Wherever we are delighted we often think of giving a treat, let it be to a friend or family treat or a self-treat. These days people browse over the internet to search for restaurants, checking the menu cards, ambiance, and more factors while choosing a restaurant. It becomes very important for the restaurants to feature good food photographs, as food photographs are the only source to impress the customer be it an online menu card or offline menu card, or restaurant’s website or App.
Restaurant food photography is not only restricted to the menu cards or website food photograph or app food photograph. Restaurant photography is all about showing off your skills to make the food look tastier so that the viewer cannot resist himself/ herself from ordering the food you have photographed.
In this article let us see how you can take good food photographs in a restaurant.
Research
Whenever you are visiting a restaurant to shoot, make sure have proper resources about the place. The kind of food they offer, their best cuisine, their ambience and so on. Also try to interact with the chefs and if possible, visit the place once before the actual shoot to get an idea of the lighting, backgrounds, and other equipment. Doing this would give you an idea about how to get prepared for the particular shoot. You can also tell the client if there is something they need to arrange from their side. Visiting the place before the actual shoot would allow you to create a game plan and organize smoothly.
Speed up
While doing restaurant food photography you need to make sure you are speedy. In a restaurant there can be multiple interruptions, which can only increase your work. Chefs are always speedy, so they can arrange whatever you require within few minutes. So, you need to be speedy in order to catch up with them. Moreover, is you are shooting in a restaurant during visiting hours then it would be really difficult to keep the place, chef and staffs engaged for a longer time.
You cannot leave the food for a longer time. If you are shooting a hot item, you need to shoot with the smoke. This is also applicable for cold drinks and ice-creams.
Do not hesitate to ask your client a lot of questions
You will need to know and understand the requirement of the client. To achieve that you will have to ask multiple questions to the client. Ask them questions like what they want to shoot, whether they have some particular demand, some idea, some storyline and so on.
Check for the particular place of the restaurant where the food is to be photographed, check for natural light. You need to check on these factors because you will be needed to prepare accordingly.
Collaborate with the Chef
You must collaborate and communicate with the chef freely as he is the who is going to prepare the food for you. He should understand how to make the food look best from the camera. You both should interact with each other before every shot.
Incorporate Human Touch
You can take the shots of the chef garnishing the food, or bartenders showing their skills or other candid moments in the restaurant. This will bring out originality in your photograph and viewers would believe that it was shot was taken in a real restaurant.
Tethered Shooting is useful
When you shoot for a restaurant, it can be useful if you shoot tethered. Tethered means that the photographs can be shown in your laptop instantly while you shoot, and this is useful because your client or anyone else can easily see the picture on the screen and judge them if required. This way the client would get a chance to tell you whether he/ she liked the picture, or it needs any modifications, before you move to the next shoot.
This also gives you an extra benefit. How? If by any chance after the completion of the shoot the client have any issues, you can tell them that they approved each of the shots.
Shooting Drinks
With a 100mm macro lens and a wide-open f-stop, for shallow depth of focus, you are all set for shooting the drinks. You can place the drink at a distance from the cocktail or mocktail corner but keep them out of focus in the background.
If there are things distracting your frame, even if it is out of focus, eliminate them!
That is all about how you can make the tasty food look delicious through your Restaurant Photography Skills.
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