If you’re anything like me, you’d rather be eating a slice of deliciously moist cake, topped with your favorite icing right about right now. When we can’t eat the delicious dessert, the next best thing is to admire beautiful photographs of it! Great cake photography can make customers crave your scrumptious icing-topped treats so much they will come into your bakery in order to satisfy their sweet tooth.
It is not difficult to learn how to become a photographer, so follow these five steps to ensure your cake photography has people on your bakery website drooling and ready to buy today!
Step 1- Don’t Eat the Cake!
Put the cake down! Back away slowly!
There will be plenty of time to eat later, but right now you need to photograph this masterpiece. You have a bakery website that needs pictures, and you need those pictures to bring in the customers, so you are going to have to control yourself.
Let’s move on to step 2!
Step 2- Proper Lighting is a Must!
Find a room in your studio, home, or bakery that gets a good amount of natural light, and set up your shoot there. This should be at a time when the light in the room is the brightest, and the light should be coming in from the side of your subject; not behind you or behind the cake. You may also find it helpful to use a bounce card to eliminate any shadows created by the natural light.
Step 3- Free Your Hands by Using a Tripod
Your hands will naturally shake and move when you are taking photographs. You can get pretty steady with practice, but using a tripod is still always recommended whenever possible.
Not only does a tripod help to steady the shot, but perhaps even more importantly it helps to free up your hands for other tasks. Photography is constant tinkering and adjusting until you find something that works, and a tripod allows you to concentrate on getting the shot you want, and keep the best angle once you’ve found it.
Step 4- Inject Some Style
There’s something about cake that seems so… stylish. It’s beautiful, it’s “done up”. Not only does it taste amazing, but it looks artistic, and that’s because it was indeed created by an artist!
Celebrate the artistry it took to create the masterpiece you are photographing. If you are particularly proud of the smooth icing or intricate piping, show it! Cut a piece out and display it creatively. This will allow you to showcase not only the beauty of your entire creation, but the viewer will also see a delicious piece of moist cake sitting on a plate, just the way it is served, ready to be eaten.
Always look for new ways to display your cake stylishly in order to entice your customers.
Step 5- Get the Perfect Angle
There is no one “perfect angle” for cake photography, because each cake has its own charm. Since you are photographing your own art, you will likely have an idea of what inspired you to make certain decisions to begin with, and those can carry over into your photography.
One cake might look best from a bird’s-eye view, while another will need a super duper closeup to show off your masterful piping. You may have spent a bunch of extra time making sure the fondant was perfect, so photograph it!
Now Go Get Photographing!
There’s no better time than now to begin taking those perfect shots that will bring in the customers. Just remember- no eating until the pictures are perfect!…
