The Truth About Food Photography

MC from Calgary recently asked, “Why doesn’t anything turn out as in the cookbook picture??”

MC, I think at one time or another we’ve all felt your pain. The cake in the magazine photograph towers three miles high while your looks like a flapjack. The cookbook shows a roast chicken resting on the platter in all its golden brown perfection while yours has singed wings and is falling apart. It can be disheartening, especially when you followed every step religiously and went to six stores for the special ingredients.

The truth is, great photos sell recipes. And there’s a lot of competition out there. Making the food look as good as possible is one way a cookbook, blog post or magazine spread can set itself apart. To do this? Food photography is like a fashion shoot. Start with the prettiest model, pick the best angels and then tweak the results.

While most food blogger cook and photograph their own food —resulting in reasonably accurate images —here are some reasons your results might not look like the picture in the magazine or cookbook.

Fake food: There was a time when magazines and cookbooks cheated. The turkey at the center of Thanksgiving dinner was an undercooked bird with a coating of spray paint and shellac. Coloured mashed potatoes masqueraded as ice cream because they wouldn’t melt under bright studio lights, and cornflakes swam in white craft glue, not milk, thus staying crisp for hours. These techniques have fallen out of favour with magazines and cookbooks, and I don’t know any food blogger who fakes the food. I call these outdated tricks The Mannequin Approach to food. Sure the dish looks pretty, but you can’t eat it.

The creme de la creme: Unless I’m making a point (like with the bird bath toothbrush incident), I’m going to show you the best — the biggest, chewiest, most perfect cookies from the batch. You don’t see burnt edges or the unfortunate ones squashed by my thumb as I pulled the pan from the oven. I can’t speak for others, but I take between 25 and 50 photos per dish but post 2, maybe 3. Cookbook photographers would have professionally prepared dishes and likely take many, many more shots. Like agents, we only pick the most photogenic models.

I’m ready for my close up: Although I select my best efforts for a shoot, I photograph my food pretty much as is. Sure, I try to find a flattering angle and complimentary setting, but not every cookie is the same size and sometimes my icing is wobbly. Professional food stylists take perfectionism to a whole new level. While the food is completely edible, they pull out the measuring tape and rulers to make sure each item is perfectly cut or diced. They’ll use tweezers to place individual sesame seeds on a bagel, fill in any gaps at the centre of a jelly danish with a paint brush dipped in jam. They’re like make-up artists preparing a model for a fashion shoot. The model’s real enough, but you can bet she didn’t roll out of bed looking that way.

Photoshop: If Photoshop can erase crows feet and dissolve saddlebags on humans, imaging what it can do with a plate of spaghetti or a bowl of cherries. Because a camera doesn’t adjust to light conditions the way the human eye does, we need to “help” the finished photos look natural. To do this, we adjust light, pump up the colour, crank up the contrast or sharpen an image. With Photoshop, photographers verge on becoming plastic surgeons.

Not sure what digital photography programs can do? Here’s a before and after example of a shot I took. I straightened the shot (I take cock-eyed pictures more often than I care to admit) and brought up the highlights and shadows. My camera “saw” the picture on the left. My brain saw the photo on the right.

So, do you feel cheated? Or do you have a better appreciation of what goes into a mouthwatering photo? If you’re a food blogger, where do you draw the line when presenting food?