Food photography, while being a specialized type of still life art form, has already formed its own following. From amateurs taking pictures of what they had for lunch to award-winning photographers celebrating a collection of cultures, food photography has us engaged.

The art of food photography is a precise one as well, requiring understanding of spacing, distance, color, and focus. Today we’ll take a look at tips and tricks to make your food appear to be the best that money can buy.

Food Photography Techniques

1. Equipment

Professional photographers use expensive digital backs on equally expensive cameras, but the barrier for entry isn’t that high. All you’ll need is a DSLR or an advanced point-and-shoot that will let you make adjustments to your shots.

Image Source: Photography Icons via Shutterstock.

The most important characteristic of your camera is the ability to tweak is settings, instead of relying on automatic modes. For DSLRs, interchangeable lenses are a must for taking photographs of different subjects. Tripods are also essential, to keep your shots steady.

Optional tools include lamp stands for external lighting, as well as lens shades to control the light. Don’t forget the accessories to complement your food, like bowls, napkins, silverware, and flowers.

2. Camera Settings

We touched upon this in the last section, but for food photography it’s essential that your camera has the ability to manually change the settings. It’s the only way you can focus on the minute details of the food, and highlight the features that you want to emphasize.

Image Source: Photography Icons via Shutterstock.

Take note of your aperture, which controls how much light will hit your sensor. A low aperture setting will let in more light, generally resulting in brighter photographs. Its partner, shutter speed, controls how long the shutter is open. You usually adjust both these settings in conjunction to compensate for changes in one setting with the other.

The third important setting is ISO, which controls your camera’s sensitivity to light. A higher ISO is used in darker scenes, but will result in a grainier photograph.

3. Composition

Having the right equipment and understanding the camera settings is nothing if you don’t know how to compose your shot. Food photographs are usually crisp and well lit, bringing out the texture of the food. Your goal is to feed your readers through their eyes, making them want to reach out to the photo and nab the food.

Image Source: Photography Icons via Shutterstock.

When composing, remember that the food itself shouldn’t be the only thing in the shot. The bowl or plate that holds the food (or even a napkin or a spoon) frames the subject in such a way that the accessories emphasize its presence. Avoid blank spaces and create a sense of movement in the image—crumbs, flakes, all in a natural position.

4. Lighting

Natural lighting is always recommended for food shots. While your eyes (and brain) can adapt to any sort of light and reconcile what the food is supposed to look like, cameras aren’t at the same level and need all the help they can get.

Image Source: Photography Icons via Shutterstock.

Ample light source is one of the most critical elements of food photography—find your light source and compose around it. Do you use the light shafts streaming through the window or the increased light available coming in the doorway? Lighting brings out the natural color of the food, and this is very important in keeping your subjects appetizing and appealing.

5. Angle

Like in any mode of photography, angle is critical in bringing out the best in your subjects. This is particularly important in food photography, because the shots are so close up. Some foods are best shot from above, like grains and cereal (with bits outside the bowl to create dynamism). Others, meanwhile, are best shot from an angle, such as cakes with layers.

Angle comes after composition—you don’t want to be thinking about the silverware and the napkins when the food is ready to be shot.

6. Focus

Focus changes the primary elements of your shot. You wouldn’t want the fork to be the subject that is highlighted in your picture of a cake, after all.

Image Source: Photography Icons via Shutterstock.

Focus is a result of the different settings and techniques working together, and is also influenced by the camera’s distance to the subject. However, if your camera’s autofocus isn’t cutting it, you can also manually adjust this setting to focus on the subject you want. How deep or short will the depth of field be? Because food photography relies so much on macro, having an understanding of focus is important.

Of course, these tips all lead up to the shot itself. If you want to do more with the photo, you can always edit them after the fact. But if your photo isn’t good in the first place, there won’t be anything to touch up.

Food Photography Inspiration

Here are some amazing examples of food photography for your inspiration:

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How have these techniques helped your food photography? Are there other tips you use in creating that perfect shot of food? Let us know in the comments below!

It is that time of the week again, a chance for you to sit back and enjoy some of our favorite web and mobile designs from this past week. And of course, don’t forget to click the ‘Change Viewport’ button to explore each site in detail.

Roynel.co

Roynel.co →

WNDRMNT (Responsive)

WNDRMNT →Change Viewport

ZURB (Responsive)

ZURB →Change Viewport

Hyperkit (Responsive)

Hyperkit →Change Viewport

Profission

Profission →

#Music.Twitter (Responsive)

#Music.Twitter →Change Viewport

Yahoo! Weather (iOS App)

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Hike (iOS, Android & Windows Mobile App)

Hike →

Sometimes, you may get a client who wants you to do something that you’re just not comfortable with. We all want to please our clients, but how do you please a client who, say, really wants you to directly copy another company’s logo design or sales copy? Or who wants you to do something malicious to a competitor’s online reputation, Google ranking, et cetera?

