Food can sometimes be a tricky subject to photograph.  Ice Cream melts (which means you have 2-3 minutes to perfect your lighting) and steaming bowls of food cool down in 5 minutes so what do you do?  Firstly here two quotes that I think very much apply to the art of food photography:

“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography”

George Eastman (founder of Kodak)

“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary.”

David Bailey

First off you need to know light.  We are surrounded by light but we never learn to fully appreciate it.  Take time in the late afternoon to absorb the wonderfully soft amber light just before the sun dips behind the horizon.  Carefully study the way light wraps around a loved one’s face early in the morning.  This even applies to when you have your lunch, out it down on the counter and study the way the light and shadows enhance and hide certain features.  By doing this you will already be halfway to a better photograph of food.  When you are setting up your shot, take an object which has a similar shape and size as the food you are photographing and try to get your lighting 99.9% correct before you even think of placing your plate of food in front of the lens.

Basically you need to make a normal plate of food look good enough to eat (literally)  Take a little bit of time to examine the colours and textures of the food while your food stylist prepares it.  And lastly, a very important tip when photographing food is to visualize the shot which you are looking to create.  Without this vision you will be lucky if you get anything good enough to show off…

Riani