A Brief Food Photography Tutorial: Yummy!

From the Swedish Baking School Championships in Gothenburg.

Here is my recipe for taking a yummy food photograph:

1. Photograph only beautiful food. If you look at food photos on Facebook and G+, you will understand why this is an important rule.
2. Think "flower photography". You never photograph flowers from above. Same thing with food. I went down on my knees to take this one.
3. Get close. This is a good general rule. Robert Capa, a famous war photographer, once said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you' re not close enough." This piece of advice works for more than war photography.
4. Use the rule of thirds! There are better rules, but this one is simple enough for me to remember when I am in a hurry. For an example, look at the foremost strawberry in the picture above.
5. Take the shot. In this case ISO 4000, f/8, 1/160s, 135mm. If I had been working, I would have used a flash. As it was, I had to crank up the ISO instead.
6. Fix it in post! If fixing flaws in post processing is good enough for George Lucas, it is good enough for me. I always post process the pictures I take. 
7. Auto enhance. I usually start post processing with Auto Enhance in Aperture.
8. Crop the crap out. The next thing I do is cropping the picture to get rid of distractions around the edges.
9. Retouch. I spent some time removing crumbs in the lower third of the picture. I also removed part of a leaf on one of the strawberries.
10. Enhance colors. I did make the strawberries look a little bit more red by increasing luminance and saturation slightly.
11. Change overall saturation and vibrancy. I really should have fixed this before working on the strawberries.
12. Increase detail. You may loose some detail while fiddling with saturation and coloring, so it is worth the effort to check if you need to bring some detail back. There is a Detail slider in Aperture that does the job nicely.
13. Add a vignette. This is a matter of taste. I like vignettes because they help guide the eye to the important bits in the photo. The Vignette function in Aperture has its limitations, but in this case, it sufficed.

I wish I could say I finished by eating what I photographed, but alas, that was not to be. Maybe next time. :-)

Here are some food photography resources:

The Jenn Cuisine Blog - A tutorial collection

Spiciefoodie has a nice tutorial