How to shoot menu photos on a phone

Once your menu is digital, every dish can have a photo. The obstacle is usually not the software — it is the belief that you need a photographer.

You do not. You need daylight and twenty minutes.

The one rule that matters

Shoot near a window, with the light coming from the side or slightly behind the dish.

That is most of it. Almost every bad food photo is a lighting problem, not a camera problem.

Specifically, avoid:

• Overhead restaurant lighting. It is usually warm, usually yellow, and it flattens everything.
• Your phone’s flash. It makes food look like evidence.
• Direct midday sun. Too harsh, and the shadows go black.

What you want is soft daylight from the side. A table by a window an hour or two after opening is usually perfect. If the light is very bright, hang a thin white curtain or a sheet of baking paper over the window to soften it.

Light from behind, fill from the front

Side or back lighting makes food look three-dimensional — you can see the texture of a crust, the steam, the gloss on a sauce. Front lighting makes it look flat.

The problem with back lighting is that the front of the dish falls into shadow. Fix it with a piece of white card, a menu, or a folded napkin propped up on the opposite side to the window. It bounces light back into the shadow. This costs nothing and is the difference between an amateur photo and a decent one.

Angles, by dish type

There is no universal best angle. It depends what the dish’s best feature is.

• Burgers, sandwiches, layered cakes, anything with height: shoot from the side, roughly at the level of the plate. Height is the selling point; from above it disappears.
• Bowls, pizzas, salads, breakfast spreads: shoot from directly above. The composition is the selling point.
• Drinks: slightly above plate level, around 45 degrees. Show the glass and a bit of the surface.
• Anything with a filling or a cut face: cut it, and shoot the cut.

Practical setup

• Clean the plate rim. Every time. Wipe it with a damp cloth before you shoot. This one thing raises the standard of a photo more than anything else on this list.
• Use a plain surface. A wooden table, a slate, a plain cloth. Busy patterned backgrounds fight the food.
• Tap to focus on the front edge of the dish, then drag the exposure slider down very slightly. Phones tend to overexpose food, and pulling the brightness down a touch keeps the colours rich.
• Do not use zoom. Move the phone closer. Digital zoom degrades the image.
• Shoot the dish fresh. Food dies fast under lights. Photograph it the moment it leaves the pass, not after you have arranged three other plates.

Consistency beats brilliance

A menu of twenty competent photos taken the same way looks far more professional than a menu with three stunning photos and seventeen ordinary ones.

So do them in batches. Pick a morning, set up your spot by the window, and have the kitchen send out ten dishes in a row. Same table, same light, same angle logic. It takes an hour and you have half the menu.

What to skip

Do not photograph:

• Anything that looks bad but sells well anyway. A photo can hurt as well as help.
• Drinks that are just a clear glass of something. The name does more work.
• Items you are about to remove from the menu.

Start with your best sellers and your highest-margin dishes. Those are the ones a photo does the most work for.

And then keep them current

If you change a recipe or a presentation, retake the photo. A picture that does not match what arrives at the table is worse than no picture at all — it is the one thing guests will remember, and not fondly.

The advantage of a digital menu is that swapping a photo takes ten seconds. Use it.