Photography is an essential part of a good blog post. Have you ever gone to a blog that maybe had a great recipe, but no pictures? It’s easy to skip over those blog posts, because there is nothing visual to look at and spark your interest. Good photographs are one of the most important parts of food blogging, especially when you are starting out. You may produce some really great recipes, but if that dish doesn’t look appetizing, it is hard to imagine how it will taste. We eat with our eyes first! I am about nine months into this whole food blogging thing, and I often wonder if anyone actually reads my posts. I try to keep it interesting and entertaining. But even if everyone visiting my blog is scrolling right through my stories, I know that they are taking at least a little time to look at my photography.

I put together five food photography tips that I have found very useful as a new food blogger.

Number 1: Plan ahead. Not only do I usually plan what recipes I am going to feature on the blog each week, but I also plan how I am going to photograph them. Think about the angles that you are going to shoot from, and how you are going to style the food. What props are you going to use? What colors will complement this particular dish? If you really get stuck, take a look at pictures from other blogs or cookbooks and draw inspiration from them. If you’re feeling crafty, Lindsay from Love and Olive Oil has a great demo on how to make your own DIY distressed wood photo backdrop. I recently made two of these boards with a bunch of different colors and they have worked out GREAT. It gives you another opportunity to make it so that all of your photographs don’t start to look the same.

VS.

Number 2: Get the right equipment. The first few months working on my blog, I was convinced that the small ray of light coming from my little kitchen window was more than enough to take a good photograph, and sometimes natural light is enough. Just to be on the safe side, I purchased two of these Lowel EGO Digital Imaging Fluorescent Lights. This really helps to create the effect of natural light. Once I started using these lights, I immediately began to see a huge improvement in my photographs, as you can see by comparing the two photographs above.

I use a Canon Digital Rebel XTi camera for all of my photography. I didn’t know anything about photography when I started My Daily Morsel, and to this day I’m still not sure what the majority of the buttons on my camera do. I actually started out using my uncle’s camera from work when he didn’t need it. I finally got my own for my birthday a few months ago (yay.) I also use a few different lenses and attachments on my camera. I use this Canon 50mm lens to take 99% of my photographs. It is super easy to use and I love it because it creates a blurry background while keeping the main object in focus. I use a Canon EF 25 II Extension Tube so that I can snap a few shots that give a very close-up view of my food.

Number 3: Do your research. Unless you are crazy talented, good photographs don’t just happen. I found Helene Dujardin’s Plate to Pixel very helpful. She shows you just about everything that you need to know about food photography, from the technical aspects of your camera to food styling. As silly as it sounds, I have found Food Blogging for Dummies helpful as well, for more than just photography. It includes basic information on how to grow your blog, but my favorite part is the chapter that shows you how to photograph foods that have proven to be difficult to photograph.

Number 4: Submit your photographs to some food photography websites. I submit my photos to sites like FoodGawker, TasteSpotting, Tasteologie, Photograzing, The Hot Plate, and Food Porn Daily. I also submit to Healthy Aperture and Dessert Stalking when appropriate. It takes a while to learn what certain sites like FoodGawker are looking for in a photograph. Your personal taste may not match up with what they are looking for. Rachael from Simply Fresh Cooking gives some good insight on how to photograph and edit pictures that you are interested in submitting to these websites. You can click here to look at my gallery of photographs on FoodGawker and TasteSpotting.

Number 5: Practice! As helpful as books and tutorials are, you have to practice to get better. Sorry about that. There’s just no getting around it. Even after reading tips like I have presented here, you aren’t going to automatically take perfect photographs on day one. Everything, including photography, takes practice, and even then, you are not going to be perfect. I have accepted that fact, because I am by no means a photographer. Truth time – on occasion, I like to look at some of my favorite blogs and see what their pictures looked like the first few months of the first year. It makes me feel better about myself… Sometimes I wish I didn’t even need pictures for my posts. Planning and struggling to get even one good picture can be frustrating. Sometimes you will get ten pictures that look great, and other times you may only get one. But I promise that it gets easier the more you practice.

Tagged as: 5 photography tips, beginners photography tips, food blogging, new bloggers, new food bloggers, photography tips