Food Photo Ideas

I worked on several marketing projects for UB & Nestle in Asia, the professional food photographers I used rarely had the luxury of being able to take beautiful biscuits right off the production line so a lot of creative techniques were used. Art shops sell white compounds that mix wiwth colouring to become cream filling, frosting, ice cream, mixing in paint in an attractive colour, you might also get good results with the royal icing used for fruit cakes. Butter icings will melt under the lights. Light coloured underbaked looking biscuits or pie crusts can be touched with water colours.

if you can get all the lighting right using natural food might work okay, but if you can't faking it is acceptable. Cake slices can be difficult to get perfect anyway so you may have to slice up a complete cake to get the perfect on, using the watered knife to get clean frosting slice throughs. Hairspray on a near perfect slice and slightly rearanging crumb lines. Hairspray is a light fixative, that gives a nice gloss, even on a jelly layer.

If you are only doing cakes you probably won't have as many problems as can be had perfectly arranging a plate of speghetti, noodle by noodle and then injecting chemicals to create steam. I can't remember the two that do it, you might be able to find out, useful if you want to create a steaming cup of coffee to go with your cakes. If it is a slice of fruit or nut cake thought you may have to "edit" the arrangement of bits. Also slicing glaced fruits, spraying them and inserting will give nicer colour than the cooked ones. As suggested by someone else, put something in the shot, especially something that will remind someone of the taste sensation involved or atmosphere the items will be served in, depending on the use. A few items of biscuits, tumbling over the fruits or flavours involved may be used for one promotion while the same item on a silver plater may be used for a professional catering brochure.

Not sure what other food items you prepare so I'll stick with baked goods here, soups and sauces can be another matter. Somethings will disintegrate under lighting, especially if you need time to play around with the shot, which is the reason for the fakery. We sometimes shot for 8 hours straight on one item. Also depending on how you are going to print them some colours need to be intensified to handle scanning and the print production so if you want to use them for ad's later on you should keep that in mind. You might ought to do a roll with each item in various positions, lighting sets and do slides as well, under exposing the film 1 stop gives a richer reproduction on the colours and is best if you will enlarge them or if printing from colour negatives and not slides. I would hope you plan to have the film professionally developed, they can give you a better basis. Also afterwards if you like a shot, but something is too dark or needs to be cropped they can reprint it exactly as you ask them to.

If all else fails one photographer friend of mine used to beleive it was a numbers game, if you take a lot of shots of the same scene some will be decent, a few "great." Professionals get a lot more "great" photo's to the roll, but it doesn't mean you have to be one to get great results. Doing your own may give you more time to patiently arrange everything and get it perfect. When you have developed a clear idea of what you want on one brochure or ad a professional might be the way to go, even if you have to approach them with a limited budget. Sometimes they will accept if they have time and know you might be a future client, don't write off the idea totally, they are people running their own businesses, too and usually friendly, doesn't hurt to ask. If it is something you can give them a lot of design leeway they might want to use it for some portfolio shots or talk to a photography school near you for help.