In addition to having good light, a little food styling  can help too.

I remember stumbling across Running with Tweezers blog while looking for some recipe and finding out she has styled food for places like Southern Living and even McDonalds and Publix! From that day on I stopped to take a second look at fast food advertisements. Just to study the styling of course.

 

 

 

Other times I’ll grab some old magazines and look through them to see what I can learn.

 

 

First I spot this fresh tomato sandwich and think Yum I’d like a fresh tomato sandwich. Then I look at it and imagine myself making this sandwich. I’d need a perfect curly leaf of lettuce, a leaf that would still hold some shape when two tomato slices were placed on it.

I make note of the sandwich not put together the way you’d eat it at all but this way you can see the tomatoes better. The  I also make note of the slices of bread at slightly different angles in the background.  I like those details there that are part of the story yet not the main focus.

 

 

On this page I just notice the  pitcher of lemonade and on second glance I see they’ve gone to the porch for good light and a nice background.

 

 

I like the whole styled table outside. This gives me so many ideas from the angle of the light all the way to the starfish and snails. Upon closer inspection I notice that each shrimp has been carefully placed on that pasta.

 

 

I like wraps and this photo says easy and quick lunch to me. I also like to study the angle it was taken from. I was picturing them standing on a chair to take this one.

 

 

Oh yay a pull back shot! Yes, sometimes putting it on a chair works really well.

 

 

These are just too cute! When Strawberry season gets here I am going to try these for sure.

 

 

Most of the time when I’m making something I have no plans on how I’m going to style it, I just try stuff. With these cuties I just started peeling one and saw it had potential to look like a flower.

 

 

I looked at it one more time and decided to put it right on top.

 

 

Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I had the flower idea from the strawberry photo in the magazine.

 

Happy shooting.

~PN