Savannah Menu Photography: A Full-Menu Shooting Plan

Plan the shoot around Savannah daylight

Savannah sits at about 32 degrees north, and that changes your window light a lot between seasons. Around the June solstice you get roughly 14 hours 06 minutes of daylight and the noon sun climbs to about 81 degrees above the horizon, so direct sun through a south or west window is harsh and high for most of the day. Around the December solstice daylight drops to about 9 hours 54 minutes and the noon sun sits at about 34 degrees, which sends low, long light deep into rooms and makes late-morning and early-afternoon the usable window.

A workable seasonal schedule: in summer, shoot between 9 and 11 a.m. or after 4 p.m. on a north-facing window, and use a white foam board opposite the window to bounce light back onto the shadow side of the plate. In winter, the low sun can come straight through a south window, so shoot mid-morning and diffuse the window with a sheet of tracing paper taped to the frame. In spring and fall, the sun sits between those extremes and a north window gives soft, even light for most of the working day.

Keep a fixed camera position for the whole batch. A 45-degree angle shows height on stacked dishes like a burger or a slice of layer cake, while a straight overhead shot at 90 degrees suits flat plates such as a seafood platter or a spread of sides. Pick one angle per menu category and stay with it so the printed menu and the QR menu read as one set.

• Summer: north window, 9 to 11 a.m. or after 4 p.m., white board as a reflector
• Winter: south window diffused with tracing paper, mid-morning
• Set white balance manually once per session and keep it for the batch
• Shoot a gray card or white napkin in the first frame to correct color later

Batch shooting a full menu in one or two sessions

Shooting dish by dish on different days is the main reason menus look uneven. Group the menu by how the food behaves on camera. Cold items such as salads, oysters or a shrimp cocktail lose their edge fast, so shoot them first and in small numbers. Hot fried items, barbecue plates and seafood baskets should be plated one at a time and shot within a minute or two of leaving the kitchen, because steam fogs the lens and fried crusts soften.

Build a shot list from the actual menu, not from memory. Print the POS or menu export, number every item, and tick each one off as it is shot. Include modifiers that appear as separate orderable items on delivery apps, such as a side choice or an add-on protein, because a missing photo on a modifier makes the listing look incomplete.

Work in batches of eight to twelve dishes per session with one person plating and one person shooting. That pace keeps food hot enough to photograph and gives you time to check each frame on a laptop before moving on. Reserve a second session for desserts, drinks and any item that needs a prop change, such as a cocktail glass or a to-go container.

Naming files so the menu and the photos stay in sync

Decide on one naming pattern before the first shot and write it on the shot list. A pattern like category_item_version_date, for example seafood_shrimp-and-grits_v2_2025-03, lets anyone on staff find the current photo without opening folders. Avoid spaces and special characters, and never leave a file called IMG_4471 in the final set.

Keep a simple spreadsheet as the master record: menu item name, POS code, photo file name, the date it was shot, and which channels use it. When a dish changes, the spreadsheet tells you which files to reshoot and which listings to update. This matters in the United States, where restaurant chains with 20 or more locations must show calorie counts for standard menu items, and FDA guidance covers online menus as well as menu boards. A photo has to match the item the calories describe, so a reshoot is not just a cosmetic choice when a portion or recipe changes.

• One naming pattern, applied to every file from day one
• Keep the original unedited file next to the edited version
• Log the shoot date for every item so you know what is stale
• Archive retired dishes instead of deleting them

Sizing photos for print, QR menus and delivery apps

The same dish needs different crops for each channel. A printed menu usually wants a landscape or square image that holds detail at small size, while a QR menu opened on a phone needs a square or vertical crop that survives a narrow screen. Delivery app tiles are small and often square, so shoot with space around the plate and crop later rather than framing tight in camera.

For platform-specific sizes, check the spec pages on this site before exporting: they cover Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub and BentoBox for the United States. Where a platform does not publish pixel specs, check the upload screen in the merchant portal, since the requirements shown there are the ones that apply to your account. Export each dish at 1:1 for app tiles, 16:9 for website banners and hero images, and a vertical 4:5 for social posts.

Keep one high-resolution master per dish and generate the channel crops from it. If you crop down from a phone screenshot or a compressed copy, the QR menu image will look soft on a large phone screen.

Updating photos when the menu changes

Set a monthly review: open the spreadsheet, compare it to the current menu, and flag any item whose photo is older than the recipe, portion or plating. Seasonal specials, price changes that come with a new portion size, and rebranded packaging all justify a reshoot. In Savannah, where the coastal menu shifts with what is available, the seafood items are the ones most likely to drift out of date.

When you reshoot, replace the file using the same naming pattern and bump the version number, then update every channel that uses it: the printed menu file sent to the printer, the QR menu, the delivery app listings and the website. A single shared folder with the current master images prevents staff from uploading an old photo by mistake.

FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social, keeping the food as it is, and every photo comes as a kit of sizes. It cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so always confirm the final crop in the merchant portal before publishing.