Menu Photography in Paris: A Consistent Full-Menu Workflow
A Paris menu usually lives in three places at once: the printed carte, a QR menu and at least one delivery app. Photographing every dish the same way, in one controlled batch, is what stops those three surfaces from looking like three different restaurants. This guide covers the light, the shooting order, the file naming and the maintenance routine.
Plan the shoot around Paris daylight, not around your service
Paris daylight swings hard across the year. Around the June solstice you get about 15 h 58 min of light and the noon sun sits about 65 degrees above the horizon; around the December solstice it is about 8 h 02 min and the noon sun is only about 18 degrees. That changes what window light can do for a plate.
In summer, the high sun means a north-facing window gives soft, even light for most of the working day, and a south-facing window throws hard patches that move fast. Shoot between 10:00 and 14:00 near a north window, or bounce a low summer sun off a white wall. In winter, the low sun rakes almost horizontally through south and west windows, which is beautiful for a hero shot but produces long shadows across a plate. Use those windows in late morning and keep a white card on the shadow side.
Build a seasonal schedule: deep menu batches in late spring and early autumn, when daylight is long and the sun angle is moderate; small refresh shoots in midwinter, restricted to the 10:00 to 14:00 band. Avoid shooting after 16:00 from November to February, when window light in Paris is too weak and too orange for consistent color across a menu.
- June: north window, 10:00 to 14:00, white card opposite the light
- December: south or west window, 10:00 to 14:00, flag the direct sun with a diffuser
- Never mix window light and overhead kitchen light in the same batch
Set one camera position and reuse it for every dish
Consistency comes from repeating the same geometry, not from repeating the same preset. Pick a table by the window, mark the tripod or phone position with tape, and shoot every dish from that spot.
Use a 45-degree angle for most plates so the diner sees both the surface and the height of the food. Drop to a straight overhead 90 degrees for bowls, salads, tartes and anything served in a round dish where the pattern matters. Use a low 20 to 30 degree angle only for tall items such as a burger or a stacked dessert, and use it for all of them so the menu does not jump between perspectives.
Keep the camera roughly 40 to 60 cm from the plate for a single portion, and step back for sharing platters. Lock exposure and white balance once, then do not touch them for the rest of the batch. If your phone has a grid, turn it on and keep the plate centered; you can crop to 1:1 for app tiles and 16:9 for a website hero from the same master file.
Batch the menu by station and by dish family
Shooting a whole carte in one day is possible only if you group dishes so the kitchen can plate them in waves. Group by station: all cold starters and salads together, all pastry and desserts together, all hot mains together. Within each group, shoot the plainest dish first so you can check light and focus before the sauced, garnished plates arrive.
Ask the kitchen to plate each dish exactly as it leaves the pass, including the garnish and the sides that are actually served. A photo that shows an ingredient the dish does not contain is a problem beyond looks: 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 the mandatory information must be available before the purchase is concluded. Photos never replace that information, so keep the plate honest and keep the allergen data in the menu text.
Shoot five to eight dishes per wave, then stop and review on a laptop or tablet rather than on the phone screen. Look for the same shadow direction, the same background and the same color temperature across the wave before you move on.
- Cold plates first, hot plates last, desserts after service prep
- One clean background for the whole menu: a plain wall, a neutral board or a linen cloth
- Wipe the rim and remove stray crumbs before every frame
Name files so the menu, the QR code and the apps stay in sync
A menu changes more often than a photo library does, and mismatched files are how a QR menu ends up showing last season's plating. Adopt a naming convention before the first shot: section, dish name, version date, for example entrees_steak-frites_2025-03. Keep the master file and the exported sizes in the same folder structure.
Keep a simple spreadsheet that lists each dish, its section, its price status, its allergen sheet reference and the date its photo was last shot. When a dish changes, you update one row and one file. When a dish is removed, you archive its photo rather than delete it, because seasonal dishes often return.
Export from the master rather than re-cropping by hand: 1:1 for app tiles, 4:5 or 1:1 for Instagram, 16:9 for a website header and a print-resolution file for the carte. Check each platform's current upload screen for its accepted sizes and file limits, since those change. Spec pages on this site cover Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Yelp for France.
Keep photos in sync with the menu, season by season
Set a review rhythm that matches how your menu actually moves. If the carte changes with the market, review photos monthly; if it changes twice a year, review at each change. The trigger should always be the same: a new dish, a changed garnish, a changed portion or a changed price on the printed menu.
When a dish is re-shot, replace the file everywhere at once: the delivery app listing, the QR menu, the website and any printed material scheduled for reprint. Do not leave an old photo on one surface and a new one on another; diners compare.
Note where AI-generated or altered images are not accepted. Deliveroo do not accept AI-generated or altered images, so there the merchant uploads their own real photo. Never describe an image as approved by a platform before it is live. For the restaurant's own channels, such as the website menu, Instagram, a QR menu, Google Business Profile or print, FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop, keeping the food as it is, and delivers every photo as a kit of sizes.
Checklist before you publish
- Mark one window table and one camera position before the first plate arrives
- Shoot in a 10:00 to 14:00 window and check the seasonal sun angle first
- Lock exposure and white balance once per batch
- Plate every dish exactly as served, garnish included
- Name each file by section, dish and date
- Export 1:1, 4:5 and 16:9 from the same master
- Update app, QR menu and website in the same session
- Archive removed dishes instead of deleting them
Questions
How do I photograph a whole restaurant menu in one day?
Batch by station and by dish family rather than by menu order. Shoot cold starters together, then hot mains, then desserts, in waves of five to eight plates. Keep one camera position and one background for the entire day so the resulting images look like a set, and review each wave on a larger screen before continuing.
What is the best time of day to shoot food with window light in Paris?
Roughly 10:00 to 14:00 works in most months. In summer the sun is high (about 65 degrees at noon around the June solstice), so a north-facing window stays soft and even. In winter the sun is low (about 18 degrees at noon around the December solstice), so use south or west windows in that band and diffuse direct sun. Avoid late afternoon from November to February.
Do delivery app photos need to match the printed menu photo?
They should show the same plating and the same garnish, because diners compare the app tile with what arrives. The crop can differ: a square tile for the app, a wider image for a website header. What should not differ is the food itself, and the allergen information must stay available before the purchase is concluded regardless of which photo is used.
How often should I re-shoot menu photos?
Whenever a dish, its garnish, its portion or its price changes, and at least at each seasonal menu change. Keep a dated file list so you can see which photos are older than the current carte, and replace the image on every surface at the same time.