Viral Smartphone Photography & Video Techniques – Taking Great Food Photos On Your Smartphone | David Loftus (Jamie Oliver’s Food Photographer)
Sony and Jamie Oliver’s food photographer David Loftus, have joined ranks to offer some tips on how to capture the perfect Christmas dinner using the Sony Xperia XZ. A trend that is ever growing, food photography, will be an even hotter topic across social media this time of year, so Sony has teamed up with renowned food photographer David Loftus to give his top tips on showing off your festive gastronomical delights using your smartphone.
We have published a video below featuring David Loftus using the Xperia XZ to capture food. Enjoy!
Follow David’s tips and you’ll be picture perfect in time for serving and capturing your festive dinner.
1. Take the pictures whilst the food is fresh to ensure the glossy tones and texture aren’t missed. This means speed is of the essence. With Xperia XZ simply hit the dedicated camera button to take an instant picture in a fraction of a second, not only will it ensure the picture is taken quickly, the Superior Auto mode recognises your subject matter and selects the dedicated Gourmet Mode to pick the best settings
2. Lighting it key to ensure the vibrancy of your food is brought to life. Don’t be afraid to move your food and take it to a window. Even if a section of your food is in slight darkness, with the added light from the window it will make the dish stand out
3. If you’re in a restaurant with dim-lighting or candle light try not to use the flash. It tinges the colours and doesn’t show off the reality of the food and the setting. Xperia XZ will recognise the low-light situation and adjusts the all the settings making sure the colours are just right. If you need a bit of extra light and it’s dark outside, try using the menu to bounce light off a candle back into the picture frame.
4. When capturing your chef skills you want to make sure you include movement. Move clutter out of the way and simply touch the screen on the food element you want in focus and the advanced Predictive Hybrid Autofocus will make sure your cake making is always free from blur
To accompany the great features within the Superior Auto mode, Xperia XZ has a fantastic range of manual options perfect for detailed photography. For those looking to improve their skills David Loftus says, “Capturing and sharing the perfect image of your homemade efforts or even food you’re proud to be served in a restaurant is a satisfying feeling, declutter your table so your picture focuses on your food, get the lighting right or adjust your ISO settings and go from there. Play around and have fun with the set-ups, manual focus can help set the scene in a busy restaurant by making the foreground your focus and everything behind a backdrop. But if you’re just in a rush, the beauty of smartphone photography is the speed, take a picture instantly using the Superior Auto mode on Xperia XZ and you’ve got a shareable shot instantly. Above all else though, practice makes perfect.”
About David Loftus
Award-winning, influential and internationally acclaimed, David Loftus’ photographs for the books of Jamie Oliver, Rachel Khoo, Gennaro Contaldo, Elizabeth David and April Bloomfield have brought food to life for millions of people. For over 20 years, David has photographed over 100 books including all but one of Jamie Oliver’s international best-sellers. He has also directed television commercials including one of the most successful food ads of all time, for UK supermarket Sainsbury’s. He works with a range of advertising clients such as American Express, Dove, Fortnum & Mason, Nespresso, Pizza Express and Philips, to name a few.
His work with Jamie Oliver alone has resulted in international book sales in excess of 30 million copies. There can be few people with any interest in food who have not at some time looked hungrily at David’s pictures of Jamie’s food and not been immediately inspired to cook.
Donating = Loving = TheAppWhisperer.com
TheAppWhisperer has always had a dual mission: to promote the most talented mobile artists of the day and to support ambitious, inquisitive viewers the world over. As the years passTheAppWhisperer has gained readers and viewers and found new venues for that exchange.
All this work thrives with the support of our community.
Please consider making a donation to TheAppWhisperer as this New Year commences because your support helps protect our independence and it means we can keep delivering the promotion of mobile artists that’s open for everyone around the world. Every contribution, however big or small, is so valuable for our future.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
