How to Take Food Photos on Your Phone

You don't need a camera. The phone in your pocket is more than good enough for a printed cookbook - as long as you fix the handful of things that make home food photos look like home food photos. Almost all of it comes down to light.

1. Turn off the overhead light and go to a window

The single biggest improvement you can make. Kitchen ceiling lights are yellow, harsh and directly above the food, which is the worst possible angle.

Instead: put the plate on a table next to a window, in daylight, and switch off every light in the room. Mixing daylight and bulb light gives you two colours at once and the photo will never look right.

Never use the flash. It flattens everything and turns food grey.

2. Put the light to the side or behind the food

Not behind you. If you stand with the window at your back, the light hits the food flat-on and it looks like a police evidence photo.

• Side light (window to the left or right) shows texture and shape.
• Back light (window behind the plate, you facing the window) makes things glow - great for anything with sauce, glaze or steam.

Both create shadows on the near side. That's fine. If they're too dark, prop a sheet of white paper or a chopping board just out of frame on the opposite side to bounce a bit of light back.

Avoid direct sunlight. It's too harsh. An overcast day is a food photographer's dream. If it's bright, hang a thin white curtain or a bedsheet over the window and it becomes perfect.

3. Pick the right angle for the dish

Two angles do almost everything:

• Straight down (flat lay). Best for anything you look into - bowls, soups, pizza, a table of dishes, anything laid out flat.
• Low, or 45 degrees. Best for anything with height - a burger, a layer cake, a stack of pancakes, a glass.

The mistake is shooting everything from your own eye level while standing at the table - that's nobody's angle, so get lower than feels natural.

4. Sort the background before you sort the food

Clear everything out of the frame that isn't meant to be there. The pepper grinder. The car keys. A corner of the microwave.

Simple, plain surfaces work best - a wooden board, a linen tea towel, a plain worktop. Plain white or off-white plates make food look better than patterned ones, every time.

Then add back one or two things that tell a story: the pan it was cooked in, a fork, a scattering of the herbs that went into it. Two props, not eight.

5. Use the phone's basics properly

• Tap to focus on the part you want sharp - usually the nearest edge of the food.
• Then slide the exposure down slightly. Phones tend to overexpose food; a touch darker looks richer.
• Don't zoom. Digital zoom just crops and softens. Move closer instead.
• Turn on the grid in your camera settings and use it to keep things straight. Wonky flat lays are very obvious.
• Portrait mode: sparingly. It can look artificial around fiddly edges like herbs and crumbs.

6. Shoot it hot

Food dies fast. Melting cheese, steam, a crisp crust, a glossy sauce - all of it disappears in about ninety seconds.

So set everything up before you plate: background, angle, props, light. Then bring the food in, put it down, and shoot immediately. Take twenty photos in thirty seconds and pick later.

If you're photographing something that wilts - salad, ice cream, anything with fresh herbs - have it ready and cold and be quick.

7. Edit lightly

Use the phone's built-in editor. Small adjustments only: straighten and crop first, lift the shadows slightly if the dark side is too dark, nudge brightness and contrast, warm it up a touch if it looks blue or cool it if it looks yellow.

Resist saturation. Over-saturated food looks plastic. If the tomatoes look radioactive, you've gone too far.

8. Be consistent

This one only applies if you're photographing the book yourself. If you are, shoot everything by the same window, on the same surface, at roughly the same time of day, with the same edit - a set taken that way hangs together like a professionally shot book. It's the same principle that governs everything else in cookbook design.

If the photos are coming from contributors, let this one go entirely. Their pictures will arrive from different kitchens, different phones, sometimes different decades - and that's not a flaw to fix. A photo of the actual dish, on the table it actually gets eaten at, says more than a styled shot ever could.

Will phone photos print well enough?

Yes, with two caveats. Shoot in your phone's highest quality setting and don't crop heavily afterwards - a photo cropped to a quarter of its original frame is a quarter of the resolution. And send the original files rather than versions that have been through WhatsApp, which compresses images substantially. If a relative is contributing photos, ask them to AirDrop, email or upload the originals.

The short version, again

Window light, no flash, side or back lighting, plain background, get low or get above, shoot it hot, edit gently. That's it; everything else is decoration.

Common questions

What's the best time of day to photograph food?

Mid-morning or mid-afternoon on an overcast day. Avoid midday direct sun, and avoid evenings entirely if you can - once you're relying on bulbs the colour goes and no amount of editing fully fixes it.

Do I need a tripod?

Not for this. Window light is bright enough that camera shake isn't usually the problem. A tripod does help if you're shooting a series of flat lays and want them all framed identically, which is worth it for a cookbook.

How do I photograph brown food so it doesn't look grim?

Stews, curries and casseroles are the hard ones. Back light them so the surface catches a shine, add a contrasting garnish - herbs, yoghurt, chilli, lemon - and shoot from a low angle rather than straight down, so you get the sheen instead of a flat brown circle.

Should I photograph the food or the people?

Both, and don't neglect the second. In a family cookbook the photograph of the person who made the dish, or of the kitchen it was made in, is often the page people stop on. Food photos make the book look good; people photos make it worth keeping.

What if I can't cook the dish to photograph it?

Leave it as type. A well-set recipe page with air around it looks entirely deliberate, whereas one bad photo in a run of good ones is the thing people notice.