P#26 Q6: The Pros Know How to Photograph Food

Take it Easy

Ron Goldman: I would say that the biggest secret of how to photograph food is not rushing. Really take your time. Don't overextend yourself. Plan on just shooting one subject, and take the entire day to do it.

Also, if you're preparing the food yourself and it's a recipe you've never made in the past, before you even start to attempt to photograph it, try and make the recipe a couple times.

I can't tell you how many times I have looked at the photographs of a recipe in a cookbook and thought, "Wow, this is beautiful. I'm going to make that tomorrow and shoot it," then you make the recipe and it doesn't look anything like the photograph that you were looking at while you were cooking it.

A lot of times you've got to modify recipes. You need to do things to get the subject to look exactly like you want it to be before you shoot it. If you try and do all of that the same day you're shooting, it can be quite frustrating. It's really better to have some experience with your subject before you attempt to take a photograph of it. That's an important thing to understand when you're learning how to photograph food.

The other thing I would say is, if you can find a local restaurant or somebody what wants to get into the food styling industry, team up with them to take care of that part of it for you. It really lets you concentrate on photographing versus worrying about what the subject is going to look like.

Learning how to photograph food can be a very lengthy process. You need to learn how to light and correctly shoot the food. The more time that you can actually spend doing that versus trying to get a decent subject, the more quickly you'll learn.

In Summary

Food photography can be one of the more challenging and complicated types of photography to pursue. If you really want to learn how to photograph food, advice from those who have mastered the art is always nice. Thankfully, Ron Goldman came to the rescue with more than a few tips.