Olga Drach – 5 Food Photo Tips

Today’s article will be big and very tasty 🙂 Olga Drach, co-founder of Simxa and Photokitchen, has been working with photography for more than 10 years! She has been a food photographer for 6 years and a food stylist for 5 years. Below you can find a lot of beauty, inspiration and of course 5 photo tips:

1. Try everything, do what you like!

It is important to understand your photo area. You are going to take hundreds of pictures in a row and every time you will find something new, so study with pleasure and prepare for each photosession like for the first one? My topic is food. But when I get tired I switch to subject or portrait photography. I also have a few permanent projects, in which it is easy to trace the dynamics and there is a place for creativity.

2. Photography is a Light

The light gives an opportunity to show the colors beauty. The proper color is very important for food. In general we use daylight, if stable conditions are required (for example, to take pictures of 40 dishes) – then a pulse or constant light should be used. Daylight is unpredictable and has limited time, both of these problems can be solved with artificial light. It is not desirable to take photos with incandescent lamps and other light sources that are indoors, they are not intended for photo shooting.

Work with color, learn how to see it, do monochrome series, use Instagram as a field for training. Create projects and take pictures to train your eye. For example, when I need to take pictures with the dark background, I see a lot of dark photos for at least a week and photograph of everything I see in dark colours.

3. Patterns

Food photo (like any other type) likes pattern. When you take food pictures, add spices, plates, drinks and hands to the frame. Don’t use flowers in the photo if you don’t know whether they are poisonous or not 😉 In the composition, go from simple to complex (to cut a dish and add hands at the last moment). Food likes cleanliness, complex composition is usually worse than a simple, clean and neat dish on the white plate with the white background and hands with a neat manicure.

4. Inspiration.

If you don’t have an account in Pinterest, then you just have to register there and start to use it! There is everything what you need to develop a style. Also I highly recommend to clean your news feed in Instagram, subscribe for talented and topical authors and enjoy the maximum beauty. If you arrange your instagram properly and check your news feed a lot, then Instagram will give you recommendations and will start to work for you.

5. Find something, that is interesting and fun to work with.

Repeat the work of others until you are tired and your talent will break through copies. Analyse mistakes, yours and others, successes will come when you think: “Oh my God, how beautiful it is!” Then stop and think why do you like this picture so much. Look and see what is “behind the frame”, how the photoshoot takes place, how the light is set and how the composition is built.