Table of Contents
This is a collaborative post.
There’s a popular phrase that goes, “You eat with your eyes first.” This is why people are always eager to preserve the beauty of their food by taking photos of it. However, there’s a stark difference between a casual diner taking a photo of their dessert plate for a social media post and a professional dessert photographer who takes food photos for a living.
No matter why you’re taking pictures of sweet treats, here are some dessert photography tips to keep in mind:
Plan Your Lighting Carefully
Lighting is always a crucial factor in photography but it’s even more so in dessert photos because desserts are supposed to be indulgences and should therefore look as appealing as possible. Bad lighting can make even the most delectable-looking desserts seem drab or dry, so make sure you plan your lighting carefully before the shoot.
Natural lighting often works best for food photos, so pick a location where you can get ample lighting such as near a window. Of course, using studio lighting is perfectly fine as well. In fact, having direct control over your lighting’s direction can help you highlight details on the dessert that you want to stand out in the final product.
Mind the Composition
One of the factors in getting amazing dessert photos is good composition. You can employ fundamental techniques such as the rule of thirds, making use of negative space, and utilising unique angles to help turn a simple photo into an eye-catching masterpiece. Your camera settings are also vital for this, so make sure you’ve got the right shutter speed, ISO, and aperture settings depending on how you’d like the shot to look.
To achieve all this, you’ll need a camera with settings that can be tweaked to your liking. If your camera doesn’t have the settings you need, you may consider a camera rental service to get the right equipment. This may also be your chance to test out cameras first to see which one you may want to buy for yourself in the future.
Include Texture
Whether it’s the smoothness of the icing spread on top of a cake or the rough crumbs on the surface of a bread loaf, texture makes any dessert photo more vibrant. So, make it a point to play with textures in your photos to convey how desserts may possibly feel when picked up or eaten. Doing this draws the viewer in and thus elevates the effect your photos have. Contrasting textures also create an interesting visual. For instance, a flan on its own may not seem that much interesting but adding fruit slices or cookie crumbs in slight disarray around it adds a nice contrast to the smooth surface of the flan.
Pick a Colour Palette
Like texture, colour is also an important aspect in making food look good in photos. Desserts can be plenty colourful on their own, however, so do make sure that your photos don’t look too saturated with different shades and hues. Instead, pick out a colour palette and try to work with it for your photo. You may also use props to complement the colours already found in the dessert. For instance, while the golden brown shade of banana bread is enticing enough, adding shades of yellow in the form of actual bananas can create a more interesting look.
Add a Human Touch to the Photos
Dessert photography doesn’t necessarily mean restricting yourself to just taking photos of the food. Rather, adding a human touch can actually bring more life to your photos. To keep the focus on the dessert, you can simply include hands in the shot but do make sure there’s purpose behind it. Portraying someone slicing a cake, passing a bowl of desserts to a companion, or taking a bite of a sweet treat can create a story behind your photo and thus make a more lasting impression to the viewer.
Including people in your dessert photos also makes the food all the more enticing. After all, seeing someone enjoy desserts in a photo can make the viewer feel inclined to also get themselves that particular treat. This is an effective trick to use if the photos you’re taking are meant for marketing purposes in particular.
Use Post Processing
Not every photo will come out perfect on the first try. At times, your photos can be slightly off the colouring you were aiming for or perhaps there are too many crumbs scattered in the shot that they end up being distracting. You don’t have to throw away the entire shot, though; rather, some retouches during post processing can do the trick. Photo editing software can help you fix those small details and make a great shot even better.
Dessert photography taps into the universal appeal of wanting to capture how delicious our food is and sharing that experience with others. With the tips above, you can improve the way you take photos of desserts and thus better communicate that joy and wonder of partaking in these sweet delights.