Restaurant Photography in Stockholm: A Seasonal Light and Platform Guide

Plan your shoots around Stockholm's real daylight

Stockholm sits at about 59.3 degrees north, and the sun's height at noon drives everything about natural light here. Around the June solstice you get about 18 hours 16 minutes of daylight and the noon sun reaches about 54 degrees above the horizon. Around the December solstice daylight drops to about 5 hours 44 minutes and the noon sun sits at only about 7 degrees, which means low, raking light for most of the short day.

The practical result is that summer gives you a long, forgiving window for window-light shots, while winter gives you a narrow one. Build your shooting calendar around the solstices rather than around fixed clock times, because the useful light moves by hours between seasons.

• Late May to early July: shoot between roughly 09:00 and 16:00 when the sun is high enough to bounce soft light into a north-facing room. Avoid the hours when direct sun hits your window wall, usually late afternoon and early evening.
• August to October: aim for mid-morning to early afternoon. The sun is lower than summer, so a sheer curtain or a white foam board as a bounce card on the shadow side keeps contrast manageable.
• November to February: the noon sun at about 7 degrees barely clears nearby buildings, so treat midday as your only natural-light window. Book shoots between about 11:00 and 13:30 and expect to supplement with a diffused LED panel or a bounce card.
• March to April: daylight lengthens quickly. Test your usual spot again each month; a table that was too dark in January may be usable by late March.

Choose the right window and camera angle for each dish

In a Nordic city, a north-facing window gives the most even light through the day because it never receives direct sun. If your dining room only has south or west windows, shoot in the morning before direct sun reaches the glass, or hang a white curtain to diffuse it.

Set the camera angle to the food, not to habit. A 90-degree overhead shot flattens a plate and works for flat lays like a smorgasbord spread, a pizza or a bowl of herring with accompaniments. A 45-degree angle is the default for burgers, open sandwiches and plated mains because it shows height. A low 10 to 20-degree angle suits tall items like a stacked sandwich or a glass of beer, but it hides the surface of a plate, so use it sparingly.

Keep the dish 30 to 60 cm from the window and put a white card on the opposite side to lift the shadows. Turn off overhead tungsten or mixed lighting; it fights the daylight and shifts colors, especially on white fish, cream sauces and pale bread.

• Shoot on a plain, matte surface: a light wood board, slate or a clean linen cloth. Busy tabletops pull attention from the food.
• Wipe plate rims and remove crumbs, fingerprints and stray garnishes before every frame.
• Use a tripod or brace your phone on a stack of menus; winter light is dim and camera shake ruins detail.
• Take one accurate wide shot and one close detail shot per dish so you have options for menus and social.

Size photos for delivery apps, Google, menus and social

Each channel crops differently, so shoot with room to spare and export per channel rather than reusing one file everywhere. A square 1:1 crop suits menu grids and Instagram feed posts, a 16:9 landscape crop suits website headers and Google Business Profile cover images, and delivery apps typically show a squarer thumbnail in lists with a larger image on the item page. If you shoot slightly wider than you need, you can crop to all of these without losing the plate edge.

For Uber Eats and Wolt in Sweden, this site publishes dedicated spec pages at /delivery-photo-specs/uber-eats/sweden/ and /delivery-photo-specs/wolt/sweden/. Check those pages and the upload screen in each app's merchant portal before you export, because platforms change requirements without notice. If a spec is not published, follow the upload screen's own guidance rather than guessing.

One hard rule: never use an AI-generated image of a dish on a delivery platform. The customer must receive what the photo shows. Shoot your own dish, and if a platform's rules or the upload screen exclude synthetic images, upload only real photography.

• Export at least a 1:1 square, a 16:9 landscape and a 4:5 portrait from the same frame.
• Keep file sizes reasonable for app loading; check each portal's stated limit on the upload screen.
• Name files clearly (dish-name_1x1.jpg) so your team picks the right version.
• Keep a master high-resolution file for print menus and window posters.

Match the photo to the dish and to Swedish labeling rules

Stockholm menus lean on seafood, root vegetables, rye bread, pickled and preserved ingredients and open sandwiches, and the photo should show exactly what arrives. If a dish is described as containing shrimp, cream or wheat, the photo must show those elements and not add anything that is not served. 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 it must be available before the purchase is concluded. A photo never replaces that information.

That means your photo caption, menu text and app listing should carry the allergen details, and the image should not imply ingredients the dish does not contain. A garnish added for the shoot but not served is misleading. Shoot the dish as the kitchen sends it out.

Write menu descriptions in Swedish for local customers, and keep any English version clearly secondary. The photo and the text should tell the same story.

Build a repeatable shoot routine for a Stockholm kitchen

You do not need a studio. Pick one table by the best window, keep a small kit (white foam board, a clean cloth, a spray bottle for freshness, a tripod), and shoot five to eight dishes in one session. In winter, schedule the session around the short midday light; in summer, use the long day to shoot more dishes in one go.

Refresh photos when the menu changes, when a dish's presentation changes, or when a platform updates its image guidance. Keep a simple log of which dish was shot, when, and which crops were exported so nobody re-shoots the same plate twice.

For your own channels, website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print, FoodPhoto can take a real photo of your own dish and improve its light, background and crop while keeping the food as it is, and every photo comes as a kit of sizes. It does not generate a different dish and cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so always check each app's own rules and upload screen.

• Keep a shoot list tied to your current menu and update it monthly.
• Store masters and exports in one shared folder with clear names.
• Re-check delivery app image guidance each time you upload a new menu.