How to learn food photography as professionals? Food Photography is one of the most attractive photography categories for photographers. In recent years, food photographers are one of the most required jobs in the Middle East and the Gulf region. Due to the booming in restaurants and hospitality services, food photography is becoming an important skill and career for photographers. Moreover, the rise of food startups including all types of food business from small restaurants to food delivery and bakery is increasing the need for professional food photography in Dubai, Cairo, Beirut, Amman, Kuwait, Doha, Al Riyadh, and Jeddah.
Eventually, while there is a huge demand for food photography, the market is still evolving and the skillset in many Arabic countries is not enough. However, there are highly professional food photographers in the UAE, Egypt, and Lebanon. Moreover, there is also high competition with photography agencies from the international market. Yet, the local Arabic talents still have a high edge since they are more advanced with understanding the local culture.
Arabic food photography is a unique skill that requires a deep understanding of the Arabic consumer food culture, local cuisines, and the food style that appeals to the consumer. The first step to becoming a professional food photographer in Arab countries is to understand the consumer taste and food style.
Study the different local cuisines in the Levant region, Egypt, Morocco, Gulf, and Mediterranean cuisines before you start shooting. Each Arabic kitchen has it is own food style, colors, ingredient, and dinning culture. This will advance your skills on the set and will help your clients to deliver their right menu and marketing brand.
As a photographer, creativity is the first role. There are so many professional photographers who can capture and edit a high-quality photo, yet when it comes to food as an element, it is important to have your own creative style.
At the beginning of your photography journey, creating quality work is most likely going to be your first concern. However, developing your identity is what going to last and will make you stand out among other photographers. Think creatively and set a plan to develop your art of photography. Quantity of photography is important and setting up a commercial portfolio requires time, but creating your own creative mindset is the key to position yourself in the market.
Online food photography courses are one of the most advanced shortcuts to learn food photography and to enhance your skills in a short time. Learning from professional food photographers will provide you with the main fundamentals of food photography tips, lighting tips, camera settings, propping and styling, and most importantly, how to edit your work for your customers.
In Art and Creativity, we worked with one of the most influenced food photographers in the Arab world, Yehia El Alaily to provide an online food photography course. With 12 lessons, the course represents the essential knowledge of food photography as well as live tutorials in the studio. Yehia El Alaily in this course takes you into an entertaining journey to learn the most effective hacks and tips of shooting food and he will also teach you to edit your food photography work.
Have a good time of your day with browsing and exploring beautiful food imagery from around the world and locally. Develop a daily habit of chasing food photography beautiful art. It will give you ideas and will refresh your imagination as a photographer. By searching for beauty, you will understand by time how to move your emotions before taking a new picture.
One of the most valuable tips by professional photographers is setting a consistent portfolio. While some would focus on the brands they worked with and the different markets they attended across the Arabic countries, the most important factor is your identity. The portfolio is a reflection of who you are, and in order to be successful with food photography, it is crucial to create your quality, theme, and style. When you start your food photography learning it is important to get some classes about how to create themes with your work. The photo above is the website of our instructor Yehia El Alaily
Professional photographers tend always to plan using sketches and storyboards before they start. In food photography, it is critical to start planning before you prepare the set and get into the studio. Shooting dishes, food, and beverages depend heavily on the preparation.
You will need to create a story you want to tell and choose the right content for it. Choosing the color palette, food style, accessories, lighting direction and all elements related to the composition are highly effective steps of the planning process.
Therefore, professional food photographers, have a good time in preparation and planning before starting a food photography session. This to help them focus on creating efficient photography and managing their time probably during the shooting and post-processing.
Food photography is different than other categories of photography. While portrait, fashion, and makeup photography are about human as a hero, food photography is about the food object and human emotions. It is a tricky part when you start to learn food photography. Some might think that food styling is the main key behind capturing an outstanding food image, the emotions and imagination is the key to master food photography. Understanding the motives of the human being when they see food, or their mental picture of the food experience or cuisine is meant to be a pleasure.
Food photography is more than just food, it is about colors, shapes, textures, and even an imaginary smell and taste. Think of arranging every frame as a chief and as a person who is going to eat it. Combine these feelings in your frame and food styling then craft the shot with your professional photography skills. That’s the real essence behind food photography art.
Avoiding mistakes and poor techniques can help a lot in achieving good skills in a short time. Eventually, food photography in Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia have so many poor techniques by amateur photographers that you can easily spot. Moreover, food photography in the UAE has also some cases of low-quality food photography practices.
Studying mistakes can eventually help you in gaining further steps in your career as a food photographer. Therefore, we will explore some of the most important tips to enhance your food photography.
With food from around the world, it is important to understand the dish or the meal before presenting it. In Arabic countries, each dish has it is own presence in the daily culture and its own mental image. Research and find out what each dish represents the local culture. While you learn food photography it is important to know that in some countries in the Middle East, some dishes are like movie stars and have their own atmosphere, occasion, and even quotes and traditions.
Therefore, the food styling should consider all the strength factors of the dish, and even it is background tradition. Falafel has different ingredients and meanings that differ in different countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. The same dish will have a different perspective when it is represented in the GCC countries. That’s where the food style plays an important role to make the dish authentic and appealing in different places.
Food styling for deserts and bakery might become a very different perspective in each country according to its tradition. For instance, Arabian coffee is an important element to the Gulf region as part of the dessert presentation. Eventually, food styling for Arabic food requires an in-depth understanding of Arabic food cuisine and dining traditions.
