Cooking is an art. In fact, it’s more than art, no? Because when you cook, the sizzling sound and the fresh aroma wash away your tiredness and all. A plate of food has the ultimate power to bring people together. Although people capture their cooking photos and call them food photos. I mean, they’re not wrong. But not right either. Are they? Care to know why? Then let’s talk about cooking photography.
Cooking Photography
What’s the difference between cooking and food? Well, cooking is the process of making a plate or several plates of food. And the food is the ultimate outcome of the cooking. To make any food or dish, you have to follow a certain procedure, right? That procedure is called cooking. The same goes for the term photography too.
When you capture photos of cooking, you don’t just capture the raw, uncooked food. You capture the hot oil being tempered with chilies or other spices. And not just tempering, you also capture the broth being sizzled, you capture the smoky aroma coming from the bbq. You also get to capture the cheese melt or the sugar burn on the top of the custard. All these delicious sides are parts of cooking. Without these, you obviously can’t make food. I mean, what do we do when we capture food photos?
We use a really clean or attractive background. We use a clean plate or decorative dish to show our food, right? Also, we keep a sharp eye on the edges so that there’s no spot of soup or broth on the plate. But cooking photography, on the other hand, is quite different. How so?
The saucy splash, the caramelizing sugar, the tossing veggies or pasta, the sizzling meat, the dripping of smoked meat, the boiling bubbles of broth or soup, and the cheese melt, etc fall under cooking photography. I know what you’re wondering now. That you often see these kinds of photos in your daily life, right? Yeah, it’s deeply related to our daily life. So, when you capture the saucy, messy process of making food, it’s cooking photography. Don’t worry. Not all sauces are hot, and not every mess is horrible. Some of them are worth doing. 😉😉
Why It’s Different From Food?
It’s pretty simple to find the dissimilarities between cooking and food. Because a plate of food is a still-life object. But cooking, on the other hand, is a live process. If you want to capture perfect cooking photos, then it’s better to have a pair of skilled hands, you know? Because you can’t tell the cook to stop tossing the vegetables just because you can’t take photos of a continuously moving subject. Besides, the right amount of lighting, the softness of light, and the camera settings are really important factors in cooking photography.
Talking about cooking, you know this also includes baking cakes, pizzas, and frostings, right? I mean, not that it’s a big factor, but you have to know these are included in cooking photography.
Tips For Cooking Photography:
Now that you know, what cooking photography really is, I guess you can dig deep into it for more!
Messy But Organized:
In cooking photo sessions, you really need to keep an eye on the background. And why? Because background plays a very important role in almost every photo session. Especially when it comes to still-life photography.
So, according cooking food, it’s mandatory to have a messy background. A backdrop where all the ingredients are scattered. But in a good way. Or if you’re not into messy, that’s also fine. You can always use colorful spice jars or cooking wine bottles, or different kinds of sauces. If you want to do any commercial advertising photo session for cooking wine or sauce. This is where you shine the brightest. In that case, use low light and focus on the product you’re covering.
Get Splashy:
Obviously, get splashy with sauces or curry broth. I mean, the word ‘splash’ really goes for water. But when in the cooking world, it’s with sauce. More clearly, it’s tomato sauce. But yeah, not always you’d get to capture the scene where the chef is throwing a batch of pasta into the sauce. So, you can capture the marination process of any bbq. Or the soup plate’s splash. You can also go for a splash of chocolate if you’re capturing any dessert photo. The same goes for any kind of fruit syrup.
Oh, I was talking about making that mess earlier. You can easily do that with some sauce or syrups too.
Toss But Don’t Overthrow:
Well, it’s a pretty common scene in our everyday life. We see this very often on TV or in restaurants. Professional chefs often show off their skills by tossing things from the pan. And we watch it in awe! Right? Also, coffee shops or restaurants use this tossing photo. But capturing that photo is not that easy you know? You need to set your aperture in manual mode. And of course, use a faster shutter speed. Because you can always edit your photos and make the details crisper.
Oh, if you’re the chef then be careful a bit. I mean, you don’t overthrow your things while you toss them.
A Snap Of Mixing Ingredients:
Cooking is all about mixing things together. It could be a bowl of colorful salad or a pan of sizzling spices. Or if you bake anything, you still need to combine the elements together, no? Use the slower shutter speed. And keep the light source focused on the subject. You can either keep it on your side or on any side of the subject.
The Time Of Garnish:
When the dish is done, the chefs take pride to garnish the dish. And you as a photographer, should not miss that. A scene where the chef is putting a cherry on top or placing the parsley on the soup plate looks really nice.
Not that this kind of photo is used in coffee shops or so. But it is used in only some of the finest or classiest diners. So yeah, it’s worth it.
Cutting Or Marinating Process:
I’ve said before, cooking photography isn’t a photo of a cooked dish. It’s a photo series of cooking preparations. So yeah, cutting veggies or marinating fish fillets or steaks fall under this. This is a very common idea though. But a very classic one.
Edit Your Cooking Photos:
Of course, you need to edit your cooking photos. If you can’t manage artificial things for cooking photography, you need to edit your photos. Because professional photo editing help, you can add the desired garnish, the right about of water droplets in the glass, and a frosty look even.
Also, your photos will need color correction too. Because it’s very hard to capture food colors in a perfect way. So photo editing is a must for the drink photos. Although, for high-end editing, you can always drop your photos in Clipping Amazon.
Why Clipping Amazon?
Clipping Amazon is known for its professional photo editing tactics. This means it’s a photo editing service provider company. We provide 17 types of image editing services. Color correction, background removal, raster to vector, image masking, and clipping path are some of them. We value our clients the highest. We edit photos in several steps. I mean, we edit and send them to the clients. Until our clients say it’s perfect now. Maybe this is one reason behind our serving in 26 countries with 100% client satisfaction. Also, we have an amazing blog site. As you’re looking for a cloud restaurant or cloud bakery business, you can have a look at our Food photography blog. There’s also travel photography, raster to vector, and ice cream blog. You can have many ideas from there.
Therefore, I hope you found my blog useful. If you need a low-cost food photo editing service, feel free to tap on the button below.
