When you have a restaurant business to manage, your goal is to take stunning photos of food and share them on Instagram. On this image-sharing social media platform, food enthusiasts visit Instagram to curate their gallery of food recommendations, photos, videos, recipes, and dining experiences. So if you own a multi-cuisine restaurant, sharing attractive photos and live videos on Instagram will help you pique the interest of your targeted audience and build engagement.
Food photography is one of the hottest trends on Instagram and the popularity of IG profiles dedicated to food and restaurants triggered a cultural phenomenon that changed the way Americans dine out with their family and friends.
According to an article published on Forbes.com, Adrianna Adarme, cookbook author and food blogger based out of Los Angeles, is passionate about food photography to create a delicious impact on her IG feed. Therefore, if you have a bistro, you need to ensure your Instagram food photos pique audience interest for increased engagement. Here is how:
Focus on angles
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Before you take that perfect shot of a baked fish delicacy, ensure to capture it from different perspectives, the best possible angle to delight your audience with a cool shot. Did you know that a couple of spreads call for a wide-pan tablescape shot? Again, pastries and pies look mouthwatering when you take a close-up shot.
When you want to take pictures of foods like cheesecake slices, cupcakes, or a pizza loaded with the topping of veggies and meats, you need to take the photo at close range to capture the ingredient layers, textures, and toppings in the best possible way.
Foods such as a stew bowl spiraled cinnamon rolls, or a platter of bacon, sausages, or hams look awesome if you take the photo from above the food. You need to take an overhead photo of these food items.
Take food photos in natural light
The key to successful photography is natural lighting and the rule holds when it comes to stunning food photos. The right lighting can make or break your photo. Remember that poor lighting is something that even Photoshop effects and tools will fail to fix.
No matter how pretty your small chocolate cakes look, if you take shots of them in poor lighting, you will end up taking bad photos. Therefore, avoid taking pictures in a dark alcove, take shots close to the window instead for natural lighting. This way, you can capture the effect of the sun glimmering off the chocolate ganache like a professional photographer. All you need is natural lighting to click awesome food photos and share the same on Instagram for maximum likes, comments, and eventually more engagement.
Always focus on natural lighting when it comes to food photography. There are challenges to food photography in dimly lit restaurants. Even dark corners are ideal spots when it comes to food photos. Then, avoid direct and harsh light as well and look for places that receive indirect lighting for the best shots. The experts in the industry recommend natural and soft light near a window if you want to take stunning food photos. When your food looks beautiful and delicious with all the garnishing, expect to buy IG views for engagement.
Utilize props for a reason
When you want to take the best shots for your restaurant food, you need to set the stage first. The ambiance, table, and styling matter when it comes to food photography. These elements are often ignored while taking food photos.
Think simple. You can place a pair of dark glasses or linen of white and blue strips just beside the plate of a croissant. All you need to do is include a couple of things with complementary or contrasting colors to add a new dimension to your food photos, thus making them more visually alluring. Therefore, choose natural, simple props that show how a particular dish was prepared. For this, you can place a couple of utensils or ingredients close to the dish to create a stunning impact.
Appeal to the human senses
Your food photos should motivate the viewers to pull a chair and savor the taste of the pork chops images you shared on Instagram. Yes, that must be the effect! When you are taking food photos, display the key ingredients in style to let people take in the beauty of the food photo. It means an added layer of hot chocolate on the ice cream before you photograph the delicacy. You can even sprinkle some fresh herbs on top of pork chops before you capture it in your camera lens.
Make your Instagram viewers the feel of the food, the ingredients that add more flavors before photographing the dishes. Your visuals should look mouthwatering so that people are tempted to taste the delicacies in your restaurant.
Take actions throughout the cooking process
When you photograph the food that you are cooking yourself, make sure you take shots of the actions through the entire process. Thingslikeheaps of overloaded cookie dough, pie-crust that’s freshly patterned, and some babka ready for the oven look stunning before being baked than later. Therefore, take photos of these foods before you bake them. These are behind the scenes shots that look awesome and you will love to share the images on Instagram as treasured memories, more so if you are preparing these foods for your family and friends.
Keep food photos natural
When you need to edit the photos, keep them simple and natural instead of overdoing it. Edit the images using a few of the best filters instead of using too many of the Instagram tools. Enhance the beauty of your food photos naturally. Keep things simple.
You can use tools like Lightroom and VSCO to retouch the images without spoiling the beauty of the visuals. With editing tools, you can tweak food photos in seconds. A quick adjustment of exposure, contrast, brightness, or clarity will do the trick.
Conclusion
Now that you have these tips handy, make your food photos look delicious and appealing to your followers. Instagram is about inspiration and therefore, take some time out of your busy schedule to figure out what the best food photographers are doing to make their visuals look stunning on this social media platform.