For Samira Kazan—best known to her online followers as @AlphaFoodie—food art was an unexpectedly welcome addition to the equation.
Samira, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Oxford, began experimenting with creating beautiful dishes in her free time as a way to explore healthier eating. Since then, she’s taken and shared thousands of photos of her food art creations on her blog and Instagram. She’s also a Pixel 2 user, and has learned a few tips along the way about what works best for her food shots. Below are her top four, in her own words:
1. Document every delicious detail with Portrait Mode
From a single currant to the perfect drop of icing, Portrait Mode makes it possible to capture the finest details of your food concoctions. Try getting close to the subject—this amplifies the background blur effect to create a striking photo.
2. Use Slow Motion to capture mouthwatering videos
Slow Motion shoots a high number of frames per second and you can adjust which parts of the videos to slow down, so a lot less editing is required. I love shooting videos of pouring drinks or chopping fruit—between the high sound quality and slow motion, I can capture enticing food envy footage for Instagram!
3. Shoot in all kinds of lighting
If you’re taking photos outdoors on a sunny day, shoot in the shade so that the photo color is more saturated and less overexposed. In overall low-light settings, the wider aperture can allow more light into the camera, making getting a clear photo a breeze. You often don’t even need to use flash at night.
4. Easily rediscover your best shots
It’s easy to capture amazing smartphone photos with one click, meaning you often have a lot of options to choose from. Pixel 2 has unlimited storage via Google Photos, which is a lifesaver for me as a food blogger. It’s easy for me to search Google Photos to find specific past photos—for example, if I’m looking for photos with bananas, I can find all of the photos I’ve taken that have bananas in it through a quick search.
