Have you ever found that you and your client weren’t speaking the same language when talking about a shoot?
Maybe they told you that wanted a “light and airy” look, but the sample images they showed you were more along the lines of “bright and bold” with highly saturated colors.
Or maybe their idea of “light green” for a backdrop colour was not anywhere close to your idea of light green?
A mood board is a perfect tool for collaborating with a client or a team of creatives. Using one will ensure that you’re on the same page in terms of the desired end result.
Ideally, it’s great if the client provides you with a mood board or other assets to demonstrate what they’re looking for, but often, they just haven’t thought this far ahead. Taking the lead by putting together some sample images to start the conversation is good client service and can go a long way in preventing communication breakdowns.
Sample of a one-page client mood board.
What Is A Mood Board?
Collaboration is crucial in food photography.
Capturing the exact images that your client wants means not only being on the same page with them, it often also involves working with an art director, a food stylist, prop stylist, or other team members to execute the shoot.
One way to help everyone understands the sought after visual aesthetic is to create mood boards.
A mood board is a collection of images gathered together into collage form. They’ re used extensively in design and photography to help define the visual direction of a project. You can send them to all the people involved in the shoot for feedback or collaboration.
A mood board is very helpful when working with clients, but you may also want to create them for your personal projects or shoots. For example, I create several mood boards when I’m planning to shoot images that will fill in the gaps of my web and print portfolios and other promotional assets.
It’s up to you to determine how a mood board can help you get your creative juices flowing.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
There is an old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” When it comes to working with clients, this is especially true.
Language is not the best way to express what the eyes should see. Words like “fun”, “bold”, “clean” are too abstract and can mean different things to you than they do to your client.
Another important point is that people see colour differently. Your idea of “teal” might not be someone else’s idea of teal. Or maybe your clients don’t know the words to describe certain tones within a colour range. Think of mauve and lavender, and how they differ from purple. Creating a mood board focused on colour may be your best course of action.
Colour mood boards are just one option. You can do also create boards based on a specific subject matter, lighting style, propping, or anything else you can think of that will clarify the creative direction of the shoot.
What Should a Mood Board Look Like?
There is no one standard way a mood board should look like. It might be a clean grid of images with a minimal colour palette and refined typography, a loose and layered collage with textures and handwritten notes, or a structured layout with swatches, materials, and reference photography organized into clear sections. What matters most is that it communicates a feeling, a direction, or a visual story clearly enough that anyone looking at it understands the world you’re trying to create.
Mood boards are about inspiration rather than copying. They often contain images or elements that won’t even appear in the final images. The photos are supposed to represent the qualities of the brand or the desired aesthetic.
Start by collecting many pictures that have the elements you want. These include colour, texture, atmosphere, or lighting style. You might pull from magazines, Pinterest, film stills, architecture, nature, or even fabric and packaging — anything that captures the mood you’re reaching for.
When agencies send photographers mood boards, they usually contain 5-15 images. Try to stick to this range for the number of photos in your mood board.
When it comes to mood boards, less is more. Too many images can dilute the essence of the feeling and atmosphere you are trying to get across.
You also may want to make more than one mood board for the client to select from.
Each board should reflect a different brand concept, but it should still align with your understanding of how the images should look in the end, based on the information that has been provided by the client.
Apps to Help You Create Mood Boards
Milanote
There are plenty of apps that can help you create mood boards, but a standout favourite is Milanote.
Milanote, a visual organization and mood-boarding tool, popular with creatives.
Here’s what it does:
Core function: It’s essentially a flexible, freeform canvas where you can drag and drop images, text, links, files, and notes anywhere on the page — think of it as a digital pinboard but more structured and shareable.
What it’s used for:
- Mood boards — Milanote is built specifically with the mood-boarding workflow in mind
- Creative briefs — laying out a project vision for clients
- Campaign planning — mapping out ideas visually
- Style guides and brand boards
- Writing and storyboarding — popular with directors, writers, and photographers
Key features:
- Drag and drop images directly from the web
- Columns, boards, and nested boards to organise projects
- Easy client sharing with a link
- Collaboration in real time
- Built-in templates for mood boards, briefs, shot lists etc.
It’s a brilliant tool for the early, exploratory stage of a project, before you’re ready to make things look beautiful.
The Milanote Interface
Canva
Canva is one of the most accessible and intuitive tools available for creating mood boards, and you don’t need to be a designer to use it.
Start by searching “Mood Boards” within Canva to browse a wide range of ready-made templates, or open a blank whiteboard for a more freeform approach. This gives you an open canvas with no fixed dimensions, so you can arrange images, colour swatches, and text as freely as you like.
You can upload your own images or draw from Canva’s built-in photo library, and the Elements section lets you search for additional inspiration imagery to fill out your board.
From there, use the Grids feature to arrange your photos into clean, structured layouts, and the Crop tool to adjust how each image sits within its space.
If you’re on Canva Pro, the Background Remover tool is particularly useful; it strips the background from product or reference images so everything sits cleanly together.
Once your board is complete, sharing with a client is as simple as sending a link.
Canva Mood Board Template
Pinterest is where most mood board journeys begin, and for good reason. It’s essentially an endless, searchable library of visual inspiration that you can curate entirely to your own taste. To use it as a mood board tool, simply create a new Board, give it a name that reflects your project or client brief, and start saving images.
On Pinterest, saving an image is called “pinning.” You can use Pinterest’s Sections feature to organize your board further, grouping images by theme, colour, or element. This is particularly useful when you’re working across multiple concepts at once.
The search function is powerful and highly visual, making it easy to go down a very specific rabbit hole. Search “dappled light dining table” or “Mediterranean terrace evening,” and Pinterest will serve up an increasingly refined feed the more you engage with it.
It works best as a gathering and exploring tool, a place to cast the net wide before you start editing down.
Once you have a strong collection, you can keep the board private for your eyes only, or share it directly with a client via a link.
Many creatives use Pinterest as