Liebre Creativa

Weekend Hashtag Project: #WHPcolorfulcooking

Weekend Hashtag Project is a series featuring designated themes and hashtags chosen by Instagram’s Community Team. For a chance to be featured on the Instagram blog, follow @instagram and look for a post announcing the weekend’s project every Friday.

The assignment this weekend is to take pictures of healthy dishes using colorful ingredients. The goal is to capture surprising combinations of food that look good and taste good. This week’s project takes inspiration from the food-themed Instagram account @nourishandevolve, run by 16-year-old chef Tina Gan from Melbourne, Australia.

“I’ve been fascinated with cooking ever since I was little, and my Asian roots had a deep impact on this,” says Tina, who was born in China. “All the women in my family are very capable cooks. I started @nourishandevolve in 2013 because I thought it would be fun to occasionally document the food I ate. I never realized that the community would become so big and powerful.”

Beyond igniting a passion for photography, Tina’s culinary adventures have given her a deeper appreciation for the relationship between food and health.

“I’ve become more aware of what I’m putting in my mouth,” says Tina. “When creating a recipe, I always try to use ingredients that are easy to source and are full of nutrients.”

Here are some tips to get you started from Tina:

“Play around with the placement of the food. Don’t always place it dead center. Try and use some props to fill up the empty spaces in the photo - cutlery, linen and raw ingredients all work great.”

“Always use natural lighting. Try taking your food photos next to a window during the day when there is plenty of light. If you’re seeing a lot of shadows, try using a reflector to bounce light back onto your food — this can be just a piece of aluminum foil or a piece of white paper.”

“Having a variety of colorful ingredients always helps, but it also matters how you assemble the dish. Sometimes the messiness is what makes the photo. But wipe down the sides of the plate to get rid of the splatters, if required.”