Food Photography - Zen Chinese Sichuan Restaurant + Photography Tips

If you know a little bit about food photography you definitely heard about the tricks photographers use to make food (or what appears to be food?) appealing. Yummy ice-cream? No, sorry, it's actually coloured mash potatoes. Cream on a cake? It's just shaving cream which won't melt under the studio light. Even instead of milk, food photographers prefer to use PVA glue because real milk makes food soggy.

As you can see it's not so easy to take photos of food as it could seem from the first sign. This was a challenge for me!

Below there is a photo of delicious "Hot Bean Lamb" from Chinese Sichuan restaurant in Dublin http://zenrestaurant.ie

The photo was taken without using any "crazy" tricks. Exept my imagination and creativity of course ;) Anyway here are some tips I used which would be useful to use in the future.

**Read more, if you want to know about technical aspects of the photo. **

If food photography is not what you want to spend your time on, then just check out the photos I hope it's good enough to make you order Chinese food for tonight's dinner!

1. Shoot with your aperture wide but not wide open. I use a 50mm f/1.4 normally that I have set to f/2.2. I have found that at f/1.4 the field of view is tiny.

2. Always bring external lighting. I personally use a Godox AD600 shot through an umbrella. A lot of restaurants are dimly lit so relying on the lighting there will never work. Also with external lighting you have complete control of the light in the picture. You don't need expensive lighting either, any speedlights will do. I often use Yongnuo 568's as they have HSS.

3. If it doesn't look right, move the dish around or look for props to complement the scene. Lots of the time something just doesn't feel right but if you take a different perspective or move the dish around 2cm it all fits into place.

4. Use a tripod. You need to get the photos especially sharp and working with a wide aperture and a narrow field of view, it's so much easier to use a tripod.

5. Edit simply! People want to see a completely natural looking image of food, a lot of the time Lightroom Presets just don't fit. I only pump up the vibrance / contrast and a little bit of clarity. You can use the healing brush to remove any blemishes and to polish up the end result.

Anyway, I hope this was useful and feel free to ask me any questions. Enjoy taking photos and eating food afterwards!