Food Styling Tips for Sandwiches (Without A Food Stylist)

What foods are the most challenging for you to shoot by yourself? I think this varies for every food photographer, but for me it’s definitely sandwiches. In this post, I decided to challenge myself and made a garden greens sandwich with an oh-so-tasty green goddess dressing. Grab my food styling tips for sandwiches and the recipe below!

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Food Styling Tips for Sandwiches (Without A Food Stylist)

Food Styling Tip 1: Use Fresh Ingredients

This may seem obvious, but using fresh ingredients is super important. I’ve tried grabbing what’s on hand in the fridge and it just doesn’t work out. It’s very obvious when ingredients aren’t fresh in food photo shoots. And, if the food doesn’t look good, the images won’t look good either. Whenever I’m shooting by myself, I either buy ingredients the night before or get up extra early on the day of the shoot to buy the ingredients I need.

Food Styling Tip 2: Get Really Good Bread

For styling sandwiches, it’s important to be selective in the type of bread you choose to use. I chose a multi-grain bread (for texture) that was pre-cut into thicker-than-normal slices (for height).  You could also pick up a variety of bread options to see what will shoot best.

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Read More About: Getting Started in Food Photography

Food Styling Tip 3: Build Layers for Extra Height

The goal with sandwiches is to highlight each ingredient so you can see them. You will probably use more ingredients than normal to achieve this. Styling for the camera is different than plating the food to eat.

Here’s how I approached the layering of this sandwich:

1. I chose a thick slice of bread for the base and placed it on top of a small cutting board for additional height.
2. I added room temperature goat cheese so it was easy to spread smoothly and made sure extra was towards the front of the sandwich so you could see it.
3. I layered in some curvy lettuce greens and thicker avocado slices.
4. I added a thicker slice of tomato and a slice of fresh mozzarella.
5. I added thinly sliced cucumber (I used my mandoline) for some additional thin, curvy layers.
6. I added some green pepper slices.
7. I added some pickled red onions towards the front of the sandwich to make sure their vibrant color was visible.
8. I added more curvy greens and finally topped it with some broccoli microgreens.
9. I used an eye dropper to carefully add the dressing

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Food Styling Tip 4: Use Good Lighting

Lighting the sandwich is really important to make those pretty layers and colors actually show up and not get lost or too dark.

For this shoot, I used natural light and decided to set my camera on my tripod so I could adjust my camera settings for the correct exposure. I set up my sandwich next to a large window where there was lots of natural light hitting the side and front of the sandwich. But, because my camera settings required a slower shutter speed, stabilizing my camera was key to avoid camera shake.

I positioned a diffuser on the window to soften the light on the ingredients without taking away the light. The window and diffuser were to the left of the sandwich. To prevent the opposite side of the sandwich from getting too dark, I also set up a white V-Flat (two pieces of white foam board taped together) on the right side of the sandwich. This helped bounce light back to the right side and created more even lighting over the whole sandwich.

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Read More About: Natural Light Food Photography Tips

Food Styling Tip 5: Use Styling Tweezers (Not Your Fingers)

Styling tweezers are an important tool to have on hand for food styling. It allows you to move little pieces without disrupting the other pieces. I have this food styling kit on hand at my home studio which includes a variety of tweezers and special spoons for manipulating the ingredients. Having a food styling kit on hand (or just some styling tweezers) will help you be much more precise and careful.

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Read More About: Food Styling Tools Every Food Photographer Should Have

Food Styling Tip 6: Practice

The secret to awesome food photography and food styling is PRACTICE. I have struggled with sandwiches for a long time and they rarely make it on my blog because of it. But, I hope these food styling tips for sandwiches provide some guidance to help.

Don’t forget to grab the delicious recipe below!

Happy Shooting!

*This post contains affiliate links which means if you click or make a purchase through my site, I might make a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only promote products that I actually use and support. 

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All images ©Regan Baroni 2018.