4 Steps to Taking Money-Making Food Porn Pictures for Instagram

We’ve all seen them, and we’re all equally guilty of drooling over them.

Food porn has been taking social media by storm and is bringing restaurants significantly more business. Restaurant owners can post their delectable pictures on Instagram, menus, and other social media sites.

But how do people take such amazing food pics? We’re going to crack the code and teach you exactly how to take the most perfect food pictures for your restaurant’s Instagram account. 

Here are some key points to keep in mind while food-porning.

It’s all About Technique

Tuck your elbows closely into your sides to keep the camera as stable as possible to avoid blurring. Tap on the area that you want to be in focus. Once you’re happy with it, scroll up and down to change the brightness. This will be useful in dark restaurants and bars (only iOS 8+). Additionally, increasing the brightness on your phone allows you to notice subtle details you may have missed from a darker screen.

Okay, now that you have the technique down, let’s learn how to sex-ify your food picture.

Compose the Photo

Instagram supports vertical and horizontal photos; however, the medium is still very much square. Take a moment to frame the image. Don't try and capture too much, especially if it's going to be cropped and uploaded to Instagram. Develop a focal point, such as the rich color of an egg yolk or a steak's pink center. Just don’t be so close that a viewer can’t tell what the image is. Another key component involves filling the frame of the photo to avoid an unbalanced food to blank space ratio.

Follow the Natural Light

Natural light allows for distinctions in a photo that you can’t get from your phone flash (which tends to not be stellar, to begin with). If the sunlight is harsh, consider using thin curtains to filter the light. When in doubt, follow the light. Success can be found by moving the plate around to explore the best possible light angles. Be careful not to capture your/your phone’s shadow in the frame.

Use a Postproduction App

There are plenty of great phone apps that can help with color correction, brightness/contrast, and framing. Two popular ones are Snapspeed and Afterlight. These two apps provide many of the benefits of Photoshop -- such as tweaking the image’s brightness, warmth and color saturation.

Remember, you don’t want to edit the photos too much! You want your food to look edible and not like something from Willy Wonka.

FOR BONUS POINTS

A photo posted by Mugaritz (@mugaritz) on

Develop a Style

Pay attention to the kinds of images you’re drawn to and favorite photos you’ve taken. Analyze how they’re done – the angle, the lighting, the saturation, etc. Try to continue in that tone as you develop your style. Some people tend to use supersaturated, high-contrast close-ups, while others use the old school, Polaroid hipster-style.

A photo posted by Food52 (@food52) on

Shoot With a Real Camera

Many of the best photos on Instagram are shot with actual cameras, not smartphones. Cameras with manual settings offer better control in low light, (which describes just about any restaurant after dark).

You’ll have to use your computer to crop the photos to size (1080 pixels by 1080 pixels). Email the photo to yourself and save the image to your phone. You can upload it to Instagram from there.

While smartphone cameras are increasingly capable, they don't all come with the array of functions and lenses as you can achieve with a DSLR. If you're serious about your Instagramming/food porn-ing, changing camera lenses can help to achieve a wider array of picture qualities.



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