How to use your smartphone to take great restaurant shots

Jeanne Horak-Druiff aka Cooksister, no mean photographer herself, picks up some tips from top photographer Paul Winch-Furness at a recent Errasuriz wine pairing dinner at Pollen Street Social

Jeanne writes: "It's not often that I get invited to attend an event that seamlessly incorporates three of my passions - but this is exactly what happened when I was recently invited to attend a food and wine matching dinner at Jason Atherton's splendid Pollen Street Social.

Wines were to be provided by premium Chilean estate Errázuriz and renowned London food photographer Paul Winch-Furness would be on hand to give us smart phone food photography tips. How could I say no?

As encouragement to all those who only ever use their phone for food snaps Paul quipped: "When I go to photograph a restaurant, I take an initial snap with my phone just to see how the food looks - and then I spend the rest of the shoot trying to take one photo that looks as perfect with my big camera!".

Here are the highlights of what Paul had to say:

• People often ask "what is the best camera for photographing food?" The bottom line is that the best camera is the one you have on you when you need to snap that shot. For most of us, this is our phone camera - but it's worth investing in a good one if you're regularly going to use it to shoot food.

• One of the advantages of phone cameras in restaurants is that they are far less conspicuous than large cameras, enabling you to snap your food without annoying fellow-diners. Another advantage is their social-media connections - the reason why most people want to snap food photos is to share them with others, and while your phone is linked to social media networks, your camera probably isn't.

• As with any camera, TURN OFF YOUR FLASH!

• To prevent camera shake once your flash is off, you can make a "tripod" by holding your phone in both hands and resting your elbows on the table. Paul also showed us that you can rest a smartphone vertically in a (preferably empty!) wine glass in order to steady it before taking a picture.

• Although most camera phones have a macro (or close-up) function, more interesting shots are often obtained by panning out a little and including plates, cutlery, glasses and other bits and bobs that make a shot a little more interesting and give it context. (This gave me food for thought as it’s the opposite of what I normally do with my camera.)

• Make a virtue out of your smartphone's small size to take angles that you'd struggle to get on a larger camera - overhead shots can be really interesting as can table-level angles.

• Just like me, Paul is a huge fan of Instagram and spent some time explaining how easy this phone app is to use - and how much fun. When you take photos within the Instagram environment, the photo is only taken when you release the shutter button, which is another way to minimise camera shake.

• Being forced to crop your photos square for Instagram is also something to bear in mind when you compose a shot - will the main elements fit into a square? Paul made us laugh with his mention of "filter anxiety" - when you just can't hit that publish button in case the 300th filter you try is the best one ever!

• For those of us who don't want to get up close and personal with our camera phone settings (shutter speed, exposure, white balance, ISO etc.) Paul suggested that the best phone post-processing app is Snapseed whose user-friendly sliders allow you to adjust contrast, colour cast, brightness and a host of other settings to counteract low light before uploading the photo to your social network of choice.

To practise our smartphone photography, the restaurant provided three amuse-bouches: soft cooked Italian egg with tomato fondant, mushroom purée, potato foam and bacon powder served in an eggshell placed in a ceramic duck foot-shaped egg-cup (now that was a challenge to shoot!), venison terrine crostini and a spoonful of lobster, apple, fennel and avocado. More on how the wines worked with these and other dishes tomorrow. In the meantime I’m checking out Snapseed . . . "

See how Errazuriz wines paired with top chef Jason Atherton’s food.

DISCLOSURE: Jeanne attended this event as a guest of Errázuriz Estate and R&R Teamwork. Her photographs were taken on a Nokia Lumia 920.

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