3 tricks to improve your food photos!

Admit it, you have done it at least once! After all, eating is a visual experience and already Apicius, a roman foodie of the 1st century said "we eat first with our eyes".

If you take pictures of your meals you know how hard it is to get it right. It requires taste, composition skills and some knowledge of light, so that your food won't look like a two weeks old McDonald's burger smashed by a car.

Let's take the most uninspiring scene and work with it to get something instagrammable (is it even a word?): fruit. First thing you would do is just take your phone and... SNAP!

Let's say that this is not the most interesting composition. The fruit looks small, lost into the scene. We want it to be the subject. So let's give it some importance by getting down on our knees changing our position.

Much better, don't you think? When you deal with small subjects like objects, pets or children you should avoid shooting from your eye-level and try to get to their one.

Now let's take care of the boring background. Try to place your subject between the camera and the light source, the window in our case. This is called "backlight", since the light source is behind the subject. This will define the contour of the subject by adding an artistic light on the edge of the silhouette.

But now the subjects are too dark right?. This is where the light reflectors come handy. Find a flat white surface that can reflect the light, like a paper sheet for instance. Place it very close to your subject and it will reflect the ambient light over them.

However, a white surface is usually a very weak reflector. A more powerful one is a silvered one. What is a silver-surface that everyone has in the kitcken? Bingo! Get some aluminum foil to do the job!

And here you have the recipe for a much better photo! Remember:

1. Get as low as your subject..

2. Shoot with backlight (the subject between you and a big window).

3. Use white paper or aluminum foil to lit the dark areas.

Check the before after!

Experiment with these simple but effective photography techniques and tag me on instagram (@kriscapasso) to show me your beautifully taken food-photos!

#foodphotography #instagramfood #photographytechniques