Minimalist Food Photography — Why I Keep Things Simple

I have always had a fairly simple approach to food photography: if something does not need to be in the photograph, I would rather take it out.

That does not mean every image needs a white plate, a plain background and half the frame left empty. Minimalism can become a style in itself very quickly, and then you are simply replacing one set of clichés with another.

For me, it is more about deciding what the photograph is actually about, and not getting in its way.

Having spent most of my working life in professional kitchens before moving into photography, I tend to look at food first. The garnish, the texture, the way something has been cooked, where the eye naturally goes on the plate. Props, backgrounds and everything else come afterwards.

Less does not mean empty

A minimalist photograph still needs to have some life in it.

If I am photographing a piece of meat, I want to see the crust, the fat, the fibres and whatever makes that particular piece interesting. If it is pastry, texture matters. If it is a sauce, the way it moves across the plate may be more important than anything I could put next to it.

Sometimes one plate and a fork are enough. Sometimes the photograph needs ingredients, linen, hands, glasses or part of the restaurant around it.

The point is not to use fewer things simply because fewer things look sophisticated.

The point is to use what is necessary.

The food still has to look like food

This sounds obvious, but it is surprisingly easy to lose sight of.

A photograph can be beautifully composed, perfectly lit and completely useless if the dish no longer looks like something somebody wants to eat.

I am not particularly interested in making food look impossibly perfect. A roast potato can have a broken edge. A sauce does not need to describe a mathematically perfect curve. Crumbs are sometimes exactly where they should be.

There is a difference between removing distractions and removing character.

I would rather keep the latter.

Backgrounds and props

I have a fairly substantial collection of backgrounds, ceramics, linens, cutlery and various objects accumulated over the years. I also make some of my own surfaces and small sets.

Having all of that available does not mean I need to use it.

The background has one job: help the subject.

Sometimes that means something dark and heavily textured. Sometimes pale and almost invisible. The same applies to props. One good object in the right place usually does more than six objects trying to tell the viewer where to look.

This is particularly important in commercial photography because the photograph has a job to do afterwards.

A restaurant may need space for menu text. A producer may need an image that crops several ways for a website and social media. An agency may need room for copy. Packaging and advertising bring their own restrictions.

Negative space is therefore not necessarily an aesthetic decision. Quite often it is simply useful.

Lighting without making a performance of it

I tend to keep lighting relatively straightforward as well.

That does not mean the lighting itself is always simple. Sometimes quite a lot is happening outside the frame to make what is inside it look uncomplicated.

What matters to me is that the light makes sense for the subject.

I want enough shape to show texture, enough control to direct attention, and enough restraint that the first thing you notice is not how the photograph was lit.

The same applies to editing. I will work on colour, contrast, texture and all the usual things, but I do not want the finished photograph to look as though the food has been rebuilt afterwards.

Minimalism has to suit the brief

I would not photograph every client this way.

A busy restaurant table full of dishes can be exactly the right image. So can a kitchen during service, a chef plating at the pass or a bar full of people and glasses.

Commercial photography is not about forcing every client into my preferred aesthetic.

My job is to understand what needs to be shown, where the photographs will be used and who they need to speak to.

But when the brief gives me the opportunity to simplify, I normally take it.

Removing unnecessary elements gives the important ones more room. It can make colour stronger, texture more obvious and the identity of the food clearer.

And perhaps because I spent so long working with food before photographing it professionally, I am quite comfortable letting it do most of the work.

Keeping the photograph useful

Ultimately, I am not creating images to sit on a gallery wall.

Most of my photographs end up on restaurant websites, menus, social media, packaging, advertising, PR or editorial pages. They need to work in those places.

That practical side influences how I compose almost everything.

I will think about crops, orientation, text space, sequences of images and how a photograph will sit next to the rest of a client's library. A strong image is useful. A strong image that cannot be used anywhere is considerably less useful.

So when I talk about minimalist food photography, I am not really talking about a set of rules.

I am talking about removing what is unnecessary, keeping what gives the food character, and making an image that does its job without shouting about how it was made.

Most of the time, that is enough.