are your thoughts about enhancing using Photoshop/Photo editing softwares?

Photo Credit: Original photo Food Photography –Japanese Udon by www.hafizismail.net

Related Posts

1. Complete Guide to Mouth-Watering Food Photography – Part 4: Set Up the Food Photography Stage
2. Complete Guide to Mouth-Watering Food Photography – Part 3: Plan for Making Great Photographs
3. Complete Guide to Mouth-Watering Food Photography – Part 2: Understand Your Subject
4. Complete Guide to Mouth-Watering Food Photography – Part 1: The Complex Art of Photographing Food
5. One Extremely Important Question That Is Ignored By Aspiring Food Photographers (and Why You Need to Address it Now)