10 Essential Food Styling Tips to Make Your Dishes Photo-Ready

Want to master food styling for photography? Get expert tips from Food Stylist Award winner Costas Millas and make your dishes irresistible on camera

In the world of food photography, food styling isn’t just an enhancement - it’s a necessity. The way ingredients are arranged, how textures are layered and the visual cues of freshness or indulgence all tell a story before a single bite is taken. That’s why the World Food Photography Awards celebrate the vision, precision and creativity of food stylists every year in the Hotel Art Group Food Stylist Award category.

One such talent is Costas Millas, a multiple finalist whose work has consistently wowed our panel. Last year, he won the Hotel Art Group Food Stylist Award with a stunning portfolio of pasta dishes that were as artistic as they were appetising. In this exclusive blog, Costas shares his top tips for food styling - perfect for photographers, content creators and stylists who want to make their dishes camera-ready.

Words and Images by Costas Millas

Food Styling is such a vast area to discuss as there are naturally a huge number of cuisines and types of food that could all be written about in detail. Essentially, Food Styling is the art of preparing and making food look camera ready and as delicious as possible to stand out wherever it is seen. There are however some key pointers that can help get you started in Food Styling either for your own images or when collaborating with another photographer.

With Food, Unfortunately Looks Matter!
Unless the theme is to celebrate the quirky and the homegrown, generally in food styling, sourcing the most beautiful and freshest ingredients is key. It is much easier to do this in person. Save online shopping for home convenience but not for prepping for a food styling project!
Be Prepared!
When styling for a food photography shoot, being as prepared as you can is so important to ensure the food can look its absolute best when being captured and be on set for the least amount of time. If styling a salad for example, keep leaves and herbs in bowls of cold water to keep them crisp and fresh. Have all your key ingredients ready laid out , so you have everything to hand to style the food on set in one go.
Dress To Impress
Dress salads, add a sauce, or dust icing sugar just before a shot is going to be taken on set, to allow the image to show the texture and consistency perfectly. Allow it to help tell the story of the dish and to avoid limp and lacklustre leaves or unappetising textures!
Cooking For a Photo Is Different to Cooking at Home
Where a recipe for making a comforting a meal at home might call for all the ingredients to be cooked together as a one pot wonder, that is rarely, if ever the case for a dish going to be photographed. We want the photo to allow the viewer to understand the dish and be inspired to make it or buy it.

A chicken curry for example, might have so many key ingredients, the meat, vegetables, fresh herbs etc and it is best to prepare them separately and bring together right at the end to tell the story of what is in the dish. Try poaching the chicken to keep it plump and juicy, steaming or roasting the vegetables to keep their colour and vibrancy, cooking the sauce on its own so it can be used to coat everything, bringing all the component parts together and adding the fresh herbs right at the end before capture.
Fresher For Longer
When styling fresh produce, adding a spritz of water to create droplets gives the idea of just-washed freshness. But water runs and will dry very quickly under hot lights! Try a 50/50 mix of water and glycerine which is easily available online. The glycerine will allow for much more pronounced droplets that will stay put for a long time giving you a fresher look for longer.
Serve A Story, Not Your Dinner!
When plating a dish for the camera, always forget about the compartmentalised way we serve food on our plates for dinner! For editorial food styling in magazines and cookbooks, there needs to be more of story. The ingredients should combine, to highlight the flavours coming together and allow the viewer to get as close to tasting the dish as they can.

Let’s imagine a pasta dish. At home the sauce would be mixed with the pasta, dredged with parmesan and devoured! But to style it, we need to not only make the pasta look beautiful (often you need to get your hands in!) show the ingredients combined with the sauce, for example seafood or a ragu, be careful about how much cheese covers the final dish and think about adding extra hero ingredients to the top and fresh touches like a scattering of fresh basil leaves to accent the flavour notes or freshly cracked black pepper to add extra texture. It is all about layering and combining the ingredients to tell the story of the dish.
It’s All in the Details
On commercial shoots, details are important as often the food is the absolute hero, with little extra in the frame, so it needs to look perfect. Simple tools like tweezers, cotton buds, fine paint brushes, a spray nozzle bottle, syringes, little bottles of vegetable oil and water mixed with glycerine (as mentioned above) are all great to start a kit and allow for minute detail touch ups and refinements that will make the difference.
Make It & Fake It!
Whilst having a love and skill for cooking and baking is naturally important as a food stylist, it’s not essential to be formally trained but to practice and work with lots of food types to get as comfortable as possible making them look great. And whilst doing so, it is fine to buy ready-made ingredients. For example, try using some store-bought meringue nests to style some mini pavlovas or some plain cupcakes to practice frosting on. Or buy a ready-made pizza bases and style your own as I did in the image below. A lot of brands will sell these products and want a stylist to help make them look amazing, so it doesn’t always need to be from scratch.
Consider Colour
Colour plays a huge part in food styling and in food photography in general. It can help evoke the feeling of the food we want to showcase and allow the viewer to see themselves in the picture.

Work closely with your props and backdrops, whether you are choosing them yourself or working with another stylist to ensure the food stands out. For example, the cold, winter blues of the Ramen image below contrast with the warm, comforting colours of the dish to give a cosy, hearty mood.

In a multi-coloured scene consider how your plates and layering of the ingredients can frame your food, so the food is not overpowered by the props. Note the white rice in the curry image below and how that adds a frame within the plate for the curry itself to stand out.

Also consider colour to add impact to your styling. For example, a rich green salad would pop on a warm pink plate, or a yellow pasta would stand out on something blue. And think about layering colour for contrast. For example, the orange soup below is accented with a drizzle of white cream, some seeds for texture and some fresh green garnishes which tie everything together with the background and props.
Play With Your Food!
One thing I love to do is pick a food subject and think about how I can style and capture it in new and innovative ways to create a striking image or series. So, make sure you play with your food and think outside the box and beyond the plate! Try choosing a few ingredients next time you go food shopping or a particular dish you’re inspired to make and set yourself a challenge to style them in several different ways.

Curious to see how the world’s top food stylists do it? Check out our gallery of previous finalists of the Hotel Art Group Food Stylist Award category. Perhaps your images will be up there next year?