How To Take Good Food Photos With Limited Space

One of my biggest worries going back to living in a dorm room wasn’t how I’d eat—I’m plenty used to cooking in tight quarters with ad hoc ingredients—but rather how it’d look. I thought to myself “Great, now I have to go back to grainy, awkward photos with street corners in the background.” But with a little effort I’ve figured out how to get around that.

The scene above might look like a pan of blondies on top of a few t-shirts covering 2 stacked food storage container. Or it might look like a tabletop with a maroon tablecloth; it’s all about perspective.

To take this photo, I made a make-shift table near a window for natural light and covered the surface with on-hand material. No matter where you are, natural light is your best friend for photography to attain realistic shadows.

Background material is important for a photo, too. In most side photos I have to be careful not to get the heater or my bed in the view line(not because it’s messy or unmade or anything…). But before you go and buy expensive textured tablecloths, look in your closet for inspiration. Most plain t-shirts can be used as a neutral background letting the food show.

The benefit of using a white t-shirt like this is that it draws no attention to itself whatsoever and takes a keen eye to tell what material it actually is.

Lastly, you can always set up a lightbox to make the best of artificial lighting and closeted background. The benefit of this is shadow less objects with customizable backgrounds, albeit small, like the one below.

Have any other questions about photography? Leave a comment below and I’ll try to answer it as best I can.