Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this episode:
In this episode, we sit down with Morgan Beasley, a Women’s Health Coach who’s mastered the art of using beautiful food photography and engaging captions to attract new clients and boost her online visibility.
Morgan walks us through her journey of developing a unique style, sharing her best food photography tips to help capture the perfect shot. From the importance of natural lighting and ideal angles to selecting the best props and backdrops, Morgan offers practical advice for both beginner and seasoned food photographers.
She’s big on consistency, practice, and personalizing your own process! Whether you’re taking flatlay shots or side views, Morgan’s food photography tips can uplevel your skills and make your dishes shine online!
Meet Morgan
Morgan Beasley is a women’s Integrative Health Coach who’s mission is to help you make peace with food, so you can have your cake and eat it too!
Why she became a women’s health coach:
“After working as a Mental Health Specialist for 2 years, I decided to dive deep into my love for nutrition and mental health by helping other women reach their health goals both on and off the plate.
Why she focused on Instagram:
I knew that in order to grow my business through social media and reach my ideal clients, I needed to upload good-quality content for them to see. For me, this meant choosing a few social media platforms to use to my advantage, which were Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Food and lifestyle pictures can show so much insight into your life and business, especially a health business, so why not get creative and share your passion for health and nutrition with others?”
https://www.facebook.com/morganhealthcoach
https://www.instagram.com/keepitpurely
** Morgan is no longer online and her Instagram is now private
Morgan’s Tips for Taking Insta-worthy Food Pics:
Tip #1 – Location, location, location
Tip #2 – The Best Time to Take Your Pictures
Tip #3 – Use What You Have
Tip #4 – Invest in Some New, Fun Items
Tip #5 – Don’t Overdo It
Tip #6 – Add Interest to Your Picture
Tip #7 – Personalize Your Plate and Your Feed
Food Photography Tips – Episode Transcript:
(0:02 – 0:29)
I’m Laurie Mallon and this is the Profitable Health Coach Podcast. The show where we’re all about creating a sustainable, enjoyable, and profitable online coaching business that gives you the freedom and flexibility that you want.
We’ll hear about strategies, systems, and solutions from experts and fellow coaches who’ve created the business of their dreams, providing amazing transformations, and connecting with clients across the globe.
(0:29 – 0:58)
Laurie: I have Morgan Beasley with me.
She’s a Women’s Health Coach. I met Morgan, I think, just in a random Facebook group for health coaches and we connected. And I started following Morgan on Instagram and fell in love because her pictures are amazing and inspiring.
And it made me want to learn how to do it. I still haven’t figured it out. Hopefully, I learned something today from Morgan.
Morgan is going to share with us how she takes such amazing pictures.
Hello, Morgan. How are you?
Morgan: Good. How about you?
Laurie: I’m good, thanks. First, I want to share some of Morgan’s pictures in case you haven’t seen it. She posts recipes …you can see she’s got salad, she’s got a smoothie and smoothie bowl because Morgan loves to do smoothie bowls. And she does pancakes and waffles and she puts amazing captions that are really engaging. She is going to walk us through the steps that she takes to produce these amazing pictures.
(1:40 – 1:50)
Morgan: Okay, so I want to let everybody know it’s just about making it your own and continually doing it. Your style is going to evolve. It takes a lot of practice.
Not every picture that you’re going to take is going to turn out like perfect and everything. It’s just going to take time and to not give up on it. Because once you capture the picture that you really want and you really love it, you’re going to feel so proud of yourself after you edit it. You’re just going to be jumping for joy when you get that picture.
The first thing is good lighting. Natural lighting is the best kind of lighting.
I know when you get really professional, you can do artificial lighting, but I try to stick to just natural lighting. My biggest tip is to go around your house and find the room that you think has the best natural lighting. And that could be windows, you know, use the windows that you have.
The windows that are the biggest in my house are in my living room, in my kitchen. So that’s where I like to take pictures is my kitchen, like right beside my kitchen table and right on my kitchen table. That’s where I get the best lighting.
So use what you have and just try to find the best natural lighting. And I want to go over what angles you want to use. So there are like four different angles.
Two that I mainly use are an overhead shot, and I’m going to say flat lay a lot, but usually that just means like where you would have all your food laying out. So an overhead flat lay shot would be wherever you have your food laid out with all your ingredients, you know, make it look pretty, little, you know, utensils, whatever you want to use. And you could take it overhead and that’s one of my favorite ways. If you have something like a salad or oatmeal, usually if you’re doing like a stack of pancakes, maybe you want to show like the drizzle of it and the thickness of it. Then you can use a side shot.
