6 Steps to Mouth-watering Pizza Photography
Your pizza looks delicious, but it’s not enough just to have a great recipe and ingredients. You also need to take the best pizza photos! This blog post will show you how to create mouth-watering pizza photography with 6 simple steps that are easy for food bloggers of any skill level to follow.
Set up the Lighting for Well-Lit Images
To get the best pizza photographs, you need well-lit images. The best option for this is always natural light but you can sometimes use artificial light to help.
If you can, try to take pizza photography during the day so that you have plenty of natural lighting. If it’s not possible for your pizza photos to be taken in the daytime, set up a high-quality lamp with white or daylight bulbs and place it right next to where you’ll be photographing your pizza. This will give you the best pizza photography lighting possible.
Make sure that you have a diffuser or some sort of light filter over your food images to soften any harsh shadows and give you more natural-looking pizza images.
If none of these options is available, take pizza photos in front of windows with sheer curtains by opening them as wide as they’ll go so that the light is diffused.
If you want pizza images that are a little more dramatic, try to take pizza photos in front of windows with sheer curtains by opening them as wide as they’ll go so that the light is diffused or use artificial lighting if natural light isn’t available.
When shooting pizza, make sure the light is directional. And watch your highlights, as cheese can provide a lot of shine that might make it look greasy.
Style the Pizza for Mouth-Watering Photos
When it comes to styling your mouthwatering food photos, you’ll want to consider the different types of pizza photos you want to achieve: overhead flat lay shots, tasty pizza slice or string cheese pieces. So if you’re looking for some pizza photography ideas. Let’s get started.
The background of your photos should go well with the food you’re preparing. I find that simple and natural backdrops work best with pizza. Things like a simple tablecloth or some checked fabric work nicely, for that Italian feeling.
Use props appropriate for the dish at hand. Consider options like a pizza cutter, or basil leaves. When photographing food in general, it’s best to keep things simple – that way your photos will look their best!
You can choose to buy a pre-made pizza crust or make your own. If the latter, partially cook it. Next, top with sauce and any fillings desired. This way, ingredients are only in an oven for a short period of time – preventing them from becoming dried or wrinkled.
One of the things to keep in mind when taking photos is that you need less sauce on your pizza than before you eat it. The sauce will lessen the beauty of the cheese, but you still need that layer of sauce.
When making a pizza, brush sauce evenly across the top of the crust before baking. Then add more in a thin line along the outer edges after the pizzas are cooked. Food stylists typically drain excess water from tomato sauce on a paper towel before using it.
Photographing pizza typically requires the use of mozzarella cheese. To help maintain consistent white colour, part-skim mozzarella is usually preferable to whole milk mozzarella. Buy your whole cheese blocks and grate it yourself to get the exact look and thickness you want for your strands. Keep them refrigerated until they’re ready to use.
Photograph the Cheese Pull for Added Deliciousness
Cheese pull is achieved when a food blogger lifts up a slice of pizza and the gooey cheese stretches to be shared with both pieces. This style is often used in pizza pictures.
For this type of shoot, string mozzarella works best. Peel apart the mozzarella beforehand into long, thin strands that are about 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch wide. This stringy look will be visible in your final photo where you lift the pizza away from the rest of the pie. You will also need some shredded mozzarella.
You will need an additional person for this. Someone should hold the spatula under that piece and you will have to cut some cardboard into a template. Place this under the slice of pizza to keep it stable and firm.
Place the pizza crust on a pan and cut the desired slice into the crust using scissors or a sharp knife.
Taking photographs of food can be a difficult task even for professionals when it comes to cheese pull. It can take a great deal of time and skill to get the perfect photoshoot.
Get the Focus Right to Achieve the Best Quality
A common problem when shooting this type of food is the amount in focus. Consider how you’re going to use the image and the technique you are going for.
If you’re looking to focus on a particular element (like the pizza itself), a shallow depth of field can work. It will fool the viewer’s eye into thinking that all but one important aspect is out of focus, like crisp toppings or the shapely crust.
To shoot crisp, in-focus photos of pizzas for commercial clients, you may want to focus more on getting sharper images.
The lower your f-stop number, the less light hits the sensor. Set a low value such as f11 or f16 to reduce your exposure.
Photographers who shoot with natural light can experiment with longer exposures and tripods to improve their photos.
A solution is to use focus stacking. This technique includes taking three pictures of the pizza with different focal points and then blending them together on a computer. It is easier than it sounds, and it’s a great approach to take when you need a photo where every part of the food is in perfect focus.
Make the Pizza Look Fresh for Authentic Results
Another reason it’s so difficult to style pizza is that when it comes out of the oven, the toppings are still bubbling and steamy. That full “straight out of the oven” look only lasts a few minutes before everything cools down enough for people to comfortably eat some slices.
A good or bad shot can be determined within a few seconds.
Food bloggers need to work fast when taking pizza shots and the best way is by preparing ahead of time. For example, pizza dough can be placed on a pan beforehand without sauce or cheese so that it doesn’t get soggy in flour while you’re making your pizza according to taste. It also helps if you have someone hand you pizza for a quick shot.
If you have the time, pre-bake your pizza and let it cool before taking photos with an oven-safe tray or stone underneath to keep them from sliding around on camera. This lets you take professional-looking shots of pizza without having to worry about getting steamy food all over your lens.
Pay attention to the shooting angle of your photos. A flat lay can help you create a more appetizing photo where slices are layered on top of one another and toppings show in a clean, organized way. Take a lower angle, around 45°, for the perfect shot to show off your crust the best.
Edit Your Pizza Photos for a Natural Look
To take the best photos of your pizzas, you’ll need to avoid using Lightroom presets or Instagram filters. Presets can work well for many genres of photography, but they often produce unflattering results when photographing food.
The goal of food photography is to make the dish look natural. After all, you’re selling food; it needs to appeal to the senses and appear appetizing. You shouldn’t change the pizza too much from how guests can expect it to taste in reality.
Colour is one of the most important factors in food photography. It’s important that you maintain natural colours and think about your color scheme when choosing props and backgrounds. Custom presets are not enough to give you total control over them. Presets often create unnatural and unexpected colour tones, such as those in the shadows and highlights.
But if you have taken care of your lighting, post-production is not as necessary.
When you’re editing your pizza pictures, work individually with the colour sliders in Lightroom to give your images a natural boost. A few tweaks are all you need to go from mediocre to amazing.
Creating the best pizza photographs
The pizza is an interesting dish to try and photograph. As a food blogger, it’s important for you to learn how to take the best shots of pizza in order to create enticing pictures.
Then you can convey how delicious your pizza will taste to everyone that sees your recipe!
