History of Food Photography

We have already talked about what a food photography is, how it is done, where it is used and much more about it. Now let’s move further with the history of food photography. The very first known photograph of a food item as a subject for photography was used in the year 1845 by a photographer named William Henry Fox who showed peaches and pineapples in his photographs. In the beginning of it, for a very long period, the food photographs tended to be a shot and in a composed manner similar to the same way people were used to encounter their food, that is laid out on the table where the food is and been shot from the perspective of overhead. Which is from the very point if the eater only. Well, the stylists back then accordingly arranged the food to appear from that point only, where the items were arranged in a flat manner on the plate and were in a very clear way separated from each other.

Later to that period, many changes were encountered in this field. Romantic lightings, angles were shallower and more props were added, these extreme cases lead to the term of food porn. Prevailing the trend from western photography, in the most recent times, commercial food photography is to present the food as simple, clean and as natural as possible and with the use of little props, often using some effects too like focus on selective angles, tilting the plates and some extreme close up to a certain extent. The trends complement the traditional way of cooking to make the food more interesting visually for the viewers. Taking an instance, the height of the dishes tends to increase more and the elements of the photograph are often layered, which eventually lends itself well to narrow angled shots.

Talking of how food photography now is different from the earlier times and how earlier the photography was used;

• Well, earlier there were not many or even any online sites to upload pictures on social platforms, so this form of photography was more used as a hobby.
• Earlier, there was not much props required, there was not any exact angle needed to get the perfect shot.
• The quality and working of cameras in the earlier years were more simple and not much complicated so taking food photography was not a big task.