(3:32 – 4:02)
And whenever I do side shots, I always make sure that the sun is coming in from the side rather than from taking it in front of it. So those are the two that I don’t recommend is taking a picture with the sun shining in front of your food or behind your food. And what I mean by that is if you have, say, the stack of pancakes and you’re trying to get a picture of it, you don’t want to take it to where the sun’s shining like right here in your window and you’re in front of it and taking a picture of your pancakes.
(4:02 – 4:24)
By doing that, you’re letting in too much lighting on your pancakes, and it’s going to be too bright and too overdone. It’s going to drown out all your colors. So again, whenever you’re doing pancakes or something like that, always try to do like a side angle or semi-side, you know, to where the natural lighting is hitting, but you’re not all the way turned.
(4:24 – 4:40)
It’s going to produce too much light on that picture. Whenever you’re taking a picture of, again, the stack of pancakes, you don’t want to take it to where the sun is shining behind the food. By doing this, you’re going to create sharp and, like, harsh shadows all over the food to where it’s going to look dark.
(4:40 – 5:04)
And what I like to compare this to is if you’re taking a portrait of somebody, if you’ve ever taken a picture of somebody and they’re behind, like, the sun is shining behind them and you’re in front of them trying to take the picture, you can’t make out their face and all the details that you want to capture because, again, the light is coming behind them, and it’s going to make their face look dark. So it’s the same with food. You want to take it from a side angle or overhead.
(5:05 – 5:19)
So if you get anything from that tip, it’s try to take it overhead or from the side to where the sun is shining on the side of your food. That’s the best way to get, like, the natural lighting. So my second tip is what times take your photos.
(5:20 – 5:41)
And I’ve found that the best times to take your photos are either in the morning or in the evening. And this is because the sun is coming up, you have all these natural pretty colors, or the sun is going down and you have all the orange, the pinks. The best times now to take pictures where I live are, like, 9 o’clock to 9.30, and that’s because the sun has just risen.
(5:42 – 5:54)
It’s not too much. If you wait until later in the day, like whenever the sun’s the brightest, you’re going to get too much lighting to where it’s going to drown out your picture. So in the morning, it’s kind of, like, dewy outside.
(5:55 – 6:04)
You still have the clouds kind of covering the sun. So, again, you have that natural color and it’s not too bright. My third tip is to use what you have in your house.
(6:05 – 6:19)
This literally was my first backdrop, and I still use this sometimes. This little cloth thing that I have that I found at the thrift store, and I just found this in my house randomly, and I was like, I’ll just use that. You can also use linen napkins.
(6:20 – 6:28)
You can lay it flat, and this will really bring out your food colors. There’s different things you can find around your house that you can use. You can use silverware that you have.
(6:29 – 6:39)
Maybe you have some pretty gold silverware, pretty dishes, plates, bowls. You know, use that and add it to your picture. You can even add greenery to your pictures.
(6:39 – 6:59)
Maybe if you have, like, some flowers or something that you want to use, you can always add that. You know, there’s just so many different options that you can try, and my best advice for getting inspiration is to go on Pinterest or somewhere like that where they upload recipes, and every day I try to look at different recipes to get inspiration. Look at different stuff.
(6:59 – 7:14)
Look at different food photography, and you’ll just get inspired by all the different colors that they use, all the different ways they lay it out, because it kind of, like, motivates you to take better pictures, and you can try to replicate it. You can try to make it your own. You know, there’s so many different options.
(7:14 – 7:27)
I’ve noticed in your feed you tend to go with a lot of neutral backgrounds, and it really helps the food pop. Anything that’s fruity. I think this is a salad with pomegranate seeds.
(7:27 – 7:57)
Like, it just pops because of that neutral background, and I just love that. It doesn’t take away from the food that’s in the picture.
Morgan: And that’s what I like to do because I always remind myself, like, what am I trying to capture? You don’t want to overdo it, especially if it’s a very colorful plate, because if you do a colorful plate with tons of fruit and all that kind of stuff and you do a colorful background, well, that’s not going to blend really well, because, again, you want the focus to be the food and not necessarily the entire layout.
(7:57 – 8:18)
You want it to be mainly the food. So that’s when sometimes I will even use a very simple layout because then it’s not going to take away from my picture, and whenever somebody sees my picture, they’re mainly drawn to the food and not, like, everything else happening around. So my fourth tip is to invest in some pretty bowls, pretty spoons.
