Menu Photography in Barcelona: One Consistent Set for Print, QR and Delivery

Plan one shoot that covers every version of the menu

Start from the menu itself, not from the dishes you like photographing. List every item that will carry a photo in any channel, mark which ones appear on the printed card, which on the QR menu and which in delivery apps, then group them by how they are plated: bowls, flat plates, boards, fried items, drinks and desserts. Each group gets its own camera height and background so the set reads as one menu.

Decide the crops before you shoot. A square tile, a 16:9 banner and a tall phone card all need the dish centered with breathing room, so leave empty plate or surface around the food instead of filling the frame. Printed menus usually want a wider crop than delivery tiles, so a slightly looser composition at capture time saves a reshoot later.

• Shoot in menu order and tick items off the list as you go
• Photograph the same dish twice if it is plated differently for delivery
• Keep one plain surface and one textured surface for the whole set
• Leave space around the plate for square, 16:9 and tall crops

A seasonal window-light schedule for Barcelona

Barcelona's daylight swings hard across the year, and that changes when you can shoot near a window. Around the June solstice there are about 15 hours of daylight and the noon sun sits about 72 degrees above the horizon, so midday light is steep and short-shadowed. Around the December solstice there are about 9 hours and the noon sun is only about 25 degrees high, giving long, low light that rakes across a table.

In summer, shoot mid-morning or late afternoon when the sun is lower and softer, and keep the table a meter or two back from the glass so the light is even. In winter, the low sun comes deep into the room, which is useful for texture but creates hard streaks, so use a sheer curtain or move the table sideways to the window. In both seasons, turn off overhead lights and mixed color temperatures; one light source keeps dish colors readable.

• June: shoot roughly 9:00 to 11:00 or 17:00 to 19:00, away from the glass
• December: shoot around midday, with a diffuser or curtain against the low sun
• Equinox months: light changes fastest, so block two shorter sessions
• Overcast days: the most even light of the year for a full batch

Batch shooting a full menu without losing consistency

Set the camera once and lock it. A 45 degree angle shows layers in a sandwich or a stacked plate, a straight overhead shot suits paella, boards and tapas spreads, and a low 20 to 30 degree angle works for tall glasses and burgers. Pick one angle per group and keep the distance to the plate the same so items sit at the same scale in the grid.

Work in batches of similar dishes: all fried items while the oil is fresh, all seafood while the ice is out, all desserts before the cream slumps. Plate one dish, shoot it from the agreed angle, check the frame on the phone screen at thumbnail size, then move on. Judging at thumbnail size is the fastest way to catch a dish that will disappear in a small tile.

• Lock focus and exposure on the plate, not the background
• Wipe the plate rim before every frame
• Keep a written shot list with angle and surface per item
• Shoot a plain reference frame of the surface for each group

Naming files so the menu, the QR code and the apps stay in sync

Agree on a file name that contains the dish and the channel version, for example dish-name_square, dish-name_wide or dish-name_print. Use the same dish name as the menu and the point-of-sale system, in lowercase with hyphens, so nobody has to guess which photo belongs to which line. If the menu is written in more than one language, keep the file name in one language and map the translations in a separate list.

Photos go out of date faster than menus do. When a dish changes portion, garnish or plating, or leaves the menu, update the master file and the channel versions in the same working session, and archive the old file rather than deleting it. A short monthly check against the live menu catches the photo of a dish you stopped serving.

• One folder per shoot date, one subfolder per channel
• Never overwrite a master; add a version suffix
• Keep a single list linking dish name, file name and menu line
• Check delivery apps and the QR menu on the same day each month

What the delivery apps ask for, and what photos cannot do

This site publishes upload spec pages for Uber Eats, Just Eat and Glovo in Spain, at /delivery-photo-specs/uber-eats/spain/, /delivery-photo-specs/just-eat/spain/ and /delivery-photo-specs/glovo/spain/. Where a platform does not publish pixel specs, the safe move is to check the upload screen in the merchant portal, which shows the accepted format and the crop the app applies.

Under EU Regulation 1169/2011, allergen information for the 14 regulated allergens must be available for food sold without packaging, and for distance selling the mandatory information must be available before the purchase is concluded. A photo never replaces that text, and a garnish in the picture should not suggest an ingredient the dish does not contain. Keep the allergen line in the menu and in the app listing, and shoot the dish as it is actually served.

Local menu context and keeping the set current

Barcelona menus are commonly written in Spanish and Catalan, and nationally also in Basque and Galician, so a dish may need more than one text version while the photo stays the same. Widely known local dishes such as tapas, paella and seafood platters photograph very differently from each other: paella needs the overhead view to show the rice and crust, while small tapas plates need tighter crops to read in a tile.

For the restaurant's own channels, website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print, FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop while keeping the food as it is, and returns each photo as a kit of sizes. Delivery apps still need your own real photo uploaded through their portal, and no tool can guarantee a platform's approval.