Restaurant Photography in Montreal: What to Shoot and When

The photos a Montreal restaurant actually needs

Most restaurants shoot too many dishes and too little of everything else. A useful set has four groups: food, room, exterior and team at work. Each answers a different question a potential guest is asking.

For food, shoot your signature plates plus anything that photographs differently from how it reads on a menu. A smoked meat sandwich, a bagel plate, a poutine or a bistro tart all have distinct textures, so each needs its own angle and light. Shoot the dish as it leaves the pass: same portion, same plating, same glassware. If your menu is written in both English and French, shoot dishes that appear under both names so one photo serves both versions of the menu.

For the room, take a wide shot from the entrance, a second from the back corner, and a detail of the bar or a banquette. For the exterior, shoot the facade with the sign legible, ideally at dusk when interior light reads through the windows. For the team, shoot hands plating, a bartender pouring, or a server carrying plates. These photos make a listing feel like a working restaurant rather than a stock image.

• Signature dishes, shot as served, one angle per texture type
• Wide room from two corners plus one detail
• Exterior with legible signage, at dusk if possible
• Two or three candid team-at-work frames

Planning a shoot around service

The best photos come from a kitchen that is not under pressure. Book a two-hour block before opening or between lunch and dinner, and tell the kitchen which dishes are being shot so they can prep components in advance. Plated dishes lose their edge within minutes, so shoot food first and room second.

Build a shot list in menu order, not in the order dishes are easy to make. Batch dishes that share a garnish or a plate so the kitchen can plate them in sequence. Keep a small kit: a tripod or a stable surface, a reflector or a sheet of white foam board to bounce window light, and a cloth to wipe plate rims. Phone cameras are fine if you shoot at eye level or slightly above and avoid digital zoom.

For Google Business Profile, upload the room and exterior shots first, since those are what people see when they search your name. For delivery and ordering platforms, check each platform's upload screen for current requirements rather than relying on old guides.

A seasonal window-light schedule for Montreal

Montreal's daylight swings sharply across the year. Around the June solstice the city gets about 15 h 29 min of daylight and the noon sun reaches about 68 degrees above the horizon. Around the December solstice it gets about 8 h 31 min and the noon sun reaches about 21 degrees. That difference changes which windows are usable and when.

In summer, high sun means direct light through a south or west window is harsh from late morning to late afternoon. Use north-facing windows for soft, even light all day, or shoot near a window with a sheer curtain between roughly 8 and 10 a.m. or after 6 p.m., when the sun is lower and the light is warmer. In winter, the low noon sun reaches deep into south-facing rooms, so a window that is too bright in June becomes a usable softbox in December. Shoot between about 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. for the strongest window light, and use a white board opposite the window to lift shadows on the shadow side of a plate.

Equinox months sit between these extremes: expect usable window light for most of the working day, with the sun moving faster across the room. Whatever the season, check the sun's path for your specific address, since a building across the street can cut hours off your window light.

• June: north window all day, or south/west window before 10 a.m. or after 6 p.m.
• December: south window, roughly 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Spring and fall: most of the day, but move quickly as the sun crosses the room
• Always bounce light back onto the shadow side with a white board

Platform specs and where to check them

Delivery and ordering platforms change their image requirements without much notice, and some do not publish pixel specs at all. For those, the upload screen is the source of truth: upload a test image and see what the crop and warning messages tell you.

This site has spec pages for several platforms in Canada: Uber Eats, DoorDash, BentoBox, Olo, Ritual, Square Online, Toast and Yelp. Skip and SkipTheDishes also operate in Canada. Use the spec pages as a starting point, then confirm on the platform's own upload screen before you batch-export a set of photos.

Keeping photos consistent across listings and channels

A guest may see your restaurant on Google, on a delivery app, on Instagram and on your own site within the same week. Consistent framing, light and color make those four impressions feel like one restaurant. Pick one hero angle per signature dish and reuse it everywhere, rather than letting each platform crop a different photo.

For your own channels, FoodPhoto takes a real photo of your own dish and improves light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social, keeping the food as it is, and returns a kit of sizes including hero, delivery-app sizes, Instagram formats and Google Business Profile. It cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so always check each platform's upload screen.