8 easy food styling tips for sweet foods

Styling food for the camera isn't always easy, whether your subject is shop-bought or homemade. In this post, we're looking at eight easy sweet foods styling tips that will help you capture beautiful photos of your baked goods.

What is food styling?

Food styling is all about preparing food for the camera in way that makes it look beautiful, tasty and inviting all at the same time.

Some foods are naturally photogenic and don't need much help, but others can do with some finishing touches to make them camera ready! In this post we're looking specifically at food styling tips for sweet foods, though many points can also be applied to savoury foods.

There are also ways to improve an image through composition choices and general set styling, so we'll touch on some of those in this post too.

8 food styling tips for sweet foods

When baking yourself...

Try to add layers and decorations to your finished bake to create some visual interest for the photoshoot.

Using some of the ingredients that are in the recipe to decorate your bakes will help the viewer to imagine the flavours they will taste when eating it - and the look pretty!

Drizzles of melted chocolate or syrup, dustings of icing sugar and cocoa powder and sprinkles of chopped nuts or coconut add lots of variety to your photos and are a great way to add movement to your images!

When buying pre-made products...

Take your time to choose the prettiest product and look for ones that have interesting decorations and complementing colours.

There is no shame in buying ready made baked goods if you don't have time to bake but want to add sweet foods to your photography portfolio!

Think about a colour palette

Colours tell us so much about the season and mood of an image, so you should always choose the colours in your scene wisely.

You can go for a neutral monochrome look, or make your bakes pop with complimentary colours in your decoration. Analogous colour schemes are quite calming, whereas triadic colours palettes can create fun and bright feeling images.

Create layers

We mentioned layers in the first point about decorating bakes that you've made yourself, but layering is an important composition technique that you can use in all your food photos.

Layering is about the number of elements your have in your scene aside from your main subject. Each item or prop can be considered a new layer, and more layers often creates more interest.

For example, a brownie slice on a plain surface doesn't look quite as interesting as a brownie slice on a piece of parchment paper drizzled with melted chocolate and chopped nuts plus a glass of milk in the background.

Of course, sometimes less is more and minimalist scenes can be very striking too (particularly when the main subject has very eye-catching layers!).

Use recipe ingredients as props

In addition to using ingredients to decorate your bakes, you can also use them as props in the rest of your scene.

Pinch bowls with chocolate chips, dried fruit or nuts and seeds are a great way of adding more elements to your frame in way that makes sense to the viewer. It gives you more items to play with in your composition and acts as a flavour cue.

Repetition

Another composition technique that I found works well for baked goods is repetition.

When we bake, we're usually making multiples of something with the intention of sharing it with others - a batch of cupcakes, slices of cake, pieces of a traybake.

If we've done a good job baking, these foods will all be pretty much the same shape and size, whether circles or squares etc. Creating a composition with repetition of a single shape is visually pleasing and makes for a fun image.

Learn how to compose images with the Golden Triangle

This technique is one of my favourite sweet food styling tips and works particularly well for flatlays, where the repetition can be seen very clearly.

Tell a story

If you've been reading my content for a while, you'll know I'm big on visual storytelling! I think it's one of the most important parts of creating a beautiful and engaging image.

Baked goods are a great subject for storytelling as they are often shared with others or used to celebrate special occasions.

So whenever you're shooting something sweet, imagine the situation someone might be in who is just about to eat. Are they at a birthday party? Celebrating a seasonal holiday? Or simply enjoying a cup of coffee with an afternoon treat?

Think about props you can use to tell the story and I can guarantee your image will resonate much more with your audience!

Taking a bite out of anything is always a good idea - not only does your audience get to see the inside of the bake and imagine eating it themselves, but you get a tasty snack mid-shoot too!

Use your hands

Staying on the point of storytelling, photographing hands in your frame is a great way of adding a human element to your scene.

Baking is often done by hand and is an activity shared with our children or even our friends. We often serve ourselves and eat cakes with our hands too, so capturing a little hand grabbing a freshly baked cookie off a plate is a really lovely way of inviting your viewer into your scene.

Summary

• Add layers and decorations for home baked goods
• Choose the best looking products if buying ready-made bakes
• Choose a well thought out colour palette
• Use recipe ingredients as props
• Incorporate repeating patterns, especially in flatlays
• Tell a story with relevant props
• Add a human element to invite the viewer into your scene

If you put any of these into practice I'd love to see your images on social media. Remember to tag me @lindahermansphotography so I can see them!