One of the most important factors of food photography is appetite appeal. Think about it, we eat with our eyes first, so capturing those crave worthy aspects is a must. If a dish doesn’t look fresh, it turns the viewer off immediately. In this article, are some of my favorite tips for how to make food look hot in your food photography. I’m going to share some links to tools that I use in the studio every day. I may receive a small commission, but I’m only recommending equipment that I rely recommend and use myself.
Hot or Not?
To make food look hot, there are many different techniques that you can use. Let’s break it down a bit, and divide them into two main categories. These include approaches that use real heat, and a few tricks of the trade to mimic heat.
How to make food look hot using Real Heat
One of the most obvious ways to make your food look hot is to actually shoot HOT FOOD! Sometimes there’s just nothing quite like the real thing. If you’re working without a food stylist, this may be your best option. But this does present a challange of limited time to shoot before your dish “dies”. Which is why we use stand ins!
What is a stand in?
A stand in is something that mimics a hero build while the photographer lights the scene, and builds the composition. Stand ins can be an exact match of the real dish, or can be rough representations. We’ve even used rolled up paper towels in place of a burrito! The goal is to replicate the dish close enough to work out all of the details in the surrounding scene. Now, when the final dish is ready, so is the photographer. You can then focus on tweaking details within the dish itself, and perfecting the shot before you lose the magic!
Tools that use real heat to make food look hot.
Sometimes you can simply cook a dish and shoot it while it’s fresh. Sometimes, you need to keep food warm to ensure it doesn’t die before you’re able to shoot. A few useful tools to extend the life of a dish on set a bit more are:
- Steamers – Steamers are invaluable on set. A quick blast from a high quality steamer can do wonders for reviving a dish that may be past its prime. It can bring life back in to sauces, cheese, meats, and more. It is also the perfect tool for achieving a controlled melt. With a steamer, you can tweak the shot and et everything just right, then at the last minute melt the cheese and capture it at peak freshness. This is one area where I recommend not skimping on your equipment. If you walk into most professional food photography studios, you’ll see at least one Jiffy Steamer J-2 standing by. These are the industry standard, and for good reason. They are built with high quality materials, and will pump out massive amounts of steam for years. A quick customization that I highly recommend is changing from the standard garment attachment, to a wig steaming nozzle. This concentrates the steam to a much more precise point, and allows you to pinpoint where you want to apply. Strap a sponge to the end with a few zip ties to avoid nuisance water drips on your set.
- Hot plates and Griddles – When building out your food photography workspace, electric griddles are a versatile tool for cooking and keeping food warm. They provide a nice large work surface, and offer nonstick coatings for ease of use. Weather you are trying to get the perfect sear on a steak, or are keeping a pizza from seizing up while you work on the top, these little griddles give you so much flexibility when styling food.
- Paint Strippers – Unfortunately, the best versions of these have been outlawed. Apparently they were starting too many fires! If you’re somehow able to get your hands on one of these old school paint strippers, guard it with your life. With an exposed heating element, they are basically a handheld, broiler.
- Heat Guns – Traditionally used for softening paint, applying shrink wrap etc, heat guns are perfect for adding additional browning, and more. If you want to toast a specific area, this allows you to dial in just the right amount of color. Costing less than $30, a basic heat gun is a must have.
- Torches – When you’re looking for more than browning, and want to add some char, a handheld butane torch is essential.
Tips for making food look hot WITHOUT real heat
With the exception of a few dishes like pizza, the majority of food that we shoot in my studio isn’t actually hot. When building, we utilize all of the tools mentioned above, but by the time the food hits the set, it is often room temp. To keep it looking it’s best, the stylists will use various techniques to mimic the natural qualities of hot food. Some of these techniques include:
- Brushing on oil – Often, all a dish needs to look lively again is a quick brush of a little oil to replicate the hot juices that would be found on the surface. You certainly don’t want to go overboard to the point that the food looks greasy, but a light touch of cooking oil can do miracles.
- Adding drips – A tempting sauce drip applied to the right spot can create a hot and ready look.
- Steam – Adding fake steam is one of the quickest ways to make food look hot. This can be done by microwaving a wet paper towel and hiding it behind your dish. My preferred method, however, is with the smoke ninja. This handheld device creates artificial steam that looks killer on camera. You can set it up with a system of tubing hidden inside or behind your food, but I often find that just applying a quick handheld blast is perfect. After you hit the food with your smoke ninja, make sure you snap a few shots in a row. This lets you get a really nice variety of intensity. Also be sure to explore the different modes on the machine. I personally find that dry ice mode on low or medium power is perfect in most cases.
How to make food look hot with lighting
You may have styled an award winning build. It could be the most beautiful plate ever created. But if you don’t light in a way that captures all those details, you’re going to miss all that magic. So to convey heat with lighting, you want to be sure you are using highlights to your advantage. Hot food glistens and shines. So you want to place light sources in locations that create reflections in your food. You’re not trying to distract, but instead, you want to enhance the details.
Specular Highlights
Specular highlights are small sharp highlights that clearly reflect the source of light. In photography, we often talk about the “texture” of light. Specular highlights come from “hard” light sources, or small, bright sources that produce defined shadows. If you’re happy with your shot, but need a bit of glisten, try adding a hard source to reflect in the front of your subject. This could be a bare bulb strobe, or even a small mirror often works nicely. Notice how in the image above, the front of the sandwich looks nice and shiny? This was achieved by simply reflecting the key light into the front with a mirror.
Diffused Highlights
Diffused highlights are on the opposite end of the spectrum. These come from soft light sources. Either through an indirect source, or by introducing a diffusion material. These are often much more subtle in texture, and can be effectively used to introduce shine without blowing out your scene. In the image above, the glisten across the top of the steak is coming from a white card placed behind the subject. By reflecting the key light with this soft source, we are able to liven up the dish quickly and easily.
Lighting for Steam
It’s always surprising how often steam gets lost in translation when shooting hot items. If your background ins’t darker than your steam, you’re not going to see it. The image above is a good illustration of this. As you can see, even though there is a heavy amount of steam, we only see it when it enters the portion of the frame where the window ledge is creating a shadow. So when lighting for steam, be sure to consider your background. Many times, adding a light source from the back that’s pointing directly at the steam will also drastically improve the visibility.
Practice makes perfect!
Even with all of this knowledge, the best way to perfect making your food look hot is to shoot shoot shoot. The more reps you get in, the quicker you will pick up on what approach will work best for the situation. Just try to keep in mind that at the end of the day, you want this to all feel real and inviting. When it makes you hungry, you’re on the right track! If you’re just getting started in food photography, check out 4 things you need to get started in food photography. If you have any other tips, share them in the comments below. As always, thanks for reading!
