Tips For Photographing Food At Home For Instagram

Yesterday I was making an orzo salad to bring to my co-working space’s monthly member lunch.   Before I packed it up it occurred to me I could be photographing it to use on Instagram!   I make it a habit to incorporate photography into my every day life. ⠀

Since it was a Greek inspired dish I wanted to use some blue in the shot so I found a blue and white tea towel in the kitchen drawer which just so happened to be new and clean! Woo Hoo!

I set up in my dining area right near the window to get the natural light.

I have a few boards that I keep in my closet for simple backgrounds and also have a few white bowls that I use for photographing food.  The simpler the better that way the focus is on the food and not the bowl.

I wanted to incorporate some of the ingredients that were in the salad – tomato, cucumber, parsley and lemon.  Designing  in 3’s is more visually appealing so I took 2 lemon wedges and one tomato wedge and placed them on the board until I got something I liked – then randomly scattered diced cucumber and chopped parsley.

The image was a bit dark and had some shadows so I used a white foam board propped up by the napkin holder (very technical!) to fill in the shadows and brighten up the image a bit.

I took a shot from my iPhone and “real” camera using my DSLR.  These 2 are straight out of phone and camera – no editing.

I decided to use the one from my camera and brought it into Photoshop to make simple tweaks.  I chose Photoshop because I use it all the time and I’m the most familiar and comfortable with the program but you could definitely edit images with an app on your phone.

This is what I ended up with for my Instagram feed…

I got this slightly different shot by varying my angle and will save to use at a later time in my Instagram feed.

If you want to get a look at the behind the scenes of how I shot these images you can watch the video below.

So remember…

• Photograph near a window
• Simple backgrounds and bowls, plates, etc
• Design in 3’s
• Use a white board to fill in shadows.
• Vary your camera angle

Pin It!

Hit me up with your photography questions – happy to help!  I did  a live Q&A about Photography as part of my Help Desk Tuesday segment in my private Facebook group.  If you want to check it out here’s the link to join.