5 Tips for Food Photography *Pizza*

Pizza is one of those foods you need cooked in order to take a decent photo and that’s because you need to see those charred colors on the toppings and the crust as well… The window of time to take photos of pizza is so short you better be prepared for places, light and frames in your head because you know that cheese wont last bubbly and the greens will start going brown!

I took these photos at the Liberty Tavern on Clarendon (Arlington, VA) and I was lucky to have a big open window in front of the Brick Oven, that really allowed me to just use natural lights for these photos, a clean table and just having the pizzas ready one at a time voila!

So here we go 5 tips:

1.  Be ready, ready and ready before the first pizza comes out of the oven, you really don’t want to waste much time, the pizza won’t start looking better as time passes so have your spot ready, lights and whatever extra detail you have prepared for this photo.

2.  Be creative, while I was doing photos I was wondering about dessert pizza even though they don’t offer one on the menu, so I suggested to the Pizzaiolo (he was so nice!) to add some toppings I love that go well together for dessert and look great on photos, for example Pumpkin, gotta love that bright orange! (last photo).

3.  Be at the same level, it’s good to experiment, try to take a photo of the whole pizza from the top, you will find a lovely perfect geometrical shape! Also from the sides, when you lower your perspective and you take the photo it’s as if your face was right next to the pizza, when you take the photo it comes through looking great.

4.  Be natural, for some other dishes I’ve had to use colorant or oil to give some shining, but with pizza there is no need for that, you can actually let the Chef do his work presenting to you a perfectly charred pizza and then your responsibility shall be shooting on a spot w/ natural lights or soft lights to go as natural as possible.

5.  Be careful, taking food photography in a kitchen is always dangerous work, knives, stoves, flat tops, ovens, fast paced environment, you name it!  And the ovens for Pizza are even hotter, they get always over 700F and if you put yourself too close I don’t want to imagine what could happen to your lens, camera or your hands!

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Have fun while at this and be nice to those who are helping and cooking this food, it’s amazing how much fun you can have while doing photography inside of a kitchen!