How to take high-quality smartphone photos of your drinks

By Rebecca Miller, The Gazette

Aug. 8, 2020 5:00 pm

How to take high-quality smartphone photos of your drinks

We're officially in the season of abundance when it comes to food in Iowa.

As the rhubarb was becoming plentiful this spring, I put a portion of mine toward a rhubarb cordial recipe from Deb Perelman's blog, Smitten Kitchen. After a bit more than a month of patience and routine shaking of the jar, I ended up with a fragrant, rose-colored, rhubarb-and-orange infused gin that I've been savoring slowly on hot days.

This was my first taste of it and I was so excited by the flavor that I decided it was photo-worthy.

However and wherever you choose to imbibe, you can take advantage of the low angle of the evening light to illuminate your drink from the side.

Your phone's camera is designed to brighten objects in the frame and bring everything into focus. You can override this by tapping your finger on the screen.

Another way to use your smartphone to photograph a cocktail as you're sipping away on your porch, patio or kitchen table is to backlight it.

Create a nice background using a napkin or towel and place the drink on a windowsill to illuminate the drink against the evening light. This creates an opposite effect to the 'white line' image of the rhubarb cordial and instead defines the edges of the glass as black lines.

To achieve this 'white line' look on the glass, which gives it definition, you want to illuminate one side of the glass against a dark background. I have a piece of black folded foamboard that I set up at a 90-degree angle to a window in my dining room. Then I used my smartphone and shot looking up slightly. I tapped the area where the stem meets the glass to bring the focus to that area, then dragged my finger down the screen a little to lower the exposure and add contrast. The result is that the glass nearly disappears against the background, except for the white lines along its edges. This brings more emphasis to the lovely color of the liquid. (Rebecca F. Miller/The Gazette)

I tapped on the center of the glass to bring the focus to the foreground and then swiped down to darken the background. This one was a St. Germain-gin concoction made by Gazette features writer Alison Gowans. (Rebecca F. Miller/The Gazette)

This is a ready-made margarita. Sometimes you just want something easy. (Rebecca F. Miller/The Gazette)