How To Take Better Food Photographs: Babiche Martens’ Pro Tips
Last month, Babiche Martens photographed every dish on the Iconic Auckland Eats Top 100 list. Kim Knight tagged along and found out how to keep beer frothy, cheese shiny and other secrets to taking a great food photo.
The last thing Babiche Martens expected to see down the camera lens was a hand, snaking into her carefully framed food shot.
“Umm . . . What are you doing?” the photographer asked the restaurant owner.
“Thirty per cent more engagement on Instagram with a human element,” he proclaimed.
Later, he pulled out his phone and turned on the torch. The scene, he thought, looked a little underlit.
Martens recalls the incident with a broad grin and a shrug of her Karen Walker-clad shoulders. She shot her first food editorial in 2004. Today, everybody is a food photographer.
Meet the professional at an Avondale cafe.
Martens uses natural light whenever possible. She’s curbside at the Burnt Butter Diner, positioning cutlery on a table the colour of a free range egg yolk, awaiting house-made crumpets with smoked fish, labneh and a soft-poached egg.
“Does the dish have microherbs?” she asks. “I’m mindful they might die in the sun.”
Martens work has graced hundreds of Viva covers, fashion spreads and restaurant reviews but today she’s on contract to Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, documenting dishes for the sixth annual Iconic Auckland Eats Top 100 list.
I’ve come along for the ride, grilling the expert for her top food photography tips.
Actually, Martens confesses, she rarely whips out her phone in a restaurant. “I’m Gen X. It’s too embarrassing.”
It is, apparently, not embarrassing to set up a tripod and light reflectors 2m from an arterial road choked with morning commuters and the occasional passing fire truck?
“That’s just the job!”
At art school, Martens studied painting.
“Composition, composition, composition.”
She’s thinking about the entire frame, top to bottom, and the “negative” or empty space that is just as crucial as the main subject.
What does she like about photographing food?
“It doesn’t talk back. It behaves.”
Seriously: “Everybody loves food. It’s really interesting, beautiful and colourful. When a chef has plated something well, it makes your heart sing.
“My job is to get the composition right, the angle of the food right, to make it look moreish and inviting. That’s my big responsibility – to make you want to eat it.”
It’s 10.09am and we’re downtown at Bossi. The kitchen is portioning prawns and blue cheese, there’s a freshly ironed white collared shirt balanced on the end of a wine bottle, and front of house is wheeling miniature hedgerows to the entranceway. Martens has commandeered a corner of the restaurant’s impressive marble counter.
“This is quite a big guy,” she says, contemplating the fettucine alla ruota - a sculptural tangle of pasta that’s been tossed in a wheel of parmigiano reggiano and laced with truffle oil. “We’re Italian,” replies restaurant owner Jenna Carter. “We’re feeders!”
Martens crumples a napkin and repositions a salad. The large white serving bowl is a challenge and she wants background colour and depth.
Cheese is, she says, among the hardest foods to photograph.
“Especially a cheese toastie. If he’s chunky, it’s good – you can stack them. But if it’s a flat toastie on a paper plate, there’s not much happening there. I might try to bring in some other elements like hands or architecture. Maybe I’ll go in really close . . . but the cheese can ‘set’ and you have to be careful you don’t show that.”
Across the road, at Aroy Thai, she likes the look of an interior brick wall (once she’s rearranged the pot plants - she has also been known to tape things to walls). This will be an action shot. Three-two-one-go! The restaurant manager pours milk into a lemony iced tea and I shower chilli flakes onto the iconic pad thai.
Again. Again. The kitchen is concerned – too much chilli. They whip up a fresh bowl of noodles and Martens shifts a lemon wedge so she can see its gleaming flesh. It’s a calculated risk.
“I might move the cutlery or arrange something in the background, but I don’t usually mess with the food. Once you’ve touched it, it doesn’t go back.”
She rarely photographs direct overhead views.
“It’s the Instagram default but it’s not my favourite angle, unless your food’s really flat – like a ceviche, or a carpaccio or sometimes even a soup. Chefs will often want me to shoot like that, but then I’ll do a three-quarter angle and they’ll go, ‘oh, that looks way better . . .’ We’re so conditioned to that bird’s eye view.”
