Creating a visual appetite for delicious food

Preparing, serving, enjoying – these are the creative steps to en­ter­tain­ing a satisfied guest in a restau­rant or café. But a guest also wants to be invited first. More and more restau­ra­teurs are turning to an appealing website or a regularly updated social media presence for this purpose. In order to score points with guests, high demands should be placed on the ambience and the dishes displayed. The time and effort invested in this is worth­while in several ways.

A basis for snapping appealing photos is suitable equipment. Although smart­phones now deliver very good pictures in high res­o­lu­tions, certain effects often can’t be achieved or only with great dif­fi­cul­ty using ad­di­tion­al apps. The built-in flashes on mobile phones can reduce red eyes, but other targeted lighting tech­niques are difficult or im­pos­si­ble to implement. This guide offers important basic knowledge and practical tips on how and with what tools you can stage your gas­tro­nom­ic skills and take another step towards dig­i­tal­iza­tion as a local business.

Let’s start at the beginning. It’s not enough to snap a picture of a plate of pasta- although this is part of the process. Pho­tog­ra­phy is one of many genres that primarily appeals to the senses. Suc­cess­ful food pho­tog­ra­phy not only depicts an object, but also allows viewers to feel an ambience, smell the aroma of the food, taste the flavors, or hear the sounds of a café. All of this invites a user to explore what’s on offer and have a closer look at what it’s all about. The product that is supposed to trigger the senses naturally belongs on the photo, and should hold a very central position. But simply taking a photo of a plate of pasta against a white back­ground? This kind of photo could be taken anywhere, even at a restau­rant down the street. That’s why design elements are important com­po­nents to com­ple­ment your main motif, as these can help capture the at­mos­phere without dis­plac­ing or dis­tract­ing from the product. How do you achieve this?

Very strict hygiene rules apply in gas­tro­nom­ic es­tab­lish­ments. Re­spon­si­ble au­thor­i­ties often make visits to make sure every­thing is in order. Com­pli­ance with these rules should be made clear to potential customers and should be reflected in your pho­tog­ra­phy. Fresh food prepa­ra­tion, clean­li­ness, good crockery and cutlery, perfect glasses, smooth table­cloths, matching napkins – there’s plenty to consider. If it’s up to a person to present the food and drinks, a neat ap­pear­ance with proper clothing is important. Back­grounds, documents, or ac­ces­sories for a photo must also meet re­quire­ments.

The coro­n­avirus has raised the hygiene bar even more. If restau­rants and cafés have to remain closed, out-of-home sales, including delivery services and click-and-collect programs for restau­rants are often a possible way of bridging the gap. At this stage, the guest or customer must be able to rely on the es­tab­lish­ment’s adherence to high safety standards. A suc­cess­ful food photo can also convey this. Under certain cir­cum­stances it may be necessary to have in­di­vid­ual pho­tographs for the webshop of different dishes and drinks.

The minimum technical equipment needed for product pho­tog­ra­phy in restau­rants and cafés includes a digital camera, a medium telephoto lens, lighting equipment, and back­ground materials. The camera does not have to offer a full format. Mir­ror­less in­ter­change­able-lens cameras with an APS-C sensor (22.3 x 14.9 mm) and an in­ter­change­able bayonet are a suitable choice.

A good lens is of great im­por­tance. It should have a focal length of at least 50 mil­lime­ters, prefer­ably around 75 mil­lime­ters, and in addition an aperture as large as possible, at least up to f/2.8. The aperture value is a central pho­to­graph­ic tool for directing the eye towards a statement element. You can find more tips in our guide to pro­fes­sion­al product pho­tog­ra­phy.

Built-in camera flashes are generally not suitable for il­lu­mi­nat­ing the subject. “Working” with the light is therefore not really an option. Swiveling flash units with light scat­ter­ing at­tach­ments and foil colors perform better. Meanwhile, there are also powerful and in­ex­pen­sive LED lights that can be used to regulate the heat of the light. Very good results can be achieved with these. These kinds of light sources can also be combined with a flash unit.

The scale of pos­si­bil­i­ties is wide open when it comes to lighting for pho­tog­ra­phy. Ring lights, for example, are a tool that not only product pho­tog­ra­phers swear by, because of their uniform light emission. Finally, a stable tripod and a remote shutter release on the camera are essential. Today’s remote releases are no longer made of wire, but connect via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, allowing modern cameras to be triggered via a cell phone app.

Once you’ve decided which products you would like to showcase, think of a suitable arrange­ment. You can con­cep­tu­al­ize this almost as you would a script: What belongs where, which objects are part of the picture? Answering these questions will help you create a mood while bringing your products to life. Continue with questions like: Which elements are dis­tract­ing from the central component? How can you make your guests feel com­fort­able? Your own taste and the ability to put yourself in guests’ shoes is probably your best guide through­out this process.

The food that you present should be fresh, so that the in­gre­di­ents will look even better when cooked. Every­thing that is cooked should not be over­cooked. Fruit and veg­eta­bles work wonders as dec­o­ra­tion, both as a whole or sliced. Many types of fruit quickly turn brownish after being cut, though. Fruit should not show any un­ap­peal­ing dis­col­oration or pressure marks on the outside either, and herbs should not have limp leaves. This also applies to flowers and floral arrange­ments. Scattered petals must be in­ten­tion­al, for example to decorate a festive table.

