Simple Holiday Backgrounds for Food and Product Photography

You don’t have to have a beautiful background to create a cozy holiday mood in food and product photos. A combination of the angle of your shot and your camera settings can take the simplest (often unattractive backdrops) and turn them into beautiful holiday-inspired photos.

In this video, I outline several photos and the simple sets used to create them. I hope it inspires ideas for photos you can style and photograph in your own space while eliminating the feeling that you don’t have the things you need to create the photos you envision.

Adding Plaid to Your Autumn Food and Product Photography

I love a nice, woodsy plaid shirt, especially in the months of October and November. And I love using plaid in my photos, but for my photography style, it’s not without its challenges. 

While it fits the rustic side of my photography it doesn’t quite fit the muted, neutral tones that I most often work with. It can grab a little too much attention, taking that from the intention and interpretation that I’ve set for the photo. 

I find the best way to manage it is to first identify where that plaid is going to come from in the photo, and then the role it will play in the full scene. Let me give you a few examples. 

The Plaid Napkin

Just like other prints, the boldness and brightness of a plaid napkin can pull your attention from the subject. The best course of action is to let it do that purposely. 

In the photo below, your eyes go to the Christmas-like plaid before they take in the oatmeal. By doing so, you immediately think - holiday season. Then your eyes take in the food subject and the mood becomes warm and comforting. 

Let plaid steal the attention from time to time. It can really set the mood.

Not comfortable with that? Just grab a corner of it in the frame of your shot.

The Plaid Blanket or Scarf

When photographing at a shallow depth of field, plaid can make moody, seasonal additions to a photo as the table cloth. It’s ever so slightly blurred allowing the food to stand out. It can also be fun to somehow color coordinate the plaid and your subject so that they work together. 

The slight golden-yellow of this pumpkin granola goes well with the blues and yellows of this scarf that I spread over my surface before styling and photographing. But I also love how the black and white contrast with the red apples.

The Plaid Shirt

A great way to add a touch of plaid is to put it on a person in the photo. Of course, here we have a young farmer holding her chicken and grapes being harvested, but you can just as easily get those sleeves in frame through holding a mug of coffee, bowl of soup, or basket of produce.

Three Questions to Ask Before Styling a Photo

Before you start arranging props and setting out foods and products, ask yourself these three questions. They’ll help the photo come together more easily and allow you to better create what you are envisioning in your head for the image.

What’s the first thing I want the the viewer to see?
Whether you are photographing a basket of fruit or just one piece, select the one piece and spot you want your viewer to see first. This is your hero. 

Where do I want their eyes to travel? 
Where will the eyes travel next? Right, left, down, up? This is the eye path. 

Will I shoot a tight or pulled-back photo?
Of course, it’s okay to photograph many different angles but always style to the one goal, the one image you want out of this shoot. 

Style your shot to these three answers and you’ll quickly climb out of that - I’m not sure where to start - feeling with a final image that reflects the goals you have for your photo.