New Orleans Restaurant Photography: Shoot in the Right Light, Size for Every App

Why the New Orleans calendar sets your shooting schedule

Around the June solstice, New Orleans gets about 13 hours 56 minutes of daylight and the noon sun sits roughly 83 degrees above the horizon. That high sun means a south- or west-facing window throws a short, harsh patch of light onto a table near midday, and the light goes flat and blue-gray by mid-afternoon. Around the December solstice, daylight drops to about 10 hours 4 minutes and the noon sun is only about 37 degrees up, so low-angle light reaches deep into the room and stays usable for much longer.

The practical result: in summer you want the hours just after opening or a late-afternoon slot, and in winter the middle of the day is your best window. Build the schedule around your service, not the other way around, and shoot in batches so one setup covers several dishes.

• Summer (roughly May to August): shoot 8 to 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m. to avoid the 83-degree midday sun
• Winter (roughly November to February): shoot 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. when the 37-degree sun comes in low and even
• Spring and fall: split the difference and test a table at 10 a.m. and again at 3 p.m. before committing

Setting up window light for gumbo, po'boys and beignets

Place the table so the window is to the side of the dish, not behind it. Side light shows texture in a roux-based gumbo or the crust on fried seafood, while backlight blows out the highlights on a glossy surface. Keep the dish about 1 to 2 feet from the glass so the light is soft but still directional, and turn off overhead fluorescents, which add a green cast that is hard to fix later.

Different dishes need different treatment. A bowl of gumbo or jambalaya reads best from about 45 degrees above the table so you see the rice, protein and garnish. A po'boy wants a lower angle, roughly 20 to 30 degrees, so the bread length and filling show. Beignets are the hardest: powdered sugar goes gray in flat light, so shoot them within a minute of dusting, slightly above the plate, and meter for the sugar rather than the dark plate.

Use a plain background. A neutral wall, a sheet of brown kraft paper or a clean wooden board works better than a cluttered pass. If your dining room is dark, shoot near the front window before service and carry dishes there on a tray.

• Window to the side of the dish, 1 to 2 feet away
• Overhead 45 degrees for bowls, 20 to 30 degrees for sandwiches
• Tap to focus and meter on the food, then pull exposure down slightly if highlights clip
• Shoot a 1:1 square for app thumbnails and a 16:9 horizontal for your website hero at the same sitting

Delivery app photos: what to check before you upload

DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub each handle image uploads differently, and the specs can change. This site publishes spec pages for Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub and BentoBox for the United States; use them as a starting point, then confirm on the actual upload screen in your merchant dashboard, because that screen is the final word.

Whatever the app, a few things hold true. Shoot the dish as it actually arrives in the container, not plated on restaurant china, so the customer gets what they expect. Avoid tight crops that cut off the container edge. Keep the background simple and consistent across your menu so the list looks like one restaurant. If your menu lists calorie counts, the photo must match the item those calories describe, so do not swap in a different portion size or a garnish-heavy version for the shoot.

For restaurants with 20 or more US locations, calorie counts for standard menu items are required, and FDA guidance covers online menus as well as menu boards. That makes photo accuracy a compliance issue, not just a marketing one.

• Photograph the dish in its delivery container
• Keep one background style across the whole menu
• Do not restyle a dish that carries a calorie count
• Check the upload screen for current size and format rules

Google Business Profile, website and print menus

Google Business Profile is where most people first see your food, and those photos should look like the room and the plate, not a catalog shot. Include a few wide shots of the dining room in daylight alongside the dish photos. Your website menu and any QR menu can use the larger, higher-resolution versions of the same shots.

For print, remember that a photo at 1:1 will need cropping to fit a menu layout, so shoot slightly wider than you think you need and leave space around the plate. If you print menus in both English and Spanish, keep the photo the same across both versions so the item is recognizable whichever language the guest reads.

Social is the loosest format: a vertical 4:5 or 9:16 crop works for Instagram, and a square works everywhere. Take the extra frames during the same session rather than scheduling a second shoot.

A realistic shooting day for a small kitchen

Pick one day a week when the kitchen can plate three or four dishes early. Set up one table by the best window the night before, gather clean containers and a neutral backdrop, and write a shot list by dish rather than by app. Shoot the widest frame first, then move closer.

After the shoot, cull hard. Keep one frame per dish per format and delete the rest, so nobody uploads the wrong version later. Name files by dish and date so the person updating DoorDash and the person updating the website use the same source.

FoodPhoto can help here: it takes a real photo of your own dish and improves light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social while keeping the food as it is, and each photo comes as a kit of sizes. Use it for your own channels such as your website, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print, and still upload your own original shots directly to each delivery platform.