When photographing food, no detail is overlooked, from the angle of the camera to the position of the smallest portion of food on the plate. Food photography is all about visually enticing your senses, to make you drool and your belly rumble in reaction to the glorious images of succulent gastronomic delights! (Kitchen Aid Giveaway Below)!
For those who are trying their hand at food photography, here are some simple but effective tips on how to elevate your ordinary food photo to a mouthwatering shot:
1. Pay attention to your lighting – the most delicious food will not be worth looking at if your lighting is all wrong or isn’t enough to illuminate the scene. Provide adequate and even lighting, using natural or studio lights. Studio lights would give you total control but you can also use indirect sunlight (window light is often used) to achieve a cozy, natural atmosphere with your setup.
2. Shine light with a soft box – a soft box is a lighting device which provides muted and even light to your food setup, making the food look more appealing. It gives light without you having to worry about awful hard shadows or blown out highlights.
3. Use a small ISO setting – the smaller the ISO number you use, the finer and smoother the image quality of your food shots. ISO 100 is usually adequate. Just remember that the smaller the ISO number, the more light you will need.
4. Experiment with Manual mode – as much as possible, stay away from using your camera’s Auto mode. If your camera has a Manual mode, use it whether it is a Canon or Nikon, a DSLR or a point-and-shoot. With this mode, you have more control over your camera’s exposure settings so you can achieve the effect you want.
5. Show some style – gone are the days when food photography was all about simple close-up shots of the food. Now, the food shots are being primped by food stylists and photographers by adding the elegant settings where the food is presented. Classy silverware, gorgeous plates, and all kinds of table props are used to accentuate the overall shot.
6. Mind your background – food photos are not just all about the food but also what’s surrounding the food in the image frame. If you are shooting cookies and there are messy looking crumbs in the background, or a chocolatey stain on the tablecloth beneath the plate, these can truly spoil the shot. People like to see pretty food photos with a tidy setting, and not as if it’s the aftermath of Cookie Monster’s visit.
Featured Blogger
I’d like to give a shout-out to Chef Dennis of askchefdennis.com for his simple yet thorough explanation of what Google+ is all about and how it can benefit us food bloggers. A very well-written, easy to understand, and enticing read!
Giveaway Closed
Thank you so much for participating. You must do all in order to be entered for the giveaway, we just launched so we need as much help and support as possible. We are still fixing some bugs, so if you are having a cropping issue when uploading photos, we are working on this now, however, it will look perfect when published. If you have any error messages or any problems uploading, please let us know and we’ll have our development team o it ASAP. Thank you so much for your patience. Giveaway Closes July 31st. Winner Announced August 8th. (recipe below)
1. Please Like our Facebook Page Here
2. Sign up as a user in our gallery (submit one recipe and one photo)
3. Follow Us on Google Plus (if you have an account)
4. Add Us as a Friend (but don’t unfriend us if you don’t win the giveaway, that would make us very sad). When you add us as a “Friend” it goes to one of the founders “Marie Cinq-Mars” (personal profile) previously (myfudo.com). Facebook changed the rules to where personal profiles can’t be connected to their fan pages (Yumgoggle’s fan page). When adding Yumgoogle, it now goes to the Founder’s personal facebook, hopefuly in the future FB will allow their users to link both.
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6. Please comment and let us know you’ve done 1-5 =)
The Perks of Having a KitchenAid
- 325-watt mixer with 10 speeds; 5-quart stainless steel bowl
- Tilt-back head for easy access to mixture
- 1 piece pouring shield with large chute for adding ingredients
- Includes flat beater, dough hook, and wire whip
- Measures 14 by 8-2/3 inches by 14 inches; 1-year warranty
Tiramisu Macaron’s
Adapted from Kim at Macaron Fetish
MACARON SHELLS
- 1 room temperatured egg white(39-40g)
- 50g icing sugar
- 30g ground almond
- 30g castor sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon of colouring in powder (you could also use cacao powder or matcha powder, ground coffee in this recipe)
Directions
1. Put ground almond and icing sugar along with the ground coffee in a food processor or a small blender. Blend them finely.
2. Sift the blended mixture and set aside
Blended and sifted ground almond, icing sugar & ground coffee
3. With an electric beater, Beat the egg white, start from low speed and increase slowly to maximum speed. Beat until frothy (you will see lots of fine bubbles)
4. Now it’s the time to add in the castor sugar, add half of the sugar, continue to beat in maximum speed for around 2 minutes, add in the othe half, continue until you get very stiff peak.
5. Mix the dry ingrediants into the eggwhites. This process is called Macaronage. Start folding with a rubber spatula. When you get smooth shiny mixture, stop folding, lift the mixture with spatula, if the mixture falls back slowly in the bolw means you’re good to go. You could also check if the lines formed from the liften mixture, they should slowly disappear in within 30 seconds. At this stage you’re good to go. Do not over fold, it will be too liquid and becoming very hard to pipe.
6. Line the baking tray with the parchment paper.
7. Fill your piping bag , pipe your macaron (about 2 cm diameter) it should spread a bit as it settles. The point should slowly disappear if the mixture is the right consistency.
If not you could hit the bottom of the tray to smooth the point out)
8. Let your macaron sits for about 30minutes. This will depand on the humity in your house and the day. Try touching the macaron softly, after 30mins. it should not stick to your hand.
9. Heat your oven to 150 C on the (heating on the top only). When the oven is ready, put your macaron at the very bottom shelf. Bake for 12 minutes, check them in the mid time of 6 minutes, the feets should already start forming. Turn the baking tray to the opposite direction to allow even baking. When the 6 mins is up, change the heating setting of your oven to Bottom only. This will help cooking the macaron and rise the feet more. Bake for another 6 minutes. You can test if the macaron is cook, touch softly on the shell and when the macaron doesn’t slide on the feet, it’s cooked. if it’s not add another 1 mins each time and check.
10. Let the macaron cool down before removing them. You could wet your working area and slide the baking sheet on it to speed up the cooling process, but do not let it sit there too long, if not the macarons will become soggy. Other wise you can leave them cool at room temperature and remove them.
FOR THE COFFEE CHOCOLATE GANACHE
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon ground coffee
- 50g dark chocolate (chopped finely)
- 10g liquid cream
Directions
1. In a small pot warm up the cream, until it boil lightly.
2. Remove the pot from heat. Add in chopped dark chocolate & ground coffee.
3. Stir and mix until you obtain a shiny, smooth consistency.
4. Fill up your macaron shells and enjoy!
TIPS
1. Whenever you could, age the egg white in room temperature. I had tried age egg whites and room tempeature egg whites, I see no difference apart than age egg white achieve stiff peak easier. It doesn’t affect the macaron.
2. Weight the egg whites. As the dry/wet ratio is very important.
3. Underfold will result in no feet, rough looking macarons. Makesure you fold sufficiently but do not overfold. I would say about 50-60 strokes.
4. If you use food colouring, the macaron tends to take longer to dry and form a shell, so you might have to leave them drying a bit longer.
5. I only use powder food colouring as it doesn’t add anymore liquid to the mixture. Also the colour is more intense.
6. Don’t forget the dollop of mascarpone cheese!
Photography Data:
Featured Photographer
Ruth Black
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I am cooking this week for a group of scientists doing research in snowy Colorado, and it's great fun to have a week where I do almost nothing but cook. The first night we were here, I needed a quick, simple dessert. I had all the makings of a yogurt cake, like this 
The beautiful thing about this cake, besides its moist lusciousness, is that it all mixes up in one bowl, and you don't even need beaters. It's only mildly sweet, too; much of the sweetness comes from the apples.
