Food and Prop Styling

You've learned how to use your camera or phone in the right light, your photo is exposed correctly, but is there still something missing? Another essential part of food photography is to properly prepare the food and the environment around your subject model for shooting. We can say that food and prop stylists are the equivalent of food photography when fashion stylists make the right combinations for their models and hand them over to the best make-up artists and hairdressers for the shoot.  How can you shoot a model without make-up or with a wrinkled dress beautifully? In this section, I will discuss how you can make your food look more beautiful and appetizing.

Although today, professional food photography is generally a joint effort involving an art director, a photographer, a food stylist, a prop stylist and their relevant assistants, before I start explaining the subject, I have a story of organic transition to food photography from my own kitchen, from the design of recipes to props. I would like to underline that I do everything on my own, from styling to photography, and that I do not prefer to use fake chemical effects that make the food inedible and take away from its naturalness, no matter how great visual results it gives.

Food Stylist

You can think of food stylists as artists who prepare your food for shooting. The most ambitious ones may come from a culinary background, or they may just be talented people who have a naturally developed visual perspective on food presentation. We can say that the duty of Food Stylists is to present dishes with great taste in a beautiful and appetizing way with some of the tactics they use in the recipes. Does every food photographer have to use a food stylist? No way. Especially in small budget shoots, with your visual perception developing over time, you can take on the role of food stylist yourself, as I do with great pleasure. However, in big-budget corporate shoots, a professional food photographer wants to devote all his focus and time to the photo shoot, and for this reason, the food stylist becomes the food photographer's most important business partner. Because it is a job that requires a lot of effort to simultaneously expose the photo correctly, create the right composition, and present the food in the same way it left the kitchen, or even better, until the shooting is completed. For this reason, when you can afford a food stylist in professional food photography, working with these talented people will give you great relief and help you get beautiful results with much less stress and time. On the other hand, if you are only shooting for your personal blog or Instagram account, or if your client's budget does not allow you to work with these people, you have to deal with the problem! For this reason, I think it is necessary for me to share with you some basic information about food styling.

Contrary to most food styling tricks or myths you read on the internet, I personally use natural food as much as possible in my client work due to my ethical concerns. So I don't use shaving foam instead of cream, mashed potatoes instead of ice cream, or motor oil instead of pancake syrup! But I have certain rules that I always follow to make food look more attractive. First of all, the ingredients for the meals are always chosen from the freshest and best vegetables and fruits. I always make sure that the materials are purchased the day before the shoot. The easiest way to make hot meals look more appetizing is to undercook them! In this way, vegetables do not lose their color and shape and look fresh and lively. Rarely cooked meat is always more appetizing with its pink interior. If you intend to use vegetables and fruits outside of the plate for styling, you should make sure that all of them are hand-picked from the most beautiful ones. Hot foods should be removed very quickly as they look bad when they cool down in a very short time and the fat freezes. Because this condition is valid for any food that melts or loses its form by deflating, such as ice cream. Therefore, before you start shooting, it would be best to test the shooting device by taking test shots with representative food or towels on your plate, and when the food arrives, quickly press the shutter button and get the correct result without the need for trial and error. If you have not had the opportunity to do this, you can brighten hot dishes such as meatballs or meat, which freeze quickly, by applying glycerin or olive oil with a brush, provided that you do not overdo it. Semi-diluted glycerin mixture will help you create a lively or icy feeling by spraying it in fruit and vegetable presentations and beverage shots. 

Before the shooting day, be sure to have a basket of the basic ingredients of the food you will shoot in the shooting area, because you can use these ingredients as props or replace an ingredient you do not like with a better one that you can find in this basket. The important point here is that these materials, which will remain on the set throughout the shooting (that is, for hours), are periodically sprayed with water or soaked in water to animate them.

Another thing you should pay attention to when shooting your food is that the surface on which the food is placed, that is, your background, is clean. I'm not talking about sprinkling ingredients around your plate or food to color the photo frame. You should pay attention to details such as not leaving any unwanted drops of oil or sauce on the plate, and for example, if you are shooting soup, you should pay attention to details such as serving the soup without spilling it around at the shooting site and leaving no traces of shaking on the plate.

The easiest way to make sure that you shoot the food from the best angle and in the most accurate way is to shoot using the "Live View" mode of your camera, that is, to see what you will shoot and its composition.

In addition to these, the best thing that can make your food photo more lively and appetizing with the right ingredients, without contradicting your recipe, are garnishes that will spice up your meal. It is important to position these garnishes so that they do not get in the way of the food.  Adding movement to the photo depending on the food or drink you photograph is also a different way to add style to the photo. Honey or sauce dripping from a spoon, pasta grains wrapped around a fork may be examples of this.