Food Truck Food Photo Guide For Beginners

The popular saying “You eat with your eyes,” is now truer than ever in today’s social media atmosphere. #Foodporn has become a common hashtag over multiple photo platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. These tantalizing food images your prospective customers see can help drive sales to your food truck, and it is for this reason that you should value food photography more than ever. Developing food truck food photo content means bringing your menu to life in a way that connects and drives engagement across all social networks.

Because of this, we’ve created this guide to help you craft your own successful food photos for your mobile business.

Food Truck Food Photo Guide For Beginners

Use All Natural Lighting

Diffused natural light is a secret step in getting food photos to shine. Shooting under a canopy outdoors or in front of a window with a diffuser provides an interesting light for your food.

Backlighting For Food Truck Food Photos

Always try to make sure the food is between you and the light. This will keep the food looking soft, balanced and will highlight all the subtle details that appear in the dish.

Staging For Food Truck Food Photos

Shooting food photos affords the photographer with a lot of flexibility that most photography doesn’t. Why? Anything can become your stage such as floors, windowsills, park benches and other non-traditional photo spots. The tightness of the shot lets you focus on the food and transform the location into an interesting backdrop.

Camera Settings For Food Truck Food Photos

Social media photos perform best when they are light and bright. In using the camera this means as wide as possible without losing the food. I’ve had professionals tell me that most of the time they shoot in the f/5 to f/8 range. For top-down shots or tall dishes they shoot as wide as f/3.5. Complex dishes may require f/10 or higher.

Angles of Food Truck Food Photos

There isn’t a best angle for shooting food. Your food truck dishes need to be understood and adapted to. Big plates of food look better when cropped in the lens. Burgers look great when you get low and shoot up, making them look larger than life. With social content, the images are often smaller and square, so use that to your advantage.

The Bottom Line

Just remember that with food photography the best shots are the least expected. Move around, grab different angles, shoot with different light levels. There is no perfect recipe to the perfect food photo, but hopefully some of these techniques will be useful to you the next time you post an image.

Do you have any food truck food photo tips? We’d love to hear them! Share your thoughts on this topic in the comment section, our food truck forum or social media. Twitter | Facebook

By Richard Myrick|2020-04-17T08:28:58-04:00Apr 17, 2020|Marketing|

About the Author: Richard Myrick

Richard Myrick is an architect by degree (Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, Michigan) who began his career in real estate development and architectural planning. In September of 2010 he created Mobile Cuisine Magazine to fill an information void he found when he began researching how to start a mobile hotdog cart in Chicago. Richard found that there was no central repository of mobile street food information anywhere on the internet, and with that, the idea for MCM was born. Richard also wrote the "Running a Food Truck for Dummies" available in bookstores everywhere and Amazon. You can reach out to Richard by email at: [email protected].