I’ve got tomatoes coming out of my ears! I love this time of year, and there’s something about a big harvest of foods that makes me want to take out my camera. Here are some easy tips to make the food from your garden look great in camera.

Five Easy Steps

1. Give your veggies a sprinkle. If you don’t have a spray bottle, a sprinkler head works great. I sprayed these with the aerate setting on my sprinkler head for a fine mist that clung to the dry tomatoes.
2. Think about what your container. Baskets, colanders, decorative bowls all look great. A low, flat basket or a wooden bowl will give a more rustic look, while a stainless or white colander will give you a more graphic look.
3. Put your best stuff on top. I put smaller tomatoes without stems on the bottom, and placed the prettier ones with fresh stems on top.
4. Think about framing. I took about 10 different shots of this overhead set-up. The first shots centered the tomatoes in the frame but they didn’t look very interesting (see the left picture below), so I panned over to use the stool and grass as part of the picture. I also turned the colander so the handle was included in the frame, which added another interesting shape. The result is a much more interesting composition.
5. Add some fill. The simple addition of a large piece of white foam core can make all the difference to your shots. For the shots above, I placed a piece of foam core in front of me and then leaned over the top of it to shoot down on the tomatoes. For the shots below, you can see the difference between the shot with and without the use of a foam core bounce. The reflections on the shot without the bounce card are distracting. You can see my blue pants under the rim and the colander doesn’t sparkle. The foam core version makes the colander look clean and crisp, highlighting the redness of the tomatoes.

The Result

The Set-Up Shot

Here’s my set-up shot. What a difference the right lens and angle makes!

There’s a lot of basil and thyme growing in my garden, so I thinking about ways to shoot those so they look beautiful and abundant. I’m hoping for a good crop of bell peppers as well.

What are some of your tips for shooting beautiful pictures of vegetables?