Food photography is an art form that can entice viewers in visceral ways. To be able to capture a still-life in such a way as it looks easy and, of course, appetising is something every budding food photographer aspires to.

So to ensure that your food photography journey starts off on the right foot, we've compiled 13 wonderful tutorials that will definitely ensure that your food photography is a feast for the eyes!

Quick Tips To Get You Started With Food Photography

If you aren't sure where to start, these quick tips will give you a great overview to get you thinking about how best to shoot still-life.

Use Natural Light
This is best for a beginner – move your subject to make sure that you have natural window light. Soft diffused light is incredibly appealing
Use A Wide Aperture Setting
Next up, ensure you have a wide aperture setting – f/1.8 – f/5.6. This will give you a limited depth of field ensuring that you have a lovely blurred background, and make sure you focus near the front edge of the food
Composition Is Key
Think about your composition – zoom right in and fill your frame with the food, or perhaps think about using negative space, and definitely make sure your background is relevant but doesn't detract from your culinary masterpiece
Contrast Colours
Still thinking about composition, find contrasting colours. For example, put some fresh basil (green) on your spaghetti or try a pop of red (chilli) on your stir-fry.
Keep It Fresh
Photograph the food while it is as fresh and as visually appetising as possible

Get A Great Introduction With These Food Photography Tutorials

Getting Started With Food Photography: This piece by Dzvonko Petrovski takes you through composition, lighting and post-production techniques to give you a great grounding in some of the basics of food photography.

An Introduction To Food Photography: Chris Cockren from Shared Appetite not only gives us a great tutorial on how to start photographing food but also shows us some great examples of what not to do, which is always helpful.

Bite Size Tips: Amazing Food Photography Primer: Dahlia Ambrose gives us some great quick tips as well as an overview of the gear you'll need and the techniques that will give you drool-worthy photographs of food.

5 Great Tips For Successful Food Photography: Over at Contrastly they've condensed their thoughts into 5 succinct tips that will immediately kick start your food photography success.

13 Tips For Beautiful & Tempting iPhone Food Photography: Some great tips here for anyone getting started with food photography and it should be noted that these techniques apply to any camera you are using, whether it is your mobile phone or the latest DSLR.

Take Your Food Photography To The Next Level With These More In-Depth Guides

How To Photography Food For Professional-Standard Shots: This is the big one. Here we give you the ins and outs of food photography, from composition and lighting to tips of styling the food as well. This guide is well worth your time.

These Are The Secrets Of Professional Food Photographers: In this tutorial, Kent Dufault gives us pointers on everything from lighting and exposure to colour and focus. This is a great piece that reveals the tricks of the professionals.

How To Do A Food Photography Shoot: Over at the Food Photography Blog you'll find a lot of great information about this genre. This guide gives you 8 clear steps to a successful session shooting food.

8 Tips And Tricks To Improve Your Food Photography: Here Jasenka covers techniques that go beyond getting started, looking closely at composition and styling tips.

Make Your Macro Food Pictures Look Like A Slice Of Heaven: This article really homes in on using macro-photography to capture food at its essence. By using macro, you'll be able to go beyond the plate!

Free Guides To Add To Your Learning Library

3 Free Food Photography Guides To Get Your Creative Juices Flowing: Federico has pulled together 3 great free guides to extend your learning. He goes into more about each of these free guides in this article, but here are the links for convenience:

Further Learning

We hope you've enjoyed these links to some amazing tutorials from here and around the web. All these tutorials have something in common, and that is reinforcing your need to understand light. One way to improve your photography is to understand light better.

If you've struggled to take advantage of light in your photography to the fullest and you want a complete, in-depth training to help you with that, take a look at the guide Understanding Light: Book One, to produce great images by discovering the key concepts of light.