(8:18 – 8:34)
This doesn’t mean you have to go all out and spend all this money, because I did that, and I regret spending half the amount that I spent because your style is going to evolve. Like, what you like now may not be what you’re going to like later on, and you may never even use it. So slowly add more things.
(8:35 – 9:00)
For example, I got this, and as you can see in this one, I don’t know if you can tell, but this is a very glossy bowl. It’s very shiny, and it reflects a lot of stuff. And the other day, this kind of reminded me why I don’t want these kind of bowls, because you can take a picture with it, and the sun will shine on the opposite side of the bowl, and you’ll have all these different lights shining and stuff, so you don’t want that.
(9:00 – 9:09)
You can even see how bright this is, like, because the sun is just, like, gleaming off of it. This one gets matte. It’s not going to have all these different reflections coming off of it.
(9:09 – 9:17)
Find what you like. Like, I like gold, so I use gold spoons. Wooden bowls, wooden spoons are my favorite too.
(9:18 – 9:34)
Just things that are simple. You don’t want plates that have all the designs on them either because it would be too distracting and take too much from your food. So try to just keep it simple, plain, and if you can, semi-matte to matte finish when it comes to dishes.
(9:35 – 9:53)
And number five is to not overdo it. I know sometimes we think, like, more is better, but when it comes to food, focus on what you want to capture. What’s my goal of taking this picture? What do I want people to see whenever they see this picture? My favorite tip is to add ingredients, cooking utensils, silverware.
(9:54 – 10:11)
I always ask myself whenever I’m creating my flat layer, I always ask myself, what did I use to make this dish? So say you’re making oatmeal. Use that pot with oatmeal in it that you used to cook in, or you can use a prettier one that’s clean. Put that on the corner.
(10:12 – 10:26)
You know you can add some silverware, some cooking utensils that you used. Maybe you added some blueberries to your dish or chia seeds or peanut butter or something like that. Add that to your dish so it looks homier.
(10:26 – 10:59)
So add different things that you used to make it, and it makes it look kind of comfy and people can, like, see, like, the process that you went through to make that dish. If I made oatmeal with, like, strawberries or chia seeds or hemp seeds or something along those lines, I can lay that flat on my background, and then on that I’ll add my bowl along with I’ll probably lay, like, a linen napkin, lay my bowl on there, and then add, like, some chia seeds. I could sprinkle those somewhere just to make it look like this is what’s in the bowl, you know.
(11:00 – 11:12)
You can add a spoon in the dish, or you can add a spoon, you know, sitting outside the dish. Different measuring spoons, different cooking utensils. Maybe you used a grater to make zucchini, you know.
(11:13 – 11:26)
Put the grater in there, like, in the corner or to the side. Or maybe you used tahini. Put it in a wooden bowl, put my tahini in there, put a spoon in there so it looks like I just drizzled it on my pancakes or whatever you made.
(11:26 – 11:50)
Something that’s kind of hard to capture are smoothie bowls and smoothies because they melt really quickly, and the toppings kind of go all, like, into it. So if you’re going to do something, like, cold that’s going to melt, work as quickly as possible and have in the back of your mind what you want to do and what you want to capture. It doesn’t have to be exact, but just an idea so then you know you can work fast and add different things to it.
(11:51 – 12:02)
And then my last tip is to personalize it and make it your own. Not everything is going to look, you know, like so-and-so’s. It’s about making it look like how you want it to look.
(12:03 – 12:15)
My pictures and my editing is not going to look the same as yours because, you know, we’re two different people. I’ll have a different style than somebody else. It’s all about finding what works for you, what editing style works for you.
(12:15 – 12:35)
Laurie: Back to your point about it being a process and something that you learn, I just want to share this, and I hope this is okay, but these are some of Morgan’s pictures when she first started, and you can see a big difference between these pictures and – I don’t even remember those pictures. They’re from the very, very beginning. But you can see the difference now.
(12:35 – 12:45)
She’s developed her style. She’s got her neutral backdrops. She’s got props and, you know, a signature look, you know, with the drizzles and the ingredients.
(12:46 – 13:07)
And, I mean, you’ve really come a long way with developing your style with your pictures.
Morgan: Yeah, and like I was telling you the other day, it’s like just – I may look at my pictures now and be like, I’m so glad I learned, you know, from my mistakes because you’re constantly learning new stuff. You’re constantly learning new ways you want to add, new techniques, new angles.
