Food photography is a still life specialization of commercial photography, aimed at producing attractive photographs of food for use in advertisements, packaging, menus or cookbooks. Professional food photography is a collaborative effort, usually involving an art director, a photographer, a food stylist, a prop stylist and their assistants. For a long time, food photographs tended to be shot and composed the way people were used to encountering their food: laid out on a table setting and shot from an overhead perspective, in example, from the point of view of the eater. Stylists accordingly arranged the food to appear good from above, with the items arranged flat on the plate and clearly separated from each other. Later, romantic lighting, shallower angles and more props came en vogue. Most recently, the prevailing trend in Western commercial food photography is to present the food as simple, clean and naturally as possible and with little props, often using effects such as selective focus, tilted plates, and extreme close-ups. This complements trends in professional cooking to make the food more visually interesting. Photos of food in advertising even become the subject of public debate because the advertisements often exaggerate the attractiveness and size of the food, which is most pronounced in the area of fast food. This graduate work theoretically analyzes photos of food from the technical and syntactical standpoint, and is placed in the cultural aspect. Based on theoretical knowledge, in the practical part of the work photos of food are taken and analysed. The aim of thesis is to determine the elements that affect the perception of the food and its cultural significance. Photos of food not only convey information, they also have extremely large cultural influence and participate in the formation of a lifestyle of today's society.