Still Life Photography: Foods & Drinks Desktop

Food photography is a still life specialization of commercial photography, aimed at producing attractive photographs of food for use in advertisements, packaging, menus or cookbooks. Professional food photography is a collaborative effort, usually involving an art director, a photographer, a food stylist, a prop stylist and their assistants.

For a long time, food photographs tended to be shot and composed the way people were used to encountering their food: laid out on a table setting and shot from an overhead perspective, Stylists accordingly arranged the food to appear good from above, with the items arranged flat on the plate and clearly separated from each other.

Later, romantic lighting, shallower angles and more props came en vogue, with extreme cases leading to the term "food porn". Most recently, the prevailing trend in Western commercial food photography is to present the food as simple, clean and naturally as possible and with little props, often using effects such as selective focus, tilted plates, and extreme close-ups. This complements trends in professional cooking to make the food more visually interesting. For instance, the height of dishes tends to increase and their elements are often layered, which lends itself well to narrow-angled shots.