Composition and Perspective in Food Photography

In food photography, as in every branch of photography, composition is one of the most important factors that distinguishes one photograph from another and makes it special. While there are no strict rules regarding composition in photography, there are some basic techniques you can use to highlight the subject you capture in your photographs, the food that is the subject of this book for us, and make it more striking.

Rule of Thirds

Divide your frame, which we see in the camera's viewfinder or on your phone's screen, into 3 x 3 = 9 boxes with vertical and horizontal imaginary lines, and place the element you want to highlight at the appropriate of the 4 points between the center and the corners where these imaginary lines intersect.

The rule of thirds, known as the most basic technique of composition in photography, actually represents the four regions closest to the golden dots in a rectangle formed by the golden ratio. Placing important visual elements in these areas in the photograph ensures that the images appeal to the eye aesthetically.

Triangles and Groups of Three

Another composition technique that can add balance to your food photo is to create triangles or triads with the elements that make up your photo. We can also call this the golden triangle.

Negative Space

This composition technique aims to draw attention to the subject by leaving empty space around the main subject of your food photo.

A correctly exposed photo, good styling and good composition may not always give good results if you do not take the photo from the right angle. For this reason, it would be appropriate to try different angles in your food photographs and find the one that best reflects the food you take. Now I want to tell you about the shooting angles I use in my food photographs.

Vertical and Horizontal

You can take your food photo vertically or horizontally. It is possible to enjoy almost any dish from both angles, but for some dishes you may need to choose one or the other. For example, a vertical frame would be more suitable for shooting a tall subject such as a layered cake or a stuffed hamburger. On the other hand, shooting a composition spread over a wide area horizontally is more convenient to capture all the elements in the frame.

45 Degrees

Since this angle is the angle from which you look at the food, I can say that it is the angle from which you can make it look most natural. This angle is perfect for shooting any plate with depth, especially dishes served in bowls such as soup, and is frequently used by food photographers.

Eye Level

This is the shooting angle where you position your camera at the same level as the food. It is used to make dishes look larger and more magnificent, and is the most preferred shooting angle for beverage shots.

Bird's eye view

This is an overhead shooting angle that allows you to include many elements in your composition at the same time, called flat lay, which attracts a lot of attention especially on social media. This angle is suitable for shooting low and wide objects. If there are elements of very different sizes in your composition, it is not possible to show each element clearly with a bird's eye view at an open aperture (the new small f number). Pizza is a great angle for capturing large breakfast and dinner tables, or meals with plenty of toppings.

Focal Point in Food Photography

If you are shooting with a professional camera, the first thing you should do is leave the autofocus mode and switch to manual mode. In this way, you can determine where your machine will focus. If you are shooting with your phone, you will be doing this by clicking on the object you are shooting with your hand.  First of all, for a well-focused photo, especially if you are shooting a food with a lot of depth and detail, you should not use a value lower than f/2.8 as the aperture value. I recommend it because at lower values, the area you can focus on decreases and you cannot show your food in the required detail.

The best way to decide on the point you focus on when shooting a meal may be to place the focus on the most eye-catching element, this may be a garnish, or it may be to choose a content you want to draw attention to and highlight as the focal point. If you have done your composition correctly, your focal point will most often be one of the intersection points that we remember from the rule of thirds. Another focusing method can be to focus on the largest piece of food closest to you, which is one of the underlying operating principles of automatic focusing systems of machines.

Color in Food Photography

When looking at a photograph, our eyes first focus on the light-colored objects there and then move on to other elements. If we do not want the attention to be diverted from the food when taking food photographs, we need to keep our composition and angle as free as possible from other elements that may distract attention in lighter colors.

If your photo seems too uniform or monotonous, you may want to add accessories or garnishes of different colors to liven it up. If you are not sure about choosing the right color, you can use the color wheel for this selection.

The correct complementary color for each color is the color that falls directly opposite it on the wheel. You can enliven your photo by using these cross colors. Another option would be to choose items from adjacent shades of a color that belong to the same color group. As is true for all other factors, this should be considered as a guide, not a strict rule. In my personal opinion, food photography, when viewed as a form of art, is a field open to unlimited creativity.