Image Source: Shoulder Devil and Angel via Shutterstock

It doesn’t matter what the unethical thing is or your reason for not wanting to do it – it’s always a pain to deal with and handle in a professional and courteous manner. Luckily, there is a reliable process many freelancers can use to stop these types of clients from getting out of control, and often prevent ethical issues from coming up in the first place.

Opting Out

First, it’s important to remember that the best option in situations like these is to simply have more options and avoid these types of projects altogether. Clients who are shady are almost always more trouble than they’re worth, and if the unethical activity can be traced back to you in any way, you’ll find yourself with more trouble on your hands than you ever wanted.

Image Source: Modern David vs Goliath via Shutterstock

If you have other potential clients you can work with, you can simply fire these bad apples and send them (politely) on their way things start to get moldy. But how do you determine who’s on the level before you take on a project?

Spotting The Red Flags

Many times, you can use your natural intuition to determine whether or not a client will present ethical dilemmas before you begin working with them. It can be as simple as a “vibe” – just a weird feeling you get when talking to them, or the dodgy way in which they answer your questions. I’ve turned down work from clients before who just had an oddness about them that I couldn’t explain. I didn’t know why they made me uncomfortable; simply that they did and I wanted nothing to do with their project. In more than one case, I found out later that they were, in fact, up to no good. Freelancer: 1, disaster: 0.

Image Source: Hacker via Shutterstock

Other times, it can be the type of work a client asks you to do that sets off the alarm bells. Reputation management, radical brand redesigns, or conflict de-escalation with third parties like angry customers or threatening competitors, while not unethical by themselves, can be signs that your client might want to handle these problems in ways that aren’t entirely above board.

Use your judgement and listen to your gut when deciding which projects to take on. It might seem silly to turn away a client just from a feeling, but it can save you potentially years of headaches and legal problems. Plus, word to the wise: it’s often these kinds of clients who provide the biggest issues when it comes to payment as well.

Remember You’re The Expert

Sometimes, a request for something unethical can truly come out of nowhere. Everything is going fine, then suddenly your client springs a rotten request on you that you’re not sure how to handle. In these situations, it’s likely that your client is less likely to be a crook, and more likely to simply be misguided on the direction they should be taking with the project. They see what’s working for their competitors, and they decide it’s not worth tampering with what’s clearly a winning formula. In other words, they have the right general idea, but need some help executing it in an original way.

Image Source: Wearing Lab Coat via Shutterstock

It’s important to remind these types of clients – and yourself – that you were hired to apply your professional expertise to solve their business problems. Don’t be afraid to challenge your client’s assumptions as to what will be truly effective and why. Point them to results you’ve achieved in the past that will show them that there are many ways to approach the dilemma that won’t violate anyone else’s intellectual property rights. Don’t just send them a new round of comps or revisions – take the time to explain what works, what doesn’t, and what will help them avoid a lawsuit.

Saying ‘I Told You So’

Ah, yes. Gloating. It’s not just for schoolchildren anymore. If you’ve done everything you can to convince a client to do the right thing, and they still refuse to see reason, it’s essential to be able to release yourself from liability if and when something goes horribly wrong. Here’s where having a record of all communication comes in handy. Even if most of your exchange with the client happens in person and over the phone, always make transcribed copies of your recommendations, requests, and warnings, and ask the client to sign off or verify them via email.

Image Source: Breaking Free via Shutterstock

Keep records of all the advice you provide and send a copy to your client, even if they end up completely ignoring you. That way, when their idea fails miserably, you can whip out your notes and show them that you warned them. Besides being satisfying to get a little revenge on a stubborn client, it makes it impossible for the client to hold you responsible for their poor behavior. Hopefully, this will convince them that it’s always better to do things the right way rather than treading on someone else’s rights, but if not, at least you can walk away with a clean conscience and warn other freelancers you know to avoid that client at all costs.

What Do You Think?

Have you ever dealt with an unethical request from a client? What strategies worked for you when dealing with the outcome? Comment and let us know!

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The design techniques for administration panels are not as openly shared as website layouts. This is because you do not always find examples of admin designs open on the web. To gain access you would need a user/password combo, so designers are often left building with trends found in other examples. But the dashboard interface has grown very quickly as a popular layout style for administrators.

