So you’ve got your food ready to photograph, but want to add more flair? Here are some simple props you can easily add into your photos to make them more interesting and engaging!
Before you read this check out: 5 Tips For Appealing Food Pictures
- Attractive plates and bowls
To me, there is a huge difference to how your food looks when you’re just cooking casually and when you want to impress. A lot of it has to do with the kind of bowl you put your food in! Have you noticed that restaurants use really nice plates and bowls? And have you ever noticed even more when they use ones that look like it just came from their house? I have – and it made me feel slightly grossed out if I’m being honest. Sure, the food still tasted good, but the visual appeal just wasn’t there.
When I first started food photography, I only had a few kinds of bowls to use – and sometimes the bowls made the photo look… cheap? And sometimes I wouldn’t have enough food to fill it up so it ended up looking kind of empty. This leads me to another point – make sure they are appropriate sizes for what you’re making! Some kinds of bowls I do not like are ones with obvious patterns on them or different colours. Like ones for children. Personally I find it to be distracting and can really make your food unappealing.
The vibe I do like is the stone ‘rock’ kind of vibe. Think speckled and neutral tones. Sometimes a dark bowl can really be striking as well. Thrift shopping is an amazing place to find a great variety of styles!
2. Tea towels
Tea towels, especially neutral linen ones, add so much more dimension and flow to your photos. It gives some more life to an otherwise boring and flat table. At the moment, I don’t have a specifically white tea towel so I just use my white tote bag and fold it in a variety of ways until it looks just right. You will be able to spot it regularly in my Instagram posts!
Tea towels are also a great way of filling in negative space. You can let it peek through the corner, hugging around the bowl or have it flow in the background. It also creates a very natural and inviting look to your photo. I have compared photos with and without a tea towel. Without a tea towel, the image looked flat and the food looked a bit… lonely all by itself. With extra elements, it turns into a fantastic scene where you could imagine yourself digging in. So experiment with the placement of your tea towel and you will soon realise you can spice it up every time with this one prop.
3. Glass jars
Got some leftover pasta jars? In my everyday life, I have really been into putting pantry staples into glass jars. I usually recycle old pasta and coffee jars for nuts, seeds and a whole bunch of spices. For my personal aesthetic, I like to show whole foods like dried chickpeas in glass jars because it appeals to a ‘zero waste’ aesthetic. It keeps the photo looking clean and made with natural, whole ingredients. In real life, most of my jars are labelled clearly which I simply adjust so it is out of view in the photo. This is also a great way of filling in space and adding more dimension.
Alternatively, if you want to show off a particular brand then this is a different story! Show those labels. However, I would recommend hiding any kind of labels for a regular picture as it can be distracting to the viewer.
4. Extra ingredients
The appeal of food photography is that messiness (when done purposefully) can be made beautiful. This is super budget friendly because chances are – you already have extra ingredients from making the food. Even things like garlic cloves, chopped spring onion and sprinkled seeds can go a long way. The reason why extra ingredients lying around looks nice is because it creates a natural, effortless look to your dish like you’re not trying too hard to look pristine, when in reality it did require attention to detail.
In my personal style, I tend to only use a couple of ‘sprinkling’ props per photo as I like to keep things nice and simple. However, there are plenty of pictures out there that utilise many ingredients which is also stunning! Again, if you find that there is awkward negative space – sprinkle some seeds and see how much it improves the balance of the photo.
5. Yourself
Adding in a human element to your photos brings life to the scene – as if you just captured a real life moment! You can do this by putting your hand in the photo like when you’re using chopsticks to lift noodles from a bowl, or holding a cookie. Another way you can add a human element is by purposefully biting into a brownie or muffin for example to make it look like it was being enjoyed in that very moment. You can also serve your food into multiple bowls to create a social scene (even if you’re the only one eating – I’ve done this before, no shame!). The ideas is to capture the idea of movement in a still photo.
There we go! Let me know what strategies you use to make your photography pop or if you will start implenting these tips – I would love to hear from you.
Pez
Cook with Pez 