Taking Better Photographs of a Table You Have Decorated

Considerable effort goes into decorating and the photographs frequently do not show it. The reasons are consistent and mostly about light and angle rather than equipment.

Light Is Nearly Everything

Overhead room lighting is the least flattering source available. It casts hard shadows straight down, drains colour and makes fabric look flat.

Daylight from a window is better than any indoor light, which is why decorated tables photograph best in the afternoon before the meal rather than during it. Turning the ceiling light off and shooting by window light is the single biggest improvement available.

For an evening table, lamps and candles at table height read far better than anything overhead, and the warmth is what makes the image look like the occasion felt.

The Backdrop Matters More Than the Table

Whatever is behind the table appears in every photograph taken during the occasion, including the ones of people.

One dressed wall or a banner behind the seating does more for the pictures than any amount of detail on the table itself. Ranges built so a banner, a cloth and a runner share a pattern, such as those at ohomestore.net, make that backdrop coherent with the setting rather than a separate decision.

The Angles That Work

• Straight down, which suits a patterned cloth or a laid setting
• Table height, roughly level with the surface, for depth and atmosphere
• Three-quarters, at around forty-five degrees, which is the safe default
• From the doorway, which shows the room and the table together

What rarely works is standing and pointing down at an angle, which is the instinctive position and produces the least interesting image.

Tidy the Frame

The most common flaw in a decorated-table photograph is everything else in the shot: a radiator, a bin, a phone charger, a stack of post.

Looking at the edges of the frame before pressing anything, rather than at the subject, catches nearly all of it. So does shooting slightly closer than feels necessary.

Photograph It Before the Meal

A laid table is at its best before anyone sits down, and afterwards it is a different photograph entirely.

Ten minutes before guests arrive is the moment, with the candles lit and nothing yet moved. This is also the argument for laying the table the previous evening, since it removes the rush.

People in the Frame

Photographs of a table are pleasant. Photographs of people at a table are the ones anyone looks at again.

Taking a few of the empty setting and then putting the phone down is generally the right balance, and asking someone else to take one with you in it is worth remembering.

Editing Lightly

Adjusting brightness and straightening the horizon covers most of what an image needs. Heavy filtering makes fabric colours inaccurate, which defeats the purpose if you wanted to remember what it looked like.