From pasta to pad thai to pizza. Romani Cafe is just around the corner and a classic of its genre. Red-and-white checked tables, ropes of faux garlic and – surprise – a bona fide Auckland Instagram influencer carefully enjoying a spaghetti (her T-shirt is white). She’s a regular. Those events with teeny tiny canapes? This place is her lifesaver.
Martens has turned off the overhead lights and is working with the owner’s daughter at a window seat. The owner, meanwhile, is offering multiple pizzas, a salad and a tiramisu.
I ask Martens the inevitable.
“Everyone wants to know that! Yes, most of the time I am invited to try the food.
“More often than not, I will decline to eat it on the spot . . . it feels a bit unprofessional. I will sometimes take it away, because you can see the disappointment on their faces . . . it’s a perk of the job, but it’s not my job. I’m not there to eat the food.”
The Top 100 Auckland Iconic Eats have been determined by a panel of judges who, this year, sifted through 2400 public nominations. Sample winners: “16 Tun’s buffalo chicken wings are made for sharing. Sticky fingers, big laughs, and ‘just one more’ energy. Bold flavour, great heat, and even better with an ice-cold beer as the chat rolls on.”
At the Wynyard Quarter freehouse brewpub, the owner pours a lager and its amber glow reflects off the copper wall where Martens has set up a plate of glossy, rosemary-flecked chicken. She’s working fast. As the chicken cools, its sheen will lessen. Brown food is almost as challenging as cheese.
“You get a steak or a beef cheek, and that’s when I get the comment – can you throw a bit more light in there? And yeah, I can, but it’s brown. There’s not that much more I can do. I try and play a bit with reflections and highlights to create depth.”
Advice for the average punter trying to phone snap a ribeye?
“A mirror from your handbag?”
I write this down and Martens is aghast. “You know I’m joking, right?” I’d reply, but my mouth is unprofessionally full of buffalo chicken wings.
At 2.45pm we hit Milenta. Viva reviewer Jesse Mulligan once called this Victoria Park restaurant “my number one place to spend a balmy Auckland evening”. They grill on open flames and when the roof is back, the decor is pohutukawa tree au naturel.
Right now, it’s closed for a private function. Martens is working outside on an uneven courtyard. A glass of beer slides towards disaster and restaurant staff tear up cardboard to wedge under the table legs – they’re about to deliver an entire kilogram of bone-in ribeye with smoked bone marrow and fresh chimichurri.
Martens forages for greenery, holding it slightly in front of her camera with one hand, firing off shots with the remote control she holds in the other. The beer is going flat. She plunges a knife into the glass and whirls up a tornado of bubbles and foam. Done!
Is she getting tired? At Gemmayze Street a fire alarm in St Kevin’s Arcade threatens to derail her tight schedule. “I’ll lock up and you can leave your gear here,” says chef and owner Samir Allen. She leaves her tripod but grabs her camera. Just in case.
Would anyone notice if the restaurant window was not polished to within an inch of its life? If someone missed a spot as they swept the floor? It’s a treat witnessing a restaurant gear up for service. There’s music in the kitchen and pide on the counter and golden hour light on the officially iconic fetteh with a fried eggplant twist but Martens has one more stop before she can get home to her children.
“Black chopsticks or white chopsticks?” She likes the colour of the wall and the architectural sweep of the back of a chair.
Her eighth shoot of the day and Uncle Man’s nasi goreng is getting just as much respect as a $144 prime rib.
Five tips for better food photography – Babiche Martens
1. Avoid artificial lighting. Use natural light wherever possible.
2. High food usually looks best towards the back of the shot.
3. Add condiments, drinks and tableware to tell a story that makes sense.
4. Bird’s eye views tend to be the Instagrammer’s default but three-quarter or close-in shots often look more appetising.
5. Hot food left to go cold can lose its gloss, shine and flavour. Don’t focus so much on the photograph that you forget to respect your dinner.
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