Phone photos that make a good impression

The rule that beats all the others: window light

Ninety per cent of bad photos of dishes and shop windows have the same problem: the ceiling light. It's yellow, it comes from above, it flattens everything and leaves hard shadows under the plate.

The fix is free: move the plate next to a window and switch off the light above it. If your place is dark, take the photos in the morning before you open. Ten minutes of natural light are worth more than any filter.

If the photo looks yellow, it's not your phone: it's the fluorescent light.

The eight practical rules

1. Stand beside the window, not in front of it

The light should come from the side or slightly from behind the plate. If the window is behind you, your shadow ends up in the photo.

2. Two angles, always the same ones

Either from directly above, perfectly vertical (it works for pizzas, sharing boards and flat plates), or at forty-five degrees (it works for sandwiches, glasses and anything tall). The angles in between are the ones that come out badly.

3. Wipe the rim of the plate

A drop of sauce on the rim really shows up in a photo. A napkin and two seconds.

4. Clear away everything you don't need

A colleague's phone, the keys, the half-empty glass, the crumpled napkin. On your phone it looks like nothing; on a big screen, that's all you can see.

5. Don't use the zoom

Digital zoom makes the picture grainy. Move closer yourself and, if you need to, crop afterwards.

6. Lock the focus

Tap the part of the plate you want sharp and hold until the lock appears. Then, keeping your finger on the screen, slide up or down to make the photo lighter or darker: that slider is the most useful control on your phone, and almost nobody uses it.

7. Shoot in landscape AND in portrait

Portrait is for social media, landscape is for the website. Two shots of the same moment: you can't go back for the other one afterwards.

8. Take ten photos, not one

It costs nothing. Move the plate two centimetres, change the angle, shoot again. Then take your time choosing.

The two mistakes that ruin everything

1. The flash. Never. It flattens everything, bounces back off shiny plates like a mirror and makes the food look yellow. If there's no light, it's not the time to take photos.
2. Heavy filters. The dish should look like the one that's going to reach the table. If it looks neon-bright in the photo and ordinary in real life, the customer feels they've been made a fool of, and says so in the reviews.

What to photograph besides the dishes

Often, the photos that persuade people most aren't the ones of the food:

• The empty room, clean, in the right light. It's the photo that gives people a feel for the atmosphere.
• The outside, with the sign. It helps people arriving by car recognise the place.
• Hands at work. Kneading, cutting, pulling a pint: they show what your trade is about better than any words.
• The people who work there. With their consent: people choose people.

Before you send them to whoever builds your website

Send the originals, not copies that have been through WhatsApp: WhatsApp compresses them and ruins them for good. Use a link from Google Photos, Drive or WeTransfer, or email them with “original size” selected. We'll take care of the rest (cropping, file size, format): a 4 MB photo becomes an 80 KB file with no visible difference.

When you do need a real photographer

If you're aiming at the top end of the market, if you have a tasting menu, if you're opening and need to get off to a good start: a half-day shoot costs between €300 and €600, and it shows. In that case, keep the phone photos for your day-to-day social media and use the professional ones for your main pages. We don't take commission from photographers: if we recommend one, it's because they do good work in your area.

If you'd like to see the effect of well-cropped photos on a real page, take a look at the restaurant demo and notice how they're cropped and put together.