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

Plan your shoot around Miami's sun, not a generic schedule

Around the June solstice Miami gets about 13 hours 37 minutes of daylight, and the noon sun reaches about 88 degrees above the horizon. That near-vertical sun means a south-facing window gets a hard, short beam at midday and almost no side light. Around the December solstice you get about 10 hours 23 minutes of daylight, and the noon sun reaches about 41 degrees, which throws a long, low beam deep into the room. The same window behaves like two different studios depending on the month.

Work in two windows each day. In summer, shoot between roughly 9 and 11 a.m. and again after 4 p.m., when the sun is lower and the light comes in at an angle. Skip 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at a south or west window unless you diffuse it. In winter, the low midday sun can be lovely but it is directional and creates long shadows, so move the plate or hang a white sheet to soften it.

June through September, plan the shoot for the morning. Afternoon storms roll in and the light goes flat and blue before the rain. October through April is the reliable stretch for exterior shots, patio tables and anything you want to show with blue sky.

• June: shoot 9 to 11 a.m. or after 4 p.m.; diffuse any midday window
• December: the low noon sun reaches deep into the room; soften it with a white sheet or shoot slightly off-axis
• Rainy season: book morning shoots; keep a backup plan for exteriors
• North-facing windows give even light all day in both seasons, so use them for reflective dishes and drinks

What to shoot for a Miami menu, and how to shoot it

Miami menus run from Cuban sandwiches and ropa vieja to stone crab, ceviche, arepas and Peruvian seafood. Those dishes fail or succeed in a photo for different reasons. A pressed sandwich needs a cross-section shot with the cut facing the camera, so shoot straight on at plate level. Stone crab claws are pale and shiny, so use a slightly darker background and a low, 30 to 45 degree angle to catch the shell texture. Ceviche and anything in a shallow bowl look best from about 60 degrees above, close enough that the bowl rim frames the food.

Shoot the dish as it is served. The FDA calorie rules for US chains with 20 or more locations require photos to match the item the calories describe, and that guidance covers online menus as well as menu boards. If your photo shows a larger portion than the listed item, the picture and the number disagree. Keep the plate, the garnish and the portion identical to service.

You can shoot on a phone. Put the plate near the window, turn off the overhead lights (they add a yellow-green cast), and set the phone on a stack of menus so it stays steady. Tap to focus on the food, then drag the exposure slider down slightly so white plates do not blow out.

• Sandwiches and burgers: straight-on cross-section, cut side to camera
• Shellfish and whole fish: 30 to 45 degrees, darker surface underneath
• Bowls, ceviche, rice dishes: 60 degrees from above
• Drinks: backlight near the window, plain wall behind
• Never add items that are not served with the dish

Size photos correctly for each delivery app and channel

Each app has its own upload rules, and the rules change. This site publishes spec pages for Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub for the United States, and for BentoBox, the restaurant website builder. Open the relevant page before you export, and still check the upload screen in the merchant portal, because the app is the final authority on what it accepts.

The practical approach is to shoot once and export several crops. Keep a square 1:1 version for menu grids and thumbnails, a 16:9 or wider version for hero banners on your website and Google Business Profile, and vertical crops for Instagram Stories and Reels. Leave breathing room around the plate when you shoot so a tight crop does not cut into the food.

Menu language matters too. Miami menus are commonly in English and Spanish. If you publish both, make sure the photo next to each item is the same dish in both versions, and that any text baked into an image is legible at thumbnail size.

Google Business Profile, website and QR menus

Google Business Profile photos are what people see before they decide to tap through, and they are shown in a horizontal crop on desktop and a squarer crop on mobile. Upload your best three or four dishes, plus one clear photo of the entrance and one of the dining room, so people arriving by car or on foot recognize the place.

For your own website and QR menus, the constraint is speed. A QR menu opens on a phone at the table, often on mobile data. Export images at a reasonable pixel size rather than straight from the camera, and keep the file weight down so the page loads before the customer loses patience.

Print is different again. A printed menu or a window poster needs a much larger file and a crop with generous margins, because print trimming varies. Ask your printer what resolution and bleed they want before you export.

Instagram and social: what is worth posting

Social rewards motion and context more than a perfect plate. A short clip of a sandwich being pressed or a whole fish being filleted will usually travel further than a static hero shot, so shoot both on the same day. Keep the lighting consistent across a set so your grid does not look like it came from five different restaurants.

Post the dish, not the stock photo. A real photo of your own plate tells a customer what will arrive at their door, and it protects you from the disappointment of a delivery order that does not match the picture. Shoot a few dishes every week rather than a huge batch once a year, because menus change with the season and with what the fish supplier brings in.

A realistic workflow for a small Miami kitchen

You do not need a studio day. Set aside one quiet morning a week, shoot four or five dishes near the best window, and keep the plates identical to service. Note which dish, which angle and which time of day worked, so the next session is faster.

FoodPhoto takes a real photo of your own dish and improves the light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social, keeping the food as it is. Every photo comes back as a kit of sizes, including a hero image, delivery-app sizes, Instagram formats and Google Business Profile. It does not create a different dish and cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so always upload to each app yourself and check the result on the merchant screen. Where a platform restricts AI-generated imagery, shoot and upload your own real photo there, and use edited versions on your own channels such as your website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print.