Adobe has teamed up with Sarah Crawford of Broma Bakery, to present a series of tips for food photographers this holiday season. Sarah also developed a series of Lightroom presets that you can download for free!
1. Style your food to set the scene
Sarah says that styling your food is an important way to get the right look and feel for your photos. She talks about angles, balance, props and more.
Find the best angles
Think about what’s most pleasing to the eye when displaying your food. For example, if you are shooting a cookie that has a beautiful decoration on top, show the top. If it’s a sandwich cookie, then you would want to show its layers.
Think about balance
Don’t place similar colors or shapes next to each other. You should space them out to create the most dynamic photo or otherwise they will look too similar.
Don’t be afraid to get messy
Taking bites out of your food is a great way to show its deliciousness in the photo. It’s like the photographer just couldn’t wait to eat it!
Bring it to life with props
Think about how you would actually enjoy the food you’re styling and incorporate that into your scene. These visual cues help tell your story.
2. Find good lighting to avoid your food looking flat
“Food photography needs strong light,” said Sarah. “You should be 1-3 feet from your window when you shoot. Any further away and the light won’t be strong enough, causing your food to look flat.”
Say no to overhead lighting
Make sure to turn off any overhead lights since these tend to compete with your natural light.
Use a single light source
When possible, shoot using a single light source, such as a window. Relying on multiple light sources – like two windows in a corner of a room –makes the light from these windows compete with each other, leading to a lack of shadows in your scene. Shadows are important for giving food dimension.
3. Use your smartphone to capture amazing photos
While having a camera is great, a smartphone can easily capture Instagram-worthy food photographs.
Make it easy!
Use the Adobe Lightroom for mobile in-app camera to shoot your photos. You can easily capture and edit your photos all within the app.
Adjust your brightness and stay focused
Don’t be afraid to manually adjust your brightness and make sure to focus your photo each time you shoot.
Use the Rule of Thirds
Use the grid guides to make a strong composition. Place the important parts of your scene at or in the middle of one of these lines. This will impart balance and harmony in the photo.
4. Easily edit like a pro with Lightroom for mobile
With Adobe Lightroom for mobile, it’s easy to edit your food photographs and share them with your friends and family.
In a pinch? Presets can help!
The Adobe Lightroom presets can make your editing a cinch and help you achieve an Instagram-worthy look for your photos. I also love using my Adobe Lightroom food photography presets I created that are free and available for anyone to use to kickstart their editing.
Use the sliders to make fine-tune edits
I love using the sliders in the Light tool in Adobe Lightroom for mobile to adjust the highlights, shadows, whites and blacks to make my scenes pop. Play around with what style works for you, but in general, using these sliders over solely contrast will make your photo look more professional.
Refine your photos
The Healing Brush in Adobe Lightroom for mobile is a great way to remove unwanted crumbs or imperfections in your photo. The Effects tool sliders for adjusting texture, dehaze and clarity are great for getting a crisp photo.
Color adjustments are key
With Adobe Lightroom for mobile, you can use the Color tool to alter the hue, saturation and luminance of specific colors to best fit your scene.
Want more holiday food photography tips?
In addition to the tips from Sarah above, we’ve developed some great holiday food photography tips to get you started in the kitchen!
Ho ho ho macro holidays - There are hundreds, probably thousands of images taken during the holidays. Family, friends, gift unwrapping, food, parties and so much more. Most of those images are wide shots, full scenes of the activities and decorations. Have you ever thought to step a little closer? Let’s look at some ways you can get the details of your holidays as well to complete the story of your festivities. Decorations Try as we might to preserve the ornaments and decorations that have been handed down from our relatives over the years or those wonderful homemade ornaments that you brought home from school when you were little, they wear out, break and can get lost. What better way to keep those memories alive and record the history of your family traditions than taking photos of them. Macro shots bring us in and help us feel like we can still touch them, hold them in our hands and maybe even create new ornaments with the images we’ve taken. Food Are there special recipes in your family that are only shared over the holidays? It’s nice to have images of the amazing food that is passed down generation after generation, but how about some detailed shots of how that melty chocolate looks, or what the garnish looks like when placed just right? Why not take those images and create your own family cookbook to hand out next year? Lights Use lights as a background for your image. The colors and bokeh can be fun and interesting. Place the lights behind clear or translucent ornaments to see the effects. Capture the light reflected in the shiny ornaments. The only limit is your imagination. Don’t have a macro lens? Use reverse ring adapters or extension tubes. These can both be an inexpensive way to introduce yourself to the world of macro photography. Cheat. What I mean by cheating is to use your telephoto zoom lens to zoom in. That can work as well. If not that, in today’s mega megapixel cameras you can crop as well. Pull into the scene to grab the detail you want out of it. Explore. Experiment. Play. Be a kid. Most of all, have fun with it and have a wonderful holiday season.
