The Art of Food Styling
Tips from the Experts: Five Ways to Take Better Food Photos.
Ellen Ecker Ogden is a food writer, cookbook author, and artful kitchen gardener. Follow the year-round progress of her Vermont garden on Instagram or sign up for a writing or design workshop on her website
Hello Everyone.
If you could describe that moment with a plate of beautiful food in front of you just before you pick up your fork to eat – what word would you use? I call it anticipation. It’s what happens every time you eat, but most of all when you cook. You might be preparing a recipe from a cookbook, simmering onions on the stovetop and the kitchen fills with a wonderful aroma. You feel anticipation tempered with patience and perhaps even a bit of awe. All those lovely ingredients come together into a meal.
When I cook from a book, the food on my plate is indeed delicious, yet it rarely looks as good as it does in the photo. The absolute best part of writing a cookbook is when the photography happens, and for two of my cookbooks, I’ve been lucky to work with a professional food stylist (@norasingley) and a talented photographer (@mathewbenson). The photo above of my maple tomato salsa is a perfect example; what you don’t see are all the seeds, skins, and chopped-up stems ready to be dumped onto the compost pile.
Before I met this dream team, I took a class on food styling from one of the greats, Dolores Custer who focused on preparing food for the camera. Yet I learned from Nora and Matthew that food styling goes beyond the food, it begs for props and natural lighting, garnishes, and plates. It’s an art that takes years to learn, and it often takes several tries to get it right.
There was a time when food bloggers made us all look at their food. “You’re at a restaurant and they bring out the food and everybody takes pictures for 15, 20 minutes,” writes a food blogger who came up in the ranks during the height of Instagram curation “and it has to be perfectly staged and no one can bite it.”
Follow the new trend among food bloggers and you’ll see plenty of drips and splatters, small kitchens with pots and pans piled up near the sink, and cakes that are not perfect. I almost prefer this messy style since it shows us real cooks and home kitchens, not the highly food-styled wonders that make us swoon and wonder why our own creations don’t quite match up.
Food styling trends continue to evolve and are the kind of thing that once you notice, you see everywhere. It’s not, in fact, easy to achieve. Some former students in my class, How to Write a Cookbook, tell me that this lesson is their favorite part. They had not planned to use photos for their cookbooks, yet after this class, learned to take better photos. I thought it might be fun for you to learn a few of the secrets to food styling and play with your food for the camera.
Try These Five Food Styling Secrets
Here are some simple food styling tips you can use right now that you can try at home. First, take a moment to look at this image. What do you notice about this photograph? What choices did the food stylist make when setting it up?
1. Ingredients: Berries with green leaves along the edge tell me they are fresh.
2. Props: Soft, crisp linen creates a relaxed look, with a simple red stripe to blend in.
3. Plates: Always add extra plates in the background, never a single.
4. Illusion: Muffins cooling on a rack indicates they are hot out of the oven.
5. Taste: The empty muffin wrapper proves they are delicious and irresistible.
Here’s another example:
Camera Angle: Aimed down to show the soup in the bowl, perfectly garnished.
Crackers: Lightly broken to indicate action, and suggests how to serve.
Tabletop: Aged wood gives it a feeling of authenticity, a true fisherman chowder.
Linen Napkin: Ironed, and folded just so, the green stripe picks up the color of the parsley.
Spoon: Often several spoons are better, along with a stack of bowls, yet this single spoon offers intimacy.
And One More:
Notice all the details here: Natural light coming in from the window, the linen napkins, the coffee pot, the angle of the cutlery, with chunks of apple showing a touch of pink. ( Tip: Nora pulled out pieces with a small fork to make them look chunkier. The recipe is on my website for Buckwheat Crepes)
As a cookbook writer, I like my recipes to use words to describe, elicit an appetite, and build anticipation. Yet eating is full of visual cues, and you have permission to give it a little extra boost when creating a photo. Play with your food, but don’t miss that moment of sitting down with anticipation to a delicious, homecooked meal.
My best,
Ellen Ecker Ogden
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I love this post! will make the buckwheat crepes!