Food Photography For Cookbook Authors

If you write your own cookbook, you also have to present the recipes you have collected visually.

General tips for better food photos

Many beginner photos are shot too far away from the subject. So get closer.

Deliberately cut off edges. This makes the image more compact and interesting for viewers.

Do not use front light such as the built-in flash.

Instead, use side lighting or backlighting.

This makes the staging more dramatic and also more exciting.

Props like wood pellet pizza oven

In modern food photography, a combination of dish and prop is therefore used. Matching accessories in terms of content and colour ensure harmonious arrangements. With the combination of food and prop, something “happens” in the picture and the visual tension is increased.

There are countless possibilities when choosing accessories so that everyone can let off steam creatively.

  • Wood pellet pizza oven
  • Cutting board
  • Cloth napkins
  • Scraps of fabric
  • Cutlery
  • Old bowls

Over time, your own supply of so-called “food props” grows. Good places to go for old crockery include household clearances or flea markets.

Photo ideas for your own cookbook

A cookbook can combine the most beautiful photos in the world. But if you always see the same motifs, it’s only half as successful. If you photograph your recipes in your own studio, you sometimes can’t see the forest for the trees. Creativity is required and new ideas and surprising arrangements are needed.

wood pellet pizza oven

Where can you find ideas for food photos?

You get the best suggestions from cooking magazines or other cookbooks. This is not about copying content, but about ideas as such. It is precisely the intentionally imperfect arrangement, from which many photos live to a certain extent. You can learn from professional photographs by studying them intensively.

For example, a masculine setting is relatively easy to implement. Meat, fire and charcoal – that’s the basis and almost nothing can go wrong. With a vegan cookbook, things are different again. Photographing seitan and blocks of tofu in an appetizing way may pose a greater challenge for some.

Food photos can be created well on your own four walls. At least, in the beginning, you don’t need any special equipment. Food photos are successful when they make you want to, arouse curiosity and encourage readers to try a dish.