Restaurant Photography in Bangkok: A Practical Guide for Delivery Apps, Menus and Social

Why the photo does most of the selling in Bangkok

Delivery customers in Bangkok scroll quickly and decide from a thumbnail. They cannot smell the curry paste or see the wok heat, so the image has to carry texture, color and portion size on its own. That means a real photo of the actual dish you send out, not a stock image of someone else's pad thai.

The dish also has to look like what arrives. If your green curry photo shows three prawns and the container holds one, the review will say so. Shoot the portion you actually pack, in the container you actually use, and let the photo do honest work.

Bangkok's food culture is broad and the city's menus mix Thai dishes with Chinese, Japanese and Western items. A single visual style across all of them helps: same background, same light direction, same crop. A customer scanning a grid of twenty dishes reads consistency as care.

A seasonal shooting schedule for Bangkok window light

Bangkok's daylight barely changes in length, but the sun's height changes a lot, and that decides when window light is usable. Around the June solstice the city gets about 12 hours 49 minutes of daylight and the noon sun sits roughly 80 degrees above the horizon, almost overhead. Around the December solstice it gets about 11 hours 11 minutes and the noon sun is about 53 degrees, lower and more angled.

High June sun means light coming through a window is steep and short-lived; it lands close to the glass and throws hard shadows under bowls. Low December sun pushes light deeper into the room and along the table, which is easier to work with but can flare across glossy sauce.

Use this as a working schedule rather than a rule. Test your own window at each slot with one dish and keep the shots that look right.

• June to August: shoot between about 9:00 and 10:30 or after 15:30. Avoid 11:00 to 14:00, when the near-overhead sun makes a narrow, harsh patch.
• September to November: the sun is dropping toward the December angle, so late morning and mid-afternoon both work. Watch for rain clouds flattening the light; a bright overcast day is actually good for noodles and soups.
• December to February: the low sun reaches further into the room. Shoot from about 10:00 to 15:00, but angle the table so direct sun skims across the dish rather than hitting it head-on.
• March to May: the sun climbs back toward the June position. Return to early morning and late afternoon slots and expect hotter, harder light at midday.
• Any month: put the dish about 30 to 50 cm from the window, never in direct sun, and turn the plate so shadows fall away from the camera.

Camera settings and angles that suit Thai dishes

Use a phone or camera at eye level with the table for most dishes, then drop to a 45-degree angle for bowls and plates with height. Shoot straight down at 90 degrees only for flat items like khao tom or a composed rice plate, where the pattern is the point.

Keep the ISO as low as the light allows and use a tripod or a stack of menus to steady the phone. A short shutter delay removes the shake from tapping the screen. Lock focus on the food, not the rim of the bowl, and tap the brightest part of the dish to set exposure, then pull exposure down slightly so highlights on sauce and broth do not blow out.

Shoot in the largest file size your phone offers and keep the original. You can always crop down for a square 1:1 thumbnail, but you cannot add detail back for a 16:9 hero banner.

• Noodles and curries: 30 to 45 degrees, close enough that the surface texture fills the frame.
• Soups and boat noodles: slightly above 45 degrees so the broth and garnishes read, with the bowl edge visible for scale.
• Grilled and fried items: side-on or 20 degrees to show crust and char.
• Drinks and desserts: straight-on at table height for tall glasses, 90 degrees for layered sweets.

Sizing photos for the delivery apps used in Thailand

The delivery apps that operate in Thailand are Grab, LINE MAN, Robinhood and ShopeeFood. Each app sets its own image rules inside its merchant portal, and those rules change. This site does not publish pixel specifications for these apps, so check the upload screen in each merchant app or portal before you export, and follow whatever minimum resolution and aspect ratio it states.

In practice, keep one master file per dish at the highest resolution you have, then export separate versions: a square 1:1 crop for app thumbnails, a 16:9 or wider crop for banners and hero slots, and a portrait 4:5 for social. Leave breathing room around the food in the master so every crop still shows the whole dish.

Name files clearly by dish and size, for example khao-pad-square.jpg and khao-pad-hero.jpg. When a menu update comes, you will know exactly which file to replace.

Google Business Profile, your own menu and social

Your Google Business Profile is often the first photo a customer sees before they decide to order or visit. Add a mix: exterior with the sign readable, interior at service time, and several dishes shot the same way as your delivery photos. Update them when the menu changes, because old photos of discontinued dishes cause complaints.

For your own website and QR menu, use the same dish photos at a larger size and keep file weight down so pages load on mobile data. A printed menu needs higher resolution and a crop that survives being reproduced at 10 cm wide, so supply the printer the master file, not a screenshot.

On social, vertical formats work best, and short clips of the same dish being plated or packed sit naturally next to the still photos.

Working with a photographer or shooting it yourself

A hired photographer gives you controlled light and a consistent set in one session, which suits a full menu relaunch. Doing it yourself costs less per dish and lets you reshoot a new item the week it launches. Many Bangkok restaurants end up doing both: a professional set for the core menu, phone shots for specials.

If you shoot yourself, block two hours, pick one window, prepare every dish the way it is served, and shoot in the same session so the light matches across the set. FoodPhoto can take a real photo of your own dish and improve the light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social while keeping the food as it is, and every photo comes as a kit of sizes for your website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print. It does not create a different dish and cannot guarantee approval by any platform.