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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Education Field Instructional

How to Create More Vivid Food Photos

Chris Gampat
No Comments
08/01/2015
3 Mins read

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One of the biggest features of a great food photo has to do with the way that the colors pop out and seem to grab you. Many photographers know that it’s all about the lighting, the textures, the props and any little touches that are added in to make the food even more scrumptious. One of the technical ways to create an image that makes your viewers hungry has to do with contrast. This is the reason why so many food photos have colors that are very dominant and others that add punch and grab your attention.

Here are a couple of tips to help you create more vivid and beautiful food photos.

Black and Whites (The Neutral Background)

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Canon 5Ds review images (5 of 24)ISO 4001-200 sec at f - 4.0

 

To start this off, you’ll need to find a neutral background. Ideas for this are:

– Black paper

– White plates

– Wooden tables and cutting boards

– Parchment and food wrapping paper.

These all work well as they are associated with food in some way. If your kitchen counter is marble, then that works, too. Quite obviously, the food will contrast and stand out from the surface that everything is on. The reason why you need this has to do with the fact that it places a bigger emphasis on the food due to the way that the human eye works, but it also makes editing much easier.

If you’re photographing some beautiful red strawberries on top of a black or wooden surface, your eyes and the post-production software (like Lightroom) knows that there are different colors. While you know that the primary colors in the scene are black (for the paper), green (for the leaves and stem) and red (for the fruit) the software will most likely associate the black with purple or blue.

By having all of these colors in the gamut, you can work on editing the color channels specifically for luminance and saturation. We’ll get to this in much more detail later on, but here are some tips to hold you off.

Contrast in Colors

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Nikon 35mm f1.8 other review images (7 of 8)ISO 4001-60 sec at f - 4.0

We started to get a bit into contrasting colors in the section above, but we didn’t get too deep into it.

Take a look at the photo above: while it’s nice it could have been much better!

In the photo above, we have oysters and the primary colors in the scene are whites, yellows, oranges and a bit of red. Another punchy and contrasty color would have made this image much better. Adding a bit of green (parsley, cilantro, etc) as a garnish, a lemon or some red hot sauce on the side would have added even more punch to the scene and made it much better of a photo overall.

The contrasting colors would draw the eye into a specific area of the frame and with strategic placement make the eye focus on the oysters.

A scene can be too contrasty–and that’s why we state that a neutral color needs to dominate the scene and other colors need to be what draws the eye in.

Saturation and Luminance of the Punchiest Colors

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Fujifilm 16-55mm f2.8 WR review Graham's images (14 of 19)ISO 4001-60 sec at f - 2.8

Contrast in colors and a neutral scene are what makes the image easier to edit and can help the photographer to put emphasis on what viewers should pay attention to. In the scene above, the primary neutral colors (the ones that we don’t care about) are brown and burgundy. But the food has totally different colors: red, yellow, orange and green. Because the background is so neutral, the food and color channels can be edited accordingly and not affect the entire scene. Instead, when you work with the color channels you’ll only be editing specific parts of the scene.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Canon 50mm f1.8 STM first impressions photos (1 of 43)ISO 1001-160 sec at f - 2.8

In this image above, you can clearly see this illustrated.

The neutral color: yellow (the wood)

The important colors: red, purple and blue (the fruit)

The major contrasting color: white (the bowl)

If the entire wooden section were painted red (like cherry wood) then tweaking the red color channel would affect the strawberry. This is why contrasting colors are so important in food and add to the vividness of the colors.

blue color food photography food photos green lightroom red
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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