Food Photography: From Plate to Photo

Class Preview

Learn essential styling, prepping and propping techniques to craft mouthwatering food photos!

Seeing Light

Meet your instructor, acclaimed food photographer Andrew Scrivani, as he delves into the role of light in creating drool-worthy photos! Discover how to create attention-grabbing specular highlights, and why backlights and sidelights accentuate texture to create dramatic compositions. Learn to convey mood and tell a story in your photos as you capture highlights and shadows.

Camera Angles & Gear

Discover the three best angles to shoot food from — the iconic tabletop view, the interactive diner’s view and the artistic overhead — and pick up Andrew’s tips on when to use each one. Then, Andrew takes you on a tour of the professional lenses he uses and offers recommendations for the inexpensive equipment and homemade accessories that will transform your photography.

Shopping is Propping

Food is not only the subject, but can be a prop, too, adding invaluable context to your photos. Andrew shares what he looks for when shopping for food and offers several tricks for transforming less-than-perfect produce into top-notch trimmings. Discover how to complement the colors in your subject with accessory food props, and learn styling and scene-setting techniques for appetizing images.

Chopping is Propping

Andrew shares the styling tools he can’t live without and then shows you how to cut up vegetables to maximize their aesthetic. Learn proper techniques for cutting on the bias, dicing and julienning. Discover how to keep foods like apples and eggplants from turning brown during your shoot. Explore the cultural expectations that come with plating iconic food such as hamburgers and pancakes, and learn three ways to style a chicken.

Finding Your Style

Learn to create your own aesthetic as Andrew shares how he found his vision for photographing food. Get tips for using props to reflect your style while tapping into cultural cues. Learn to create a signature look to differentiate yourself as a photographer.

Using Props

Learn to set a scene and tell a story as you build your photo from the tabletop up. Discover the illusions you can create through props and set scenes that tap into the emotions people have associated with food. Then, Andrew takes you through two set-ups, a romantic dinner and a picnic, and shows you how he styles the food and how the scene changes throughout the shoot.

Challenging Foods to Photograph

Learn invaluable tricks of the trade as Andrew shares secrets for styling some of the most challenging foods to photograph. Discover how to light chocolate desserts as well as white cakes. See how to build a salad from the plate up and learn how to photograph liquids with the proper exposure. Then, discover two ways to style a bowl of soup, depending on whether you’re shooting it from a tabletop view or above.