Critiquing Your Food Photos (+ My Own)

Learn how easy it is critiquing your food photos and watch me critique mine and see what improvements I could have done to improve them.

Hi everyone, I’m back with a few of my old photos, which I’m not too happy about. In general, I like the look of them, but there’s a lot that could be improved. You can watch it right here below.

And if you know me, you know how I like talking about reading your images, which is also something I dive into with my Food To Frame students a lot more.

Knowing what mistakes you made in your photos is the ultimate key to success. If you never go back and review your old photos, you’re missing out on so much growth! Seriously, after reading these and watching the video, go over your photos and find a few you’re not happy about and try to pinpoint those areas where it’s lacking. Things that you could change to tell your food story much better or make your dish stand out.

The three key components of critiquing your food photos are:

1. Looking at what is the distraction in the photo

Think of distractions like procrastination. When you’re procrastinating, you’re trying to do everything else but your task, right? It’s very similar here. Distractions are everything that makes it difficult to see the main subject because you’re focusing on everything else. This could be a subject that’s too bold, it might be poor editing, or the light not being there.

If you pinpoint the distractions, you’re already halfway there!

2. Checking out the placement of your main subject and all the supporting elements

Placement is crucial in photography. When you’re reading your images, make sure to check whether the position of your elements makes sense. Both in terms of its position in relation to the frame and to the other elements in the photo.

3. Thinking of solutions

This might be the hardest one.

Okay, you know what’s wrong with your photo, but how do you know how to fix that?

It might take some trial and error, but in general, I’d start with the opposite.

Let’s say you realized your photo is too dark. The solution is obvious, right? Go with the opposite and make it lighter.

With some mistakes, it might be a bit tricky and the solution will not be so straightforward.

Let’s say your photo angle is wrong for that dish. How can you fix that? There aren’t just two possible angles to shoot from, so you actually need to think about the dish and the angle at which it looks the best. In case you ever encounter that problem, I actually have a guide on camera angles ready.

In these cases, you need to dive deeper into critiquing your food photos and learn more about the subject. And what I also find useful is checking out photos of other photographers which might give you the solution.

Make sure to also read How To Read Food Photos To Improve Your Food Photography + A Case Study! to learn more in-depth photo reading techniques.