5 Tips For Taking Beautiful Food Photos With Your iPhone

Taking beautiful food pictures consists of more than just snapping a quick photo of what’s on your plate. It takes a little more thought and effort to capture gorgeous photos of your mouthwatering creations. Notice that I said thought and effort; nothing about a little more money. I mean, why spend hundreds of dollars on expensive photography equipment when you can use what you already have to take high-quality photos? Your iPhone.

So if you’re looking to up your food blog game and audience or start making a living as a food blogger, tempt readers with your beautiful food and iPhone photos using these 5 food blogger photography tips.

1. Shoot with soft, natural lighting.

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In order to create attractive still life food photos, you need the right lighting. Camera flashes and artificial lighting from lamps mess with your food and backdrop colors. Color is crucial to good food photography, so you want all your colors to show up accurate.

Soft, natural lighting is your food and iPhone camera’s best friend. Use natural daylight from a window for indoor photography or go outside on an overcast day when the clouds become a natural diffuser and create the perfect soft light. But when you don’t want to be dependent on the weather or time of day—like at 11 p.m. when inspiration for a new dessert strikes—use a photography light box that produces the perfect lighting anytime of the day.

2. Choose the right angle.

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The right angle makes the most of your food. If you’re showing off a breakfast bowl or dinner plate of food, take top-down photos so readers can see all the details of your food, the background and other accompanying objects in the photo. This angle is also better for creating a balanced composition. But if you’ve made a 7 layer rainbow cake, take your photos from one side and up against a fairly neutral background. If you can’t decide which of these angles is best, you can also shoot diagonally to include both a top-down and side view of your food.

Play around with the different angles to figure out which angle is the most visually pleasing for your different foods. Your shooting angle can make all the difference in how your photos turn out.

3. Keep your backgrounds simple.

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I mean, it’s all about the food right? So there’s no need to go crazy with trying to find unique backgrounds. Vibrant patterns and designs take away from the focus of your photo—the food! So Instead, use subtle, neutral backgrounds, and opt for a plain white plate instead of one with colorful flowers on it.

For food photography, light, dark and wooden backgrounds are the 3 best background types. Pair dark foods with darker backgrounds, and light-colored foods with lighter backgrounds. With wooden backgrounds, like a wooden chopping board or table, just about any kind of food looks good against it.

Also in keeping your background simple, remember to leave some negative space around your subject to place more emphasis on your food and the shapes of the dishes, cutlery, etc., being used.

4. Style your food and the scene.

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How you arrange your food is so important. It’s the key to beautiful food photography. A beautiful mess isn’t beautiful at all in food photography. Think neat, organized and balanced to create a captivating visual piece of food art.

You’re a cook and an artist. Your job is not only to make tasty food, but to make it look as good as it tastes—because as humans, we all eat with our eyes first. So carefully position your food, clean up any spills and decorate the scene by garnishing the plate and using your ingredients or other smaller items as props around the dish. Spices, colorful berries, fresh herbs and chocolate pieces are great smaller props that help visually enhance food photos.

5. Don’t use the zoom.

With correct iphoneography, the zoom is never used. Zooming in on your food reduces the quality of your image. So while our lazy human instinct is to just zoom in to get an up close shot of our subject, fight against that instinct. Take a few steps closer to your food to get a closer shot. The quality of the photo and details of the food you’re wanting to highlight will appear so much better.