Moody foodie

Inject a dark feel into your food photography with natural lighting and underexposure

Thanks to the Instagram generation and the rise of the smartphone camera, photographing food is now more popular than ever. Getting decent results is harder than you might think, though – even with a professional camera.

In this project, we’re going to be capturing simple, stylish images of cakes, but with minimal props and styling to get in the way of our subjects.

In terms of lighting, it’s best to stick with a natural source when you light food. A large, bright window will do the job very capably, as nothing makes an edible subject look more unappetising than a bright flash.

For our shots we positioned the subject on a board, placing it on a stool near a bay window in the late afternoon (meaning the light was softer). Shooting handheld, we used a 50mm lens and set a fairly wide aperture of f/3.5, making sure the focus point was on the top of the cake. As we were shooting from above, depth of field was less of an issue than if we’d been shooting the subject from an angle.

Using Aperture Priority mode, we underexposed the shot by 1.5 stops using exposure compensation – partly to retain highlights in the reflections and partly to achieve a deep and moody look in the final image. A reflector could also have been used to bounce light onto one side of the cake.

For editing, we bumped up the Contrast, Shadows, Blacks and Whites for greater impact.