As soon as our chocolate fondant comes out of the oven, we want to share the happy news on Instagram:we're going to enjoy it! Armed with our smartphone, we machine-gun the delight until we realize the obvious... Not everyone is a food photographer. Luckily, the New York Times has revealed some little tricks that can make a basic dish highly Instagrammable.
It seems obvious, and yet… A nice photo of food is a clean photo that clearly shows what we are talking about. So we stabilize the phone and focus on the center of the most important food (or part of the food, like the softness of a cake).
Rather than posting a snapshot of our plate alone, we try to think like a food stylist and we don't hesitate to bring life to the image:a fork taking a bite, a scoop of ice cream that has slightly melted , a wooden spoon next to the dish, a nice napkin visible in the corner of the image…
Zooming in on a food is an original way to show a food or a dish. Thus, the frame is filled and it seems that the food is almost overflowing.
Natural light brings shades of color that flash erases. The best light will always be natural, so we do not hesitate to bring a dish / plate near a window before photographing it. If it is too hard, it is not terrible either, so we think of drawing the curtains to filter it.
If we must avoid using our flash, nothing prevents us from using that of our friends. This can also save a photo in the evening at the restaurant, without light... We therefore ask a friend to light up our plate with his flash (we can filter with a napkin if it's too hard) before taking the photo.
Rather than always taking the same photo in front of our plate, we try different angles:we stand above the plate, we bend down to have the dish in perspective...
We do not hesitate to move the plate to make a success of the photo:we can thus put it on the ground if the ground is prettier or the light is better. Well, we avoid doing that at the restaurant or with friends on the other hand…
Pssst… it’s no secret:the best #food photos on Instagram are actually taken with a camera (which offers better rendering, especially in low light). We then resize it on the computer (1,080 pixels by 1,080 pixels) and send it to each other by email.
Rather than relying on Instagram filters and settings alone, we do not hesitate to process photos with an app like Snapseed or Afterlight. We obviously avoid changing the image too much and we are content to retouch the brightness, the contrast or the saturation.
What makes the difference between a lambda Instagram account and an account that we hasten to visit? The style of the photos, which makes it immediately clear who is the author. Well, we are not going to lie to each other, photography is a profession and having a style is not an easy thing. However, we can observe our own shots and try to define what we like in those we prefer:a colored background, a plate still cut in the lower left corner, a glass of water that serves as common element, a slightly pink light… In short, we find the little thing that marks our images and we try to reproduce it systematically in our photos. And above all, we are never satisfied with a single photo:it often takes 10 shots to succeed in having a decent photo, even when we are used to it!
