Food styling: 12 salad styling tips

Salads have become an all year round dish, with winter salads being just as colourful, beautiful and delicious as the summer salads. But how do you make salads look as good as they taste and have that beauty shine through in your photographs? We're going to talk about 12 simple salad styling tips that will help you make your salads stand out beautifully on the camera.

Salad styling tips

1. Choose the best ingredients

Salads are often made up of raw or lightly cooked ingredients, so you want choose the best ones you can when out shopping. Farmer's markets are often a great place to find beautiful, fresh produce and comes with the added bonus of supporting your local community and lowering your carbon footprint!

At the supermarket look for produce that has the longest best before date, as these items will have been harvested most recently. Check soft produce for bruises and leafy vegetables for any damp or wilted leaves that will quickly deteriorate before you've even got them home! If anything does look a bit lacklustre when you get around to shooting, herbs and leafy greens will be revived by placing them in a bowl of ice water for a few minutes.

2. Undercook vegetables

There's nothing more unappetising than limp, soggy vegetables! If your salad includes any cooked vegetables like broccoli or asparagus, cook them for less time than you normally would so they remain relatively firm. Rinse green vegetables with cold water straight after steaming or boiling to halt the cooking process and keep their colour vibrant.

3. Work to a colour palette

Using colour stories in your images is a great way to create harmonious and visually appealing images. A colour wheel is a handy tool to select colours that would work well together.

There are four common types of colour combinations you can try:

• monochromatic: various shades of one colour (e.g. green)
• analogous: colours that sit next to each other on the colour wheel (e.g. yellow, orange and green)
• complementary: colours that sit opposite each other on the colour wheel (e.g. red and green, blue and orange)
• triadic: three colours that equidistant from each other on the colour wheel (e.g. green, purple and orange)

Look at the ingredients in your salad and see if you can choose a colour palette based on the main elements. Base the rest of your choices related to props and editing around this colour scheme and you'll instantly have a more visually pleasing image!

Note that there is a whole body of work on colour psychology and how colours affect our emotions. This is a topic for another blog post, but it's worth having a look into especially if you want to improve your visual storytelling.

Salad styling tips #4 - Select a dish that suits the story

In photography, storytelling is a powerful tool that can help to engage your audience and create emotional connections to your work. When you plan your shoot think about what time of year the salad would normally be eaten and consider which props will convey that in your image.

For example, a summer salad might fit better in a lighter coloured dish such as white or cream, and then styled with other light linens and props. On the other hand, a winter salad could be styled in a darker ceramic dish and complemented with rustic backdrops.

Alternatively, you can consider the setting in which someone would eat the salad. Is it a great summer BBQ side dish, or maybe an ideal working lunch? Think about how you can create that environment in your image based on the dish you choose. A side dish might be served on a big platter ready for everyone to share, whereas a working lunch could be presented in a cute bento box.

5. Use a shallow dish

Even though salads are often served in bowls, in photography avoid using anything that's too deep that your ingredients can get lost in. Larger and heavier ingredients will fall to the bottom of a deep bowl, and high rims will cast shadows block out parts of the salad. Shallow dishes and plates, on the other hand, are ideal for salads because you can evenly spread out the ingredients and clearly show what's in it.

If you are going to use a bowl, then this little trick is going to save you having to use a lot of ingredients: place a smaller bowl upside down inside your main bowl, making sure it's not visible above the rim. Then you can pile your ingredients on top - this way you'll need far less ingredients to make the bowl look abundantly full and you'll have a platform to rest your hero ingredients on!

6. Think about your shooting angle

The angle you choose to shoot from will affect how you style the overall dish because different parts of the scene will be visible. The most common shooting angles for food photography are flatlays (shot directly above your scene at 90° to your subject), an angle anywhere between 45° and 75° (looking down at your subject from an angle lower than a flatlay) and straight on (directly from the front of your subject up to 45°).

In flatlays you're not going to see any height, so you this is where a shallow dish or plate is preferable compared to a deep bowl. Use its surface area wisely to showcase all the ingredients of your salad. The points above about creating shapes and layering will help you create a dynamic and textured frame whilst highlighting the star ingredients.

As for straight on, 75° and any angles in-between you're still better off using a shallow dish or plate. Make sure that whatever you use is generously filled and the salad visible over the rim of the dish and deliberately place the hero ingredients so they can be seen. Of course, the higher the angle you shoot at the less height your salad needs, but no-one wants to see a meagre portion size, so do try to create an abundant-feeling dish.

7. Create shapes for visual interest

To make the image more interesting, think about how each ingredient is presented and consider cutting them in different ways. For example, carrots could be sliced into ribbons with a vegetable peeler, cucumbers could be cut into batons and cherry tomatoes could simply be halved. The variation creates a more vibrant image and gives the viewer more to take in.

8. Layer up the ingredients

Rather than mixing all the ingredients in a bowl and tipping them out onto your serving dish, try intentionally layering them up. I usually start with the larger elements first, like leafy greens or pasta and then adding smaller ones in descending size. Try to keep the styling realistic and natural by tuck and wedging the ingredients into the layers, rather than just piling them on top of each other.

Finish the salad off with garnishes like a sprinkling of seeds, nuts (chopped or whole) or fresh herbs and micro greens.

If you have lots of ingredients, you could also try arranging them in groups on the dish before mixing them together. This makes is easier for your audience to visually separate them and identify everything that goes into the salad.

9. Save some ingredients for the scene

Remember to keep some extra ingredients whole and prepped aside as these can be used to add finishing touches to the whole scene. These extras can be used in your overall composition to create leading lines, tell a story, act as flavour cues and identify the hero ingredient. Don't be afraid to leave drips and scattered seeds visible as this also helps make the image more realistic.

Learn the fundamentals of lighting in food photography

10. Pinch bowls are your best friend

Pinch bowls are really handy for holding little things like seeds, chopped herbs and side servings of dressing. They work really well to create a more dynamic composition outside of the salad dish itself and give the frame a more natural and lived-in feeling.

Salad styling tips #11 - Go easy on the dressing

No-one like a dry salad (just the thought of it makes me uncomfortable!), so a dressing is another important element for a salad scene. It's a good idea to style your salad without any dressing first because it gives you time to adjust all the elements before the point of no return, since the dressing will cause things like delicate leaves to wilt.

Take the opportunity to get some shots of the salad with the dressing on the side in a nice jar or pinch bowl, and then have a go at some pouring shots too for variation.

The amount of dressing you put on the salad is up to you, but I find that less is usually more in this case. Start with a drizzle to give your salad a shine and add more as you see fit. Some foods like pasta and beans can handle more dressing, so use your own judgement when pouring.

If you don't have a dressing but the salad looks dry, a spritz of water or a drizzle of olive oil will give it a lovely sheen to liven it up!

12. Serve some onto plates

Once you've shot the salad as a whole, try serving some portions onto plates and playing with the composition now you have more elements in the frame. Not only will you have a wider variety of shots to work with for a single dish, it also plays more into storytelling and creates the feeling of a moment captured mid-meal. The sense of community in these kinds of images evoke an emotional connection with your audience and draws them into the scene.

Now it's your turn!

I challenge you to stock up on some beautiful produce and style a gorgeous salad using these salad styling tips! I'd love to see your images, so don't forget to tag me @lindahermansphotography on any snaps you upload to the 'Gram!