4 Smartphone Professional Food Photography tips From May VISUALS.

Mahmud Ali
Oct 10, 2022
3 min read

Updated: Aug 4, 2023

Most food photographs you see on instagram and twitter today are captured on a smartphone.

Modern phones have great cameras but it’s not so much about the quality of gear but what you do with it.

Here are some smartphone food photography tips and techniques to take your images to be instagram worthy.

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1. Use Natural Light

tip:

Hold down on your screen to lock focus on your image,
Slide up to increase exposure after locked focus
Slide down to reduce exposure after focus.

When you shoot with your smartphone, ensure that you are using natural light.

Most food pictures regular people take in restaurants look horrible because of artificial lighting.

Fluorescent and other types of artificial lights create unwanted colour casts. As a result, they cause your pictures to look hard and flat.

Your food needs to look as fresh as possible to look appealing. To achieve this, natural light is the way to go. Professional food photographers use large and expensive strobe lights to mimic natural, diffused daylight but thats a lesson for another day.

But how can you do food photography at home without strobes or expensive equipment? Simply bring your plate to a window with natural light or shoot outside in the shade.

Make sure you stay away from the bright sun as it creates hard shadows in your scene. If you can’t avoid it, shield your dish with a small diffusion disc or panel. It works much like a window in softening the light.

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2. Get the Perfect Exposure with Bounce Cards

Most smartphones can take correctly exposed pictures in ideal conditions. But you don’t always get the best lighting when it comes to food photography.

Smartphone food photography requires constant problem-solving. But a bit of creativity combined with what’s already around you can go a long way!

You can boost the brightness of your scene by using a piece of white foam core as a bounce card.

As the name suggests, a bounce card reflects some of the light from the main light source onto the set.

You can also invest in a reflector kit and bring it to a restaurant to diffuse the light. Or you can open up reflectors to bounce more light onto the dishes.

3. Use Neutral Backgrounds to Highlight the Food

In food photography, you want the backdrop to be neutral. The food is the star, and anything else in the image needs to support it and not detract from it.

A background that is too colourful or textured draws the eye away from the main dish.

With smartphone food photography, it’s hard to get bokeh. So keep your background simple.

A bit of creativity will serve you well. You don’t always have to shoot food on the table. I sometimes put the dish on a concrete floor or neutral-colored tile with an interesting pattern.

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4. Style Your Dishes for Delicious Results

Styling is essential in food photography. You can have the right angle, perfect exposure, and an excellent subject. But if the dish looks sloppy, the result will be unappealing.

If you’re shooting at home, use herbs and garnishes to elevate the aesthetic of your image. You can also use other elements like chunks of bread or some extra sauce. Sometimes, I even have some coarse salt or pepper to sprinkle onto my surface to give some context to my food story.

Props also give your photos character.

Whether shooting with an iPhone or a DSLR, photographers usually bring items like vintage cutlery or squares of linen to restaurant shoots.

Doing so adds a bit of pizzazz to what is sometimes dull and typical flatware.

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