Finally, starting your career and to learn food photography requires dedication and soft skills such as the ability to present yourself and to communicate with the client. While this sounds like hard work, the opportunities in all countries are wide open due to the massive demand for food and hospitality industries. Stepping into the field and learning food photography can provide you with a combination of profitable career and joyful art. An online food photography course is an important step to consider in this journey.
We are being constantly bombarded with photographs since quite a while now. Nevertheless, there is one subject in those photographs that takes a huge place on the visual spectrum. All products benefit from, there is no doubt about it. But food is the one that benefits the most from it. Good looks are absolutely crucial when it comes to food photography, and today we are going to talk about some things that you should know before photographing food.
It is hard to pin-point when food photography became so massive, but we are sure that social media has a lot to do with it. Prior to that, food photography was exclusively held by advertisement companies, which kept food-styling techniques more secretively than nuclear codes. After some of this information was given to the public, people started demanding more sincere and honest marketing practices. Food-styling is still around but is more sophisticated than before because it now aims to capture food in its natural and more edible state.
Before we get to the considerations, it is important to know why food photography matters so much. We have a vast amount of food businesses rising every day, from food-trucks to small bakeries, from boutique restaurants to BBQ masters, from artisan breweries to detox juice-bars. Spotting that, there is undoubtedly a huge opportunity there for someone who wants to specialize in a photography genre. Being a factotum photographer nowadays isn’t a wise call, you need to be able to stick to a genre and develop it consistently through time. Food photography happens under “controlled” situations and is very open to styled related enhancements.
Be Passionate
No kidding? Yup, we know that this one is highly obvious, but hold it down for a second. You need to be as passionate with light as your clients are intense for their food. You need to be able to cope with the looks with the flavors. Cooks are always concerned about the flavor more than the looks, and you will be focused exactly in the opposite direction, so be careful, you need to be able to balance the two. Contemporary cooks have more to do with artists than you would imagine, they have structured and complex ideas that build up their entire restaurant concepts, so you need to pay close attention in order to truly understand the soul behind their dishes. If you are able to understand a creative concept, then you’ll have the advantage over other photographers that are trying to build a food photography style.
Food Visuals aren’t New
Still-life isn’t new either, and one of the main themes of it was (and still is) food. We can learn a lot of the dark and moody light that those paintings had in order to make a more compelling and easier to crave food photography. Therefore, there is a huge legacy behind us that could help us in getting better food photography ideas. Revisiting the past is always a nice way of innovating in the future.
The Organic Look
Way before the rise of social media, food photography was aimed in a baroque direction, focused on idealized conceptions of food and flavor. Nowadays the organic and even raw look is more pleasing for us. Food is responding nowadays more to a moodier narrative, which results in a pretty realistic visual experience. This reduces the huge gap between reality and expectations of big-name billboards which spend serious amounts of money in their ads.
Food Photography ≠ Food Style
One of the main problems one encounter as a newcomer to food photography is the fact that food styling and food photography are completely different disciplines, and each has their own secrets. Food stylers have developed plenty of knowledge about food make-up and how to make food last longer during a photoshoot. Food photographers, on the other hand, have to develop more graphic design related skills in order to assembly aesthetic looking plates.
Chefs won’t do Their Photos
Well, of course, they can do them, but there is a high chance that creative cooks would like to have a professional photographer capturing their creations than themselves. At least they start considering that way of doing things after some failed attempts. Trust us, food photography has its tricks, but it is a nice genre to work with. Serious chefs are aware of the complexity behind making a dish look good, just like they know that designing their dishes isn’t an easy thing to do. There is profound mutual respect between creatives that should be exploited more these days.
You Need to Understand Light
Everything in photography is about light, and food isn’t an exception to this rule. Light enables food photographers to enhance or flatten out textures, depending on the visual intentions of the concept that the chefs handle. In cultural terms, we can say that there are some dishes with a strong relationship with feelings and emotions that span between the nostalgic and the outrageous. Your lighting decisions should correspond and even comply with those highly expected feelings that are embedded in people’s minds. It doesn’t matter if you are shooting with a phone, a point, and shoot camera, a chunky DSLR or a mirrorless camera system. Even an analog film camera can work, what really matters in food photography is composition and lighting decisions.
Have a Visual Script for Preparing the Food
This one is being bored from the conceptualization process, a fundamental element in artistic photography. Even if you are not creating a fine art piece, this should be considered. Start jotting down some ideas, make some sketches, decide composition on paper, think wisely about the color pallet that will hold your photographs together, etc. This isn’t a precise recipe, and there aren’t perfectly designed step-by-step guides either. You need to start doing things in a systematized way so you can reduce improvisations during the food photography session. Designing the plate on paper (or a pdf file) will guarantee you a higher degree of control during the shoot.
Some Nice & Easy to Perform Tips and Tricks
Here is a brief list of easy things that you could start doing today in order to capture better food photographs.
We hope that this brief list of things to consider and tips will inspire you into making better food photographs. Remember that beyond technique, graphic design skills will help you out into producing more pleasant compositions and food arrangements. Understanding light will help you out into making your dishes talk for themselves. Food photography isn’t easy, and by now we are sure that you know this better. Practice daily, and above all, enjoy it. Do what you love, and love what you do!
Related Online Photography Courses
Give a friend $15 off their first class and we’ll take $15 off your next one
get started
Or use your personal link to share:
You’re going to love Art And Creativity! Use my link to take $15 off your first Art And Creativity class!
Share with your friends using Twitter. When posting please do not delete your personal link.
Share with your friends using Facebook Messenger by clicking the button below:
(0) 