Vegan doughnuts made with raw ingredients. If this doesn’t sound appetising then perhaps you haven’t seen Sam Murphy‘s Instagram feed yet.
A chef and the author of new vegan cook book Beautifully Real Food, the 24-year-old New Zealander posts pretty picture after pretty picture of glistening, brightly-coloured doughnuts neatly dotted with hearts or criss-crossed with a zebra print.
Then there’s sushi doughnuts, beetroot burgers, ‘meatballs’ and endless vegan cheesecake creations topped with flowers, fruit and more than a little flourish.
So how do you make your food look as appetising as Sam’s? Here, she offers up her top tips…
Buy a good camera
“My Instagram only really took off after I invested in a good-quality camera. I only had a middle-range DSLR camera to start with and then when I started the book, I upgraded,” she says.
“A good camera helps to get a nice crisp image. It takes things up a little notch because essentially Instagram is a visual app to get people to want to enjoy your content so you have to create visually appealing content.”
Be open to new ways of learning
“Alongside investing in a camera, I also use an editing programme on my laptop called [Adobe] Lightroom,” she says.
“I also watched YouTube tutorials on how to do edit and fiddled around with the tools to learn how to make the things a bit brighter, more appealing and help enhance the photo a little bit.”
Make your food look professional
“Everyone always asks me what I use for my backgrounds because it looks like slate but I’ve actually just got a board that I’ve painted and made to look like a concrete slab,” says Murphy.
“You can always find things like that at second-hand stores or if you go to tile shops they often have leftover cuts you can use. I do a little set-up by my bedroom window. Everything from the book was shot there.”
Get the right angle
“Generally if I’m photographing cakes they look better from the side as it adds a bit of depth,” she says.
“But if I’m doing a plate of food or a spread of food, taking it from above is effective in showing what you’ve got.”
And finally, take lots of photos
“I usually do two or three different shots of each meal and then I post them at different times of the week,” says Murphy.
Beautifully Real Food by Sam Murphy is published in hardback by Blink, priced £16.99. Available now.