In this article I want to look into various styles and ideas for creating administration dashboard pages. These are typical website layouts built using HTML5/CSS3/JS. Except users will not ever see these designs because the admin CP is only needed for website settings, templates, or updating posts/pages. But there are still lots of exceptional designs for admin dashboards and I hope to showcase a number of trends in this article.

Tabbed Navigation

Utilizing tab buttons for page navigation has been a common trend for years. The reason it works so well in dashboard pages is because you often need to organize a lot of similar tools under the same umbrella. Using both horizontal and vertical tab menus can offer related sub-menu positions for including tons of links.

Any form of tabbed link design can work for a navbar. You do not need to handle the typical rounded corners and button interface design. More often it helps to make very simple tabs which behave as links, also using background images for icon artwork. This helps users to determine which links go to which section of the administration panel. Tabbed designs also offer a very flashy interface, using big text and bold letters will help the links stand out among other text.

I can’t make the claim that every control panel navigation should be using tabs. If we look at WordPress’ dashboard it certainly looks more like blocks of list items compared to a tabbed navbar. And WordPress is an extremely popular CMS which goes to show any navigation can work. A good strategy is to plan out a sitemap of links and then follow those ideas to a core group of link items.

Toolbar Icons

I had briefly mentioned icons earlier but I think this design trend is important even outside of navigation. Icons are a picture symbolising the content of a link or some page information. Text requires more time for the brain to read and process what it all means, but pictures are clear and concise. I think icons should be included as interface elements on buttons, tables, headers, input fields, and really any potentially confusing areas on the page.

Modern designers have a much easier time building these interfaces because of the many freebie icon releases to be found online. There are so many collections built using various themes, techniques, and design styles, that you should have no problem locating a set for your admin interface. You can determine good icon placements by scanning the page for content which seems overbearing and might benefit from visual graphics.

Popover Hover Menus

There will not always be enough space on the page to include all the inputs and details you need. Sometimes a good way of handling this problem is to initially hide some features, and then display them later using a popup menu. This could be triggered on hover or by clicking a button/link on the page.

You may also include popover menus for hidden input fields related to some data on the page. Administrators are often busy editing pages or adding new content into the website. This requires a lot of work and patience to put everything together. Obviously a popup block may contain a lot of data – even including modal windows using a lightbox or shadowbox effect.

I really like the example above labeled Mango Admin. You can hover the messages link block and it’ll display some of the messages within the inbox. This trend could be expanded for new posts, drafts, user comments, and tons of other queue systems. Any typical CMS generally requires some content management to keep everything running smoothly. By reorganizing some of this content to appear hidden on the page, it can alleviate room for a more relaxed interface.

Content Display Styles

All the various administration panels do share one thing in common – their purpose is to display information. We may also use the word “content” which can include tables, lists, buttons, graphs, really anything. The entire layout is generally focused to encapsulate this content where is it easy to read and easy to edit.

I like the small icons you can see in the table which would appear to be quick access buttons. You may quickly add, edit, or delete content from within a row of the table. And the icons are colored so you will be able to tell from a distance what they do. Of course, this is just one simple example but trends like these are hard to find. Always keep thinking of new ideas or techniques which would make your administration powers easier and simplified.

It is notable that not all administration interfaces will have graphs and charts and statistics. Sometimes you will just be dealing with straight information. And even though this may seem boring, you have to think about how you will be interacting with all this data. Then you will be looking at the challenge from a user’s perception. No matter how many ideas you try out they are all worth it, because nobody has the perfect design UI and there are always new trends on the horizon.

Showcase Gallery

All of the trends listed in this article provide a nice starting point for designers. But I think you can learn a lot by studying other common examples for admin dashboards. I have put together a small collection of screenshot pages from Dribbble shots. I hope you will notice some of the trends I have listed, plus some fresh ideas to use in your own designs. And if you have questions or resources in relation to admin dashboards feel free to share with us in the discussion area.

Device Dashboard

Admin Tools

Admin Charts

Wood Control Panel

Responsive Dashboard

Datatable Content

Ultramarine Admin

Flyout Menu

Administration Panel

Minimalist Admin

Dashboard Charts

Sidebar Navigation

Dashboard Link Icons

Dark Admin Tabs

Dashboard Management

Flat Admin Design

A New Project

Data Tables Admin

Admin Panel Layout

Dashboard UI

Contacts Listing

A Web Service

Analytics Dashboard

Colorful Admin Dashboard

Analytics Traffic Charts

MyPage Dashboard

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