Make sure you only use com­plete­ly clean glasses, dishes and cutlery, prefer­ably all polished. Cutlery and glasses quickly show fin­ger­prints, so wear gloves! Glass or bottles run the risk of being mirrored, even with your camera, es­pe­cial­ly when you’re leaning in for a close up.

Plates should not be over­loaded with food, but a “mouthful” can look un­ap­peal­ing. It’s equally important that all com­po­nents of a dish or menu are present. Take in­di­vid­ual photos of all the in­gre­di­ents of your 7-course in­dul­gence menu. A picture can quickly become over­loaded so that not all in­gre­di­ents will be presented in the same way. Focus on the dish’s most exciting angle, like the cut-open side of a lasagna, a burger, or a slice of cake.

The per­spec­tive of the image also plays an important role. Various studies have shown that the view you have when you’re sitting down at the table is the one that’s most inviting. Set design and styling like a nicely decorated table are ideal for this. In addition, a birds-eye view looking down onto the set table from above can also come across as inviting, as often seen on Instagram.

While shooting, the per­spec­tive should be tested with small changes in height as well as from radically different angles. The same applies to the light. Shots with light and few shadows look natural and true-to-life. Shooting against the light creates drama, but also poses the danger of masking the picture’s main element. It is also worth playing with color or black and white shots.

If you’re also using images that are not original i.e. that you did not create, make sure that you handle the copyright correctly in order to avoid legal reper­cus­sions. Our guide to image rights online will introduce you to the necessary basics.

It’s no secret that you can waste a lot of time looking for the right photos! With a sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly organized photo library, you’ll be able to quickly find your motif of choice. The­mat­i­cal­ly labeled folders make it easier to find the right subject. If you decide to use a calendar-based folder system, we recommend using the preceding date format with a keyword: “YYYY-MM-DD_sam­ple­meal”. Further sub­fold­ers could be called, for example, “Web”, “Social media”, or “SM”.

After taking a photo, you are often spoilt for choice: Which photo is best suited for the job? Here, it’s best to simply save all photos, even if some don’t appear as perfect at first sight. High-res­o­lu­tion photos must be adapted to suitable image formats and file sizes for the website or social media channel. You should always keep the original photo, because you never know when the next restau­rant flyer will be needed.

To edit images, you’ve got a host of programs to choose from. The flagship program is Photoshop from Adobe, but for image editing for websites and social media there are also less expensive or even free al­ter­na­tives to Photoshop to choose form.

When creating a website for a restau­rant, technical re­quire­ments will call for the correct image sizes. In some content man­age­ment systems, an original photo can be uploaded, which the system then converts and saves in pre­vi­ous­ly defined image sizes, e.g. in WordPress settings: 150 x 150 pixels for thumb­nails, 300 x 200 pixels for images embedded in text, and 1,024 x 680 pixels to display images in light­box­es or photo galleries.

The original image is of course also located on the server and consumes several megabytes of memory. That’s why it’s worth­while to scale down images before uploading them to a maximum hor­i­zon­tal size of 1,920 pixels at a res­o­lu­tion of 72 dpi. This reduces 8.6 megabytes of a photo with 4,896 x 3,672 pixels to only about one third of the file size. You won’t need more than that with the most popular website formats.

When it comes to selecting the right file type for restau­rant and café images, our overview of graphic formats can help.

A good marketing concept for restau­rants and cafés not only helps grow a loyal community of customers but is also present on social networks with photos (and videos). In the Journal for Corporate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Julia Meifort coined the term “digital food” in a research paper (issue 2/2017). In this form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the ad­ver­tised process of eating becomes a social in­ter­ac­tion. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube – each channel has its own image sizes and formats.

That’s why it’s worth creating templates for the image formats for your own social media presence, and to label them ac­cord­ing­ly. There are various free templates that you can find online for this specific purpose. Below you’ll find a short overview of image re­quire­ments as of 2020.

Facebook

• Profile picture: 180 x 180 pixels (presented within a circle). Upload with 1.200 x 1.200 pixels
• Main image: 820 x 312 pixels
• Main image for events: 828 x 315 pixels
• Split images: rec­om­mend­ed 1.200 x 630 pixels

Instagram

• Profile picture: 110 x 110 pixels (presented within a circle)
• Square: 1.080 x 1.080 pixels
• Hor­i­zon­tal format: 1.080 x 560 pixels
• Vertical format: 1.080 x 1.350 pixels
• For Stories: 1.080 x 1.920 pixels

Twitter

• Profile header picture: 1.500 x 500 pixels
• Profile picture on the profile page: 400 x 400 pixels
• Picture for the Twitter stream: 400 x 220 pixels

For fre­quent­ly used formats, it is best to create templates with the necessary pixel di­men­sions. With such a file, e.g. as a PSD file in Photoshop, you can place photos as in­di­vid­ual layers and then resize, crop, rotate, or distort them as you wish. The best photo editing programs also have an export function for web images, which provide the required res­o­lu­tion of 72 dpi. For circular formats, use the diameter as a measure for the edge length and make sure that the main part of the image is centered.

Our guide on how restau­rants and cafes boost sales on social media has got some more tips on how to build a suc­cess­ful social media presence.