(13:07 – 13:29)
And it’s, again, about working with what you have and just, like, practice. That’s all you can do. You can only practice and not be too hard on yourself whenever it doesn’t look picture perfect because sometimes, like I was telling you, it pays off to look perfectly imperfect, kind of like what you said, like a messy type perfect to where the picture looks like you really want to eat it.
(13:29 – 13:55)
Sometimes when it’s too perfect, it doesn’t come off as authentic and it looks too fake and it doesn’t look – you can’t really notice the textures in it, if that makes sense. So sometimes I try to make sure that it looks a little – like if I do a drizzle, I add it around the plate. Like sometimes I just flop the spoon places because I want it to look messy but not too messy, kind of like professional but yet yummy, like something somebody wants to eat.
(13:55 – 14:03)
So I was going to talk about, like, the editing apps that I use. I have three different apps. One is the Lightroom CC, and for that one I use presets.
(14:04 – 14:22)
You pay for presets. I already have some that are geared towards the pictures in my editing style, but the ones that are free that I wanted to show you all are VSCO, and Snapseed. Those are my two top two favorite food editing apps.
(14:22 – 14:42)
I was going to show you all a video of how I actually edit. First one I go into after I take the picture is VSCO, and you just click this little plus sign once you get in there and you add your photo. Once I click on the photo, you can see that there are different presets that you can do, A4, A5, A6.
(14:43 – 15:00)
I always go with A6, so if that’s what I’m going to click on is A6, and it kind of gives you a scale. It starts at 12. I think it was 12 right here, and you can slide it down at how edited you want this picture, like the editing style for this one.
(15:01 – 15:13)
I kind of just went around. I think I kept going a little bit lower, and then I went, you know, just kind of play around with it, kind of slide it up and down to see which kind you want. And then, again, you just save that to your camera roll.
(15:13 – 15:23)
I always do actual size, and it saves it. And then you X out of that, and then I open it up in Snapseed. I get in there, and I push the editing one.
(15:23 – 15:31)
In this one, you can change, like, the brightness, the contrast. So I went for brightness first. I kind of like a brighter color.
(15:32 – 15:46)
So I kind of just moved it up, and then you can go into contrast. For this picture, I didn’t do any contrast because the papaya was already really orange. So contrast kind of makes it a little, adds a little more color, makes it a little darker.
(15:47 – 15:55)
So I didn’t want that one. I went in ambience because that makes your food look brighter, and I really like that one. But, again, don’t overdo it.
(15:55 – 16:09)
And then I did a little highlight, and by highlighting it, it kind of brings out all the colors in the picture a little bit more. And then you also have shadow. And shadow is used whenever you have a lot of shadows in your food.
(16:09 – 16:17)
It kind of hides those off. But I don’t necessarily use those a lot because, again, this was shot overhead. So I didn’t have any harsh shadows.
(16:17 – 16:29)
And I just clicked to show you the difference in between. And then you just save it, and you modify it, and it’s done. And you just upload it to Instagram or wherever you’re going to upload it.
So, yeah, that’s the process of the editing that I do.
Laurie: I also was going to ask you a little bit about captions. Some you give the recipe, and some you kind of direct them to your website.
How do you decide which ones to share and which ones to put on the website?
Morgan: Well, the way I decide that one are my favorite ones I kind of put on my website because I want my website to look really good. So I’m like, some of the ones that I’m – I never – I’m a perfectionist. And when it comes to pictures, I try to never upload ones that I’m not – I’m kind of iffy about.
And if I’m like, I don’t really know if I like this picture, I usually don’t upload it, honestly. If I really like the picture, I’m going to upload it to my website and to Instagram. And the reason I don’t upload the recipe on Instagram or Facebook is because I want to bring people towards my website so they can go on that.
It takes me a while sometimes to come up with some. And then sometimes it kind of just pops to my mind. I try to just let your personality show when it comes to captions.
You know, be yourself. Talk about – people actually like to listen to your story. They like to hear stories.
They like to know about you, what’s going on in your life. You know, what did you do today? What was going on whenever you were taking this picture? You know, like, for example, with the oatmeal thing, you could describe, like, what else you had with – if you had a matcha latte, you know, or what you’re going to do that day. Like, this is my pre-workout, you know, about to go to the gym, about to spend the day doing some work or going to a yoga class this evening.
(17:55 – 18:06)
Just let people into what you’re doing that day. And even some things you’re struggling with, you know. If you’re struggling with something, so people can relate to you, that you’re also human. They like a story.
Laurie: I have found the posts where I’m most kind of vulnerable about, like, things that are going on with me get the most engagement. And that’s been really an adventure for me because I’m not really used to sharing a lot of stuff like that.