Creating movement with festive food photos - Add a little pizazz to your festive food photos with some movement and even an element of human touch. A little movement in a still image is easier than you think and can really bring your images to life. Here’s how to add an element of human touch and really make your festive photos sing. Behind the scenes Whether you are going for something a little more dramatic and dark and moody, or if you are after light and bright, lighting is important. Especially if you are trying to capture a little movement. Sure studio lights are fabulous, but unless you are shooting in the studio a little difficult to lug around. Natural light is your friend and be sometimes all you need. Not much light? You can also add a desk lamp or LED for a bit of fill light. Don’t forget those reflectors, catch every bit of available light and bounce it back onto your subject. Sprinkling When it comes to festive food photos, there is nothing quite like a sprinkling of some extra Christmas joy, through elements like icing sugar, powdered chocolate or cocoa. You can capture the powder or sugar falling in slow motion (like a waterfall) or as high impact action with individual grains. It is all dependent on your shutter speed. Working with the exposure triangle, you need to have either a shutter speed of under 1/60s or slower to catch a waterfall-like effect or higher than 1/125s for an action shot. Obviously the slower shutter speeds you would need to place your camera on a tripod to avoid camera shake. If you have a willing assistant, makes things so much easier, but if not a remote trigger will do the trick. Set you shot up and obtain focus on your subject. Make sure everything is set to go and then move into position to start sprinkling over your food. Taking multiple shots to achieve the desired result. Check the back of your camera to get the desired result. Pouring I personally feel that the pouring images with just a hand in just in shot, adds a human element and movement as well to still photos. Again this can be slow or quick, but if the shutter speed is too slow you may get blurry hands. While this is a look that some people like, I prefer a sharper focus on the hand in the shot. This can be created in the same way as the sprinkling image above, on a tripod with a remote trigger, using yourself as the hand model. Whether you are pouring the cream onto pudding or cake or pouring milk into a coffee, it’s all about an even consistency in the actual pour. If pour too fast you could miss the shot, but if you pour too slow it may be blurred. Make a few trial runs first. Glistening There are different ways to had a glistening effect to your festive food photos. I recently wrote a post on creating bokeh and that can look amazing with your festive food as well. Using a small water spray bottle with water on fresh fruit can make it look like it is glistening too. Try adding half glycerin and half water and spray onto glasses, bottle or cans, for an icing look that can also glisten in certain light too. Reflections in shiny baubles and decorations can also make for some interesting photos too. Tip: If you are using icing sugar, cream or milk, try using a dark background to make it stand out more. Likewise, if using powdered or melted chocolate use a lighter colored background.
Capturing Holiday cooking cheer - With the Holidays just around the corner, there is usually lots of cooking and baking going on. Capture some of your own festive Holiday cooking cheer with some behind-the-scenes photos. These can make for gorgeous keepsake memories if the kids or grandkids get involved too. No kids? Grab some friends and a bottle of wine, and make an afternoon treat and get-together of it. Why not make a high-tea out of it? Don’t forget to include the mess, the clutter, holiday fun and festivities. Beautiful festive images to share with family and friends. Who knows, you might even find your next Christmas card idea! Great holiday photos don’t have to be staged. Make it real, but most of all make it fun. Oh, and don’t forget to nibble on some of those yummy treats!
Capturing the holiday spirit through festive food photos - It’s that time of year again! All thoughts turn to the Holiday Season. Whether that’s Thanksgiving or Christmas, or something else entirely. If it’s festive, chances are there are bound to be friends, family and of course, food. Capture festive food photos with all that sparkles, glistens and shines with a few fantastic ideas below. You don’t have to bring the big guns out — mobile cameras these days are fantastic too. Sprinkling Capture the action of dusting baked treats with icing sugar. Remember to use a slower shutter speed for soft dreamy effects. Or, speed the shutter up to get more action. Sparkling Add in some pretty LED lights or holiday lights for some sparkly bokeh in your shots. Slightly darker lighting helps amplify the lights. Glistening Grab a spray bottle with water and gently spray on fruit for that just-picked, farm-fresh look. Lovely natural light works well with this too. Don’t forget — once you’ve captured all the yummy food and are happy with your festive food photos, sit back, relax and enjoy it with good friends or family.
