Lighting is everything: Photo tricks for Instagrammers

Many foodies don’t only want to enjoy delicious food, they want to post beautiful pictures of it on their social media accounts.

To get the best shots, there are a few things to bear in mind – and the light source is one of the most important, photography experts say. Here are three tips about lighting for food photos.

Reduce reflections: Ideally, photographers should turn off unfavourable overhead lights and substitute their own light source. Of course in a restaurant this is rarely possible.

Instead the experts advise to get a window seat in the restaurant during the daytime. When light comes from the side the photographed food will look to have more contours.

Use a background: Alternatively, photographers can make use of the backlight provided by the window by putting a black or white notebook close to it and using that as the background for the photo.

It’s important that the book should not be too big so that enough light from above and from the sides falls on the subject.

Light your scene with another phone: Of course at evening-time using a window for indirect lighting won’t work. But if you have one to hand you can use a mobile phone as a light source. The trick is to set the display backlight to maximum and hold it as close to the subject as possible.

You can always crop out the phone later if it appears in the picture. Using the smartphone display actually sheds more light than using the device’s flashlight and large light sources at a very short distance prevent harsh highlights. – dpa

Source: TheStar