Today food photographer Jonathan Pollack shares some wonderful food photography tips (and some positively mouth watering photos).

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As photographers, we have the ability to control our viewer’s eye through several creative techniques at our disposal. It’s not good enough just to say, use good composition.

Good composition is made of several element working in unison. Focus is certainly important, actually it’s the use of use of depth of field rather than the actual subject your focusing on. Another is the use of Light within the photo to direct the viewers eye. Our eye usually go to the brightest object within the photo. By making your intended subject the brightest object in the photo, your view will be directed there. Finally there is the uses of Leading Lines to guide your viewer eye through the photo.

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The good old ‘rule of thirds‘ makes a lot of sense in many types of photography (if you don’t know what the rule of thirds is see out tutorial on it).

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What makes a good portrait?

Photographing people is the most common and, in many ways, the most challenging task for photographers. We all know a good picture when we see one but what is it that makes the good ones stand out? Is it because it is an especially good likeness? A photograph will always be a true likeness, even when we think it isn’t. How many times have you heard someone say “that doesn’t look like me/you at all”? How can that be when we are using a camera?

The problem is that we are used to seeing people moving around, at least their faces, and in some kind of context, doing something or talking to us. We very rarely see people completely motionless, except perhaps when they are asleep, so a single frozen moment in time can seem totally unrepresentative, it can, only too easily, capture a moment when they are in a pose that we have never noticed before.

So what makes a good portrait of someone is that it should say something about that person that we feel is true. A good portrait sums up the character of the person or at least an aspect of their character. You don’t know the girl on the left but, looking at her photo, you have made some judgements about her and you have made some decisions about her character.

The pose, viewpoint, direction and quality of lighting, choice of lens, choice of background and the cropping of a picture can all contribute to the mood of the photograph and therefore what you are saying about that person.

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Placing the elements of your picture within the frame and deciding what to leave out.

In our modern world of automatic cameras, which focus for us and adjust the exposure in an ever more perfect way (most of the time), the biggest difference between a good photograph and a mediocre one is the compositon.

In every photograph we take, we can decide where the boundaries of that photo will be, called the cropping. We can also choose the viewpoint. If we are taking pictures of people or movable objects then, often, we also have the opportunity to arrange them into the shapes we want.
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Selecting your viewpoint, the position from which you photograph the subject, is a very important part of composition and one that some people pay very little attention to. When taking a photo of a group of friends, how often do you move around the group looking for the best angle?

The first, most obvious difference between one viewpoint and another is the background. If you are photographing a subject that cannot easily be moved, the only way to change what is in the background is to choose a different viewpoint.
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What to leave out, what to put in and where to put it.

Tip – One of the easiest ways to improve your photography is with careful attention to framing. Look into the corners of the viewfinder to see what is there. Do you need all that background? Can you get closer to your subject or zoom in? Would the picture look better as an upright or landscape?
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