Food Photography

Just a quick reminder that the Mom Conference starts in 3 days! Have you seen the line-up of speakers and presentations? I think it will be a lot of fun I love learning from other Mothers!



For some time now I have been trying to be a little better with the photography of my food. I'll be the first to admit that a photographer I am not! It's not really something I enjoy doing. But I do love and appreciate a good quality photo and I don't think a good recipe is complete without a good photo of the finished product.

A few years ago I saved up money and got me a nicer camera. Notice it's still a point and shoot I needed it to be simple or I would really hate using it. It does have some manual settings and has been a camera I am very happy with!

I still felt like most of my food pictures didn't do justice to how good the food was. So a while back when I came across the Tasty Food Photography book at Pinch of Yum, I knew it was something I should read. I didn't expect miracles but I was hoping to at least improve.




I still don't love taking pictures but I do think putting some of the advice from the book into practice has helped......A LOT!  My biggest problem has been getting enough natural light. (Which I didn't really understand until reading this ebook) Since this blog is a hobby that pretty much pays for itself I don't make dinners in the middle of the day just so I can have good lighting.

I don't cook for my blog I cook for my family and most of the things I make and quickly take a picture of are just before we eat dinner and usually light is not the best at that time. I realized lighting was the biggest factor in the quality of my pictures.

So I started looking for something that would help me bring more natural looking light to my pictures. Like a mini studio or something but it had to be compact and affordable. Hobby remember. ;) That's when I found and ordered this.

So to try it out I thought I would do a retake a couple of  couple least photogenic foods that I have posted. (You know those ones that are just really hard to make look good especially if you are a total amateur like me.) Be sure to click on over to the recipes to see how the other pictures came out.

The first one was my Creamy Vegetable Soup:

Here is the before picture:

And here is the after:

The other was Mac and Cheese:

Before:

After:

Now remember least photogenic. It would probably help more if I got some props or garnish or something. I'm still working on what props might help non-photogenic foods look good. But I still think there is quite a bit of improvement and I'm excited to be able to at least get decent lighting no matter what's going on outside my window. I'll keep practicing. I don't see me ever becoming a pro but I hope at least that when you see one of my recipe pictures you will think, "Yummy I want to make that!"