food photography

A long weekend in the Winelands, a road trip up the West Coast, a few days on the KwaZulu-Natal coast: the places we travel to within South Africa are as worth photographing properly as anywhere further afield. The trouble is that holiday pictures often come back flatter than the trip felt. The light was better than that, the view was wider, the food looked more appetising than the photograph suggests.

This guide sets out practical travel photo tips in three parts: the scenes you are most likely to shoot, the exposure and composition behind them, and how to choose a lens you will actually enjoy carrying for a week. Most of it applies whether you are travelling with company or heading off on your own.

Why an Interchangeable-Lens Camera Lifts Your Travel Photography

Most travel pictures are taken on a phone, and for a quick record of where you were that is perfectly sensible. If you want more from the images than a record, an interchangeable-lens camera changes what is available to you.

The

A plate of something excellent arrives — lamb off the braai, a slice of melktert, a bowl of curry still steaming — and the phone or camera comes out almost automatically. The frustration is what happens next. The dish looked extraordinary on the table and somehow looks dull, dark and flat on the screen. This guide covers the fundamentals of food photography for beginners: how to read the light, what to set, how to frame it, and which lens will actually help.

What makes food photography look appetising

TAMRON 28-300mm F4-7.1 (Model A074) | Focal length: 28mm | Exposure: F4 | Shutter Speed: 1/50sec | ISO: 100

Good food photography is really about doing justice to something that already looks good. Almost everything else follows from two decisions: where your light is coming from, and whether you have enough of it.

Window light does more for a plate of food than any amount of editing. It renders colour honestly and shows texture the way your eye actually sees it. The softer light of early