Montreal Menu Photography: A Consistent Full-Menu Shoot

Shoot the menu in batches, not dish by dish

Group dishes by how they are plated and lit, not by where they sit on the menu. Smoked-meat sandwiches, bagels and poutine are all built on a board or in a bowl and can be shot in one run; bistro plates on white ceramic need a separate run with different background and garnish. A batch of 12 to 20 items per setup lets you keep the tripod, lens and background fixed while only the food changes.

Shoot the same dish type at the same angle. Sandwiches and handheld items read best from about 30 to 45 degrees above the table, showing the filling and the top. Bowls, poutine and soups want a steeper 60 to 75 degrees so the surface fills the frame. Flat items like a bagel platter or a charcuterie board work straight down at 90 degrees.

Build a shot list from the actual menu export, then mark each item as shot, edited and published. If your menu changes weekly, keep a standing list of "always on" dishes and a second list of rotating specials, and only re-shoot the second list.

• One lens, one tripod height per batch
• Plate every dish in the same style of dishware within a batch
• Shoot the best seller first while the light and the kitchen are fresh

A seasonal window-light schedule for Montreal

Montreal's daylight swings hard across the year, and that changes when you can shoot with window light. Around the June solstice the city gets about 15 h 29 min of daylight and the noon sun sits about 68 degrees above the horizon, so sun comes in steep and high. Around the December solstice there is about 8 h 31 min of daylight and the noon sun is only about 21 degrees, so light comes in low and rakes across the room.

In summer, shoot between roughly 9 and 11 a.m. or after 4 p.m. on a north-facing window, or use a south or west window with a diffusion panel because the high sun is harsh. In winter, the low sun reaches deep into the room, so a south-facing window gives usable light for most of the short day, but the window of good light is narrow. Plan winter shoots around 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and expect to shoot more dishes per session.

In spring and fall the sun sits between those two extremes and light is softer for longer, which makes them the easiest months for a full-menu shoot. Whatever the season, turn off overhead lights so you do not mix color temperatures, and set white balance manually on a gray card at the start of each batch.

One dish, many crops

A single photo has to survive being cropped square for a QR menu tile, wide for a website hero and tall for a social post. Shoot slightly loose so there is room to crop, and keep the food centered with a margin of background on all sides. A square 1:1 crop is the safest master; a 16:9 crop of the same frame gives you a banner without re-shooting.

Test each finished photo at thumbnail size on a phone before you accept it. If the dish is unrecognizable at 150 pixels wide, the framing is too loose or the background is too busy. Check the platform spec pages on this site for Uber Eats, DoorDash, BentoBox, Olo, Ritual, Square Online, Toast and Yelp in Canada before you export; where a platform does not publish pixel specs, check the upload screen itself.

Skip and SkipTheDishes also operate in Canada. Read their current upload guidance directly rather than assuming another app's dimensions will fit.

Name files so the menu stays in sync

Use a naming pattern that ties every file to a menu item and a date, for example poutine-classique_2025-03_1x1.jpg. Sort by item name so a whole dish's crops sit together, and keep the date so you can tell a current photo from an old one. Store originals in one folder and exports in another; never overwrite an original.

When a dish changes, update the photo the same week. A menu where the poutine photo shows a different bowl than the one served now costs trust. Keep a simple tracker with three columns: item, photo date, platforms updated. When you change a price or remove an item, check the tracker and retire the old files instead of leaving them in the export folder.

For printed menus, export at the size your printer asks for and keep the print files separate from the phone-sized ones. A photo that looks sharp on a QR menu can look soft on a laminated card if it was exported small.

Menus in English and French

Menus in Canada are commonly written in English and French, and Montreal menus often carry both. That affects photography: leave room in the frame for a two-line caption, and avoid compositions where the dish fills the entire tile, because the text will have nowhere to sit.

Photograph each dish once and reuse the same image for both language versions. Re-shooting for a translated menu wastes time and creates two visual styles for the same restaurant.

Quebec has its own labeling and language rules for menus, which are separate from the Ontario calorie-display requirement for chains with 20 or more locations. Check the current Quebec requirements with your own advisor rather than relying on another province's rules.

Keeping the look consistent across the year

Seasonal specials are where most menus drift visually. Set a fixed recipe for every new item: same background surface, same angle for that dish type, same white balance and same crop. Write it down so a new staff member can shoot the next special without matching by eye.

If you want help with light, background and crop while keeping the dish exactly as it is, FoodPhoto takes a real photo of your own dish and returns it 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, so upload your own real photos to each delivery app yourself.

Checklist before you publish

• Shot the full menu in batches by dish type and angle
• Checked each photo at phone thumbnail size
• Exported 1:1 and 16:9 crops from the same master
• Named files with item, date and crop
• Confirmed specs on each platform's upload screen
• Updated photos for changed dishes the same week
• Kept print exports separate from screen exports