Menu Photography for Amsterdam Restaurants

Plan the shoot around Amsterdam daylight

Amsterdam sits at about 52.4 degrees north, and the daylight swing is large. Around the June solstice you get roughly 16 hours 34 minutes of daylight and the noon sun reaches about 61 degrees above the horizon. Around the December solstice that drops to about 7 hours 26 minutes with a noon sun of about 14 degrees. A north-facing window or a covered courtyard gives you soft, even light most of the day; a south-facing window gives strong direct light around midday in summer and low, raking light in winter.

Use the solstices to set two shooting calendars. Summer: shoot between roughly 09:00 and 11:00 or after 16:00 to avoid hard midday sun, and shade the window with a diffusion sheet or a thin white curtain. Winter: the low sun means light comes in almost horizontally, which is good for texture on crusts and grilled surfaces but throws long shadows across the table, so shoot closer to the window and use a white card on the shadow side. In both seasons, put the camera on a tripod and keep the same table position for every dish so the batch looks uniform.

• Summer (May to July): avoid 11:00 to 16:00 direct sun; diffuse the window.
• Winter (November to January): shoot late morning, use a white bounce card opposite the window.
• Equinox months (March, September): daylight is close to 12 hours, the easiest window for a full-day batch.
• Check the weather the day before; overcast days give the most consistent light for a 40-dish shoot.

Batch shooting a full menu in one session

Group dishes by how they are plated and by how they photograph: bowls and stews first, then fried items, then cold plates, then desserts. Fried and hot dishes lose their shine within minutes, so shoot them last and in small batches straight from the pass. Cold dishes and drinks can wait on a side table.

Fix your angles before you start. A 45-degree angle suits most plates and shows depth; a straight-overhead 90-degree shot works for flat dishes, rijsttafel spreads and sharing boards; a low 10 to 15 degree angle flatters burgers and stacked plates. Pick one main angle for the menu and use the others only for hero images. Keep the same focal length, the same distance and the same background for every item so the grid reads as a set.

Shoot each dish in more than one crop. Delivery tiles are usually square or near-square, printed menus often need a wider horizontal image, and social posts need vertical. Frame with space around the plate so a square and a 16:9 crop both work without cutting the food. Take a plain background shot and a styled shot of each dish if time allows.

• Write a shot list in menu order before the session and tick items off as they are plated.
• Use one background, one surface and one light setup for the whole batch.
• Shoot three frames per dish minimum: 45 degrees, overhead, and a close detail.
• Photograph every dish as served, including the garnish and the portion size customers receive.

File naming and keeping photos in sync with the menu

Name files so anyone on staff can match a photo to a menu item without opening it. A simple pattern works: category, item, version, date, for example starters_bitterballen_v2_2025-03. Avoid spaces and special characters, use lowercase and hyphens, and keep the same pattern for every batch. Store the master files in one folder per menu version and export web-sized copies into a separate folder so the originals stay intact.

Menu changes are constant: seasonal specials, price updates, sold-out items and new dishes. Set a rule that any menu edit triggers a photo check. When a dish changes portion, plating or ingredients, reshoot it rather than reusing the old image. Keep a simple spreadsheet with item name, photo file name, date shot and status. Once a quarter, open the live delivery listing and QR menu side by side with the spreadsheet and retire images that no longer match.

• One folder per menu version, named by date.
• Never overwrite a master file; add a version number instead.
• Log every dish in a spreadsheet with file name and shoot date.
• Delete or archive photos of dishes that have left the menu.

Delivery apps in the Netherlands and their photo specs

The delivery apps listed for the Netherlands are Uber Eats and Thuisbezorgd.nl. This site publishes a photo spec page for Uber Eats in the Netherlands at /delivery-photo-specs/uber-eats/netherlands/, which covers the image requirements for that platform. For Thuisbezorgd.nl, check the upload screen in the restaurant portal for the current size and format rules rather than relying on a third-party summary.

Under EU Regulation 1169/2011, allergen information for the 14 regulated allergens must be available for food sold without packaging, and for distance selling, including delivery apps, the mandatory information must be available before the purchase is concluded. A photo never replaces that information, and an image should not suggest ingredients the dish does not contain. If a dish is photographed with a garnish that contains a regulated allergen, either remove it from the shot or make sure the listing states it.

Print, QR menus and your own channels

Printed menus and QR menus share the same source photos but need different crops. Print needs higher resolution and usually a horizontal crop that sits beside the dish description; QR menus are read on a phone, so a square or vertical crop at thumbnail size works better. Export print files at the printer's required resolution and check a proof at actual size before sending to press.

Menus in the Netherlands are commonly written in Dutch, so keep the item name in the photo file consistent with the Dutch menu name to avoid mismatches when a designer or a staff member updates the layout. For your own channels, a single real photo can be prepared in several sizes: FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social, keeping the food as it is, and every photo comes as a kit of sizes. It cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so always check each platform's own upload rules.