Put the focus on flavour

Good food deserves a good shot. Three stylists update their bag of tricks to ace food photography

- Urvee Modwel

With food photos in ads and videos, some secrets are already out. What looks like ice-cream is often raw dough (so it doesn't melt under hot lights). Cereal bowls are filled with glue, not milk, so the cornflakes stay crisp. Shaving cream is substituted for whipped cream, the maple syrup on those pancakes is actually petrol. With new items on menus comes a new bag of tricks. Three food photographers and stylists: Goa-based Aishwarya Rivonker, Gurgaon-based Abhishek Khanna and Chennai-based Ashwin Vijayaraghavan, offer lessons on making real food pop on the 'gram.

Full steam ahead.

Korean pullapart bread, dim sum and sushi are each challenging in their own way. Adding drama helps. Photograph the bread when it's fresh from the oven, or include the fingers that are tearing it open, recommends Rivonker. No steam for dim sum? No problem. "Stylists create artificial steam either by re-heating the steamer, using dry ice, or even with incense sticks."

Just dough it.