Restaurant Photography in Berlin: A Practical Guide for Your Own Dishes

A seasonal shooting schedule built around Berlin daylight

Around the June solstice Berlin gets about 16 h 35 min of daylight and the noon sun reaches about 61 degrees above the horizon. That high sun means a south-facing window throws a hard, short patch of light onto the table near midday. Shoot early or late instead: from roughly two hours after sunrise to two hours before sunset the light comes in at a lower angle and stays soft enough to show texture on a schnitzel crust or the glaze on a pastry. A north-facing window is the steadiest option in summer because it never receives direct sun.

Around the December solstice daylight drops to about 7 h 25 min and the noon sun sits only about 14 degrees above the horizon. Low winter sun rakes almost horizontally through south windows, which is good for side-lighting a plate but creates long shadows across the table. Move the table about a meter back from the glass, or tape a sheet of diffusion paper (or baking parchment) to the window to soften the beam. Plan winter shoots between about 10:00 and 14:00, when the sun is highest, and keep a white foam board opposite the window to bounce light into the shadow side of the dish.

• Summer: shoot 08:00 to 10:00 or 17:00 to 19:00 to avoid the hard 61-degree midday sun.
• Winter: shoot 10:00 to 14:00 and diffuse the low 14-degree sun with paper on the glass.
• Use a north window for consistent soft light in any month.
• Bounce light back with a white board or a sheet of A2 paper on the shadow side.

Set up a repeatable table for any dish

Pick one table near a window and keep it as your shooting station so every dish on the menu looks like it comes from the same restaurant. Put the camera at roughly 45 degrees above the plate for a natural view of a bowl of soup or a plate of pasta, drop to about 15 to 20 degrees for a burger or a stacked sandwich so you see the layers, and go straight overhead at 90 degrees for flat dishes like a döner platter or a slice of cake. Keep the background simple: a dark wooden board for pale dishes, a light linen or stone surface for dark sauces.

Shoot at the dish's real serving temperature and with the real portion. Steam, condensation on a cold glass, or a sauce that has started to split will read as a mistake, so plate, shoot within a couple of minutes, and keep a cloth nearby to wipe drips from the rim. Use a phone on a tripod or a stable stack of books, tap to focus on the front edge of the food, and turn off the flash. Take one wide shot, one closer shot and one detail shot of the key ingredient for each dish so you have options for different placements.

• 45 degrees for plated mains, 15 to 20 degrees for stacked items, 90 degrees overhead for flat dishes.
• Shoot the real portion at serving temperature, no flash.
• Capture a wide, a close and a detail frame per dish.
• Keep one background surface per menu section for visual consistency.

Delivery apps, Google and your own channels

In Germany the delivery apps you are most likely to deal with include Lieferando, Uber Eats and Wolt. This site has photo spec pages for Uber Eats Germany (/delivery-photo-specs/uber-eats/germany/) and Wolt Germany (/delivery-photo-specs/wolt/germany/), plus a Yelp Germany page (/delivery-photo-specs/yelp/germany/) for your public listing. Read the relevant page before you shoot so you know the shape and size each app expects, and check the upload screen in the partner portal as well, because apps update their requirements without notice.

Wolt do not accept AI-generated or altered images. For Wolt, shoot your own real photo of the dish and upload that file directly. Do not call any image Wolt-ready or assume an edited picture will pass review; the merchant is responsible for what goes on the listing. For your own channels, website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print, you have more freedom over crop and background, and that is where a consistent set of images pays off most.

For Google Business Profile, upload a handful of strong dish photos rather than the whole menu, and refresh them when the menu changes. For print and QR menus, choose images that still read at small sizes: a single dish filling most of the frame beats a wide table scene shrunk to a thumbnail.

Allergens, accuracy and what a photo must not imply

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 customer completes the purchase. A photo never replaces that information. Keep the allergen details in the app listing, on the menu and on the QR menu page, and make sure staff can point to them.

A photo should not suggest ingredients the dish does not contain. If you garnish a dish for the shoot with something that is not in the served version, or photograph a version with an extra sauce, you create a mismatch that matters more in Germany because of the allergen rules. Shoot the dish exactly as it leaves the kitchen, and if you change a recipe, reshoot the photo the same week.

Working with Berlin's food culture in your images

Berlin's menus commonly appear in German, and widely known dishes such as currywurst, döner kebab and schnitzel sit alongside Italian, Turkish and Vietnamese cooking. Whatever the cuisine, the photo should show the dish the way your kitchen actually serves it, with the sides and garnishes that arrive on the plate. A döner benefits from a low angle that shows the fill and the bread; a schnitzel from a slightly higher angle that shows the pan-fried surface and the lemon wedge; a bowl of pho from overhead so the herbs and broth read clearly.

If your menu runs in German and another language, shoot once and use the same image across both versions so the guest sees the same dish whichever menu they open. Keep a simple file naming habit, such as dish name plus date, so you can find the current photo when a recipe changes.

Making the shoot manageable

Batch your shooting by menu section rather than by dish: all starters in one session, all mains in the next, so the light and background stay the same. Shoot five to eight dishes per session and stop when the light changes, rather than pushing through and getting a mixed set. Keep the originals in a folder and export smaller copies for the web.

FoodPhoto takes a real photo of your own dish and improves the light, background and crop for your website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print, keeping the food as it is, and every photo comes as a kit of sizes. Use it for those channels; for delivery apps that restrict altered images, upload your own real photo directly.