(18:21 – 18:26)
Morgan: Yeah. They see you as, like, a friend. They want to, like, know about your life, you know.
(18:26 – 18:33)
It’s not as engaging whenever you just see a picture with the recipe. Switch up the length of your captions. Sometimes do short ones. Sometimes do longer ones. Play around with it and see which one gets better engagement on your page. Sometimes it takes me over a day to write a caption.
(18:41 – 18:54)
And I’ll just sit there and, kind of like a blog post, I’ll write some of it. And then sometimes it’s just not coming naturally, so I’ll go do something. And then it’ll pop in your mind, like, this is a smart thing to say.
(18:54 – 19:08)
I’ll, like, hurry up and go get my phone because I’ve got to write this one down.
Laurie: I feel like a lot of those things come to me when I’m either washing dishes or in the shower. For some reason, those are two places that I, like, get a lot of inspiration.
(19:08 – 19:15)
Morgan: Or, like, cooking or, like, laying in bed. You’re like, “this is clever. That was really clever.”
(19:17 – 19:41)
Laurie: Now, do you come up with your own recipes or are they just kind of a lot of things that you either derive from other recipes? Or what’s the process that you use? Because, honestly, I’m lazy in the kitchen and I’m lazy about what I eat. So, for me, it’s, like, anything more than, like, three ingredients, I can’t be bothered. So, I’m always inspired by, like, your dishes that have, like, fun stuff in them.
(19:41 – 19:55)
Morgan: Since I just now turned vegan, I like to do plant-based versions. And even if you aren’t vegan or anything like that, you can go online on Pinterest, just add different things. Sometimes it’s a hit and a miss whenever I’m messing with stuff.
(19:55 – 20:05)
You know, like, you’ll make something, like, this is not, nobody, I’m not going to share this recipe. You know, and you’ve got to still work on it. And you just practice, kind of like with the picture-taking.
(20:06 – 20:22)
You just throw some stuff in there and see what you got. And if it doesn’t turn out well, well, then, oh, well, try again next time, you know?
Laurie: I’m going to look at your pictures differently now, now that I know, like, what goes on behind the scenes now. It’s going to be a little bit more like, “oh, there’s the jute mat.
Oh, there’s her white napkin. There’s her gold spoon.”
Morgan: I need to start investing in some new ones because I’m, like, I feel like I’m using the same ones.
(20:29 – 20:37)
I’m, like, I got to step it up for something.
It’s part of your signature look. And, I mean, I think that it’s good to have that continuity.
I really love that gold spoon, though, that’s in that, I think, the smoothie bowl picture here.
Laurie: Where do you look for, like, kind of interesting pieces to put, like, little, your props to get to put in your pictures?
Morgan: Home goods has some good options. Thrift stores have some good ones.
(20:56 – 21:10)
Like, if you’re looking for stuff that’s, like, boho, I guess you would say, like, rattan-type stuff. Most of mine are from, like, Marshalls, home goods. I actually went into a store in my hometown, and I found two wooden bowls.
(21:10 – 21:15)
I’m all for wooden stuff. Like, I love wooden spoons, wooden bowls, wooden plates. I found those at a local store.
(21:16 – 21:26)
You can find them a lot of time, like, at stores that have homey stuff. Dollar Tree, you may not think they have some cool stuff, but you can always see what kind of silverware they have. Just keep your eyes open.
(21:27 – 21:43)
Laurie: I don’t know if this is a Southern thing, but the antique stores, those, I mean, those are just, like, they give me a little bit of anxiety because there’s just so much, like, stuff in a small place. But we always find, like, the most interesting pieces. And my husband collects antique mixing bowls.
So anytime we go into one of these stores, he goes straight for the kitchen stuff because we have to look to see if, you know, they have one of these bowls that, you know. So we have, like, a whole collection of these bowls. But, you know, it’s just always, like, the most interesting stuff.
But I never cared because I never was taking pictures of food and things like that. But now I’m going to be on the lookout for interesting pieces. I’m totally inspired now, Morgan. So I’m going to try to step up my Instagram.
We’re going to wrap up. And I want to thank you so much for sharing all your tips with us.
(22:15 – 22:27)
And if you want to follow Morgan on Instagram, her handle is @keepitpurely. That’s the name of her coaching business. And I’ll go ahead and add that into the show notes as well.
(22:28 – 22:35)
But thank you so much. I really appreciate the time that you took to come here and share this with us. And it’s been very inspiring and very motivating.
(22:36 – 22:40)
Morgan: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on here.
