Weekly Photography Challenge – Play with Your Food

Your mother may have told  you not to play with your food, but this week you have our permission.

Shot I did in New Orleans – very famous coffee and donuts.

I recently shared some video tutorials with food photography tips – check those out if you need help.

Here are some other dPS articles on the topic if you want more tips and ideas:

• 4 Tips for Beginners to Food Photography
• The Secret to Finding the Hero Angle in Food Photography
• 8 Tips for Food Photography Newbies
• How to Take Cool Food Photos in Your Refrigerator
• Household Items to Bring to Your Next Food Photography Shoot
• 5 Tips for More Professional-Looking Food Photography
• 5 Tips That Will Make Your Food Photos Stand out from the Crowd
• Using Focus Creatively with Food Photography

I used to do food photography commercially – a long, long, time ago! Here are some of my tips:

Don’t forget your fruit and veggies – even still in the tree or on the vine.

Food in its raw form including still on the tree works!

Not quite on the tree. I added the hands here to add interest and show scale, as well as the inside of this nut.

Add a human element or photograph the preparation of the food as well as the finished product.

The making of the iced coffee.

Add a human element for interest. Yes I did drink it and yes it was amazing!

Get the light right. The most common placement or direction of light with food photography is to have the light actually coming from behind the food. It makes it look shiny and more appetizing that way. Like this Colombian ajiaco soup.

Play with angles, light, and composition. Don’t just take one shot.

I wanted to show how full the table was here so I used this overhead angle. This is shot I did for a hotel in Nicaragua showcasing the breakfast they serve.

I took a lower camera angle here to show the setting of where the breakfast is served.

Here I added the human element and motion with the juice pour.

Now it’s your turn!

Weekly Photography Challenge – Food

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge. Sometimes it takes a while for an image to appear so be patient and try not to post the same image twice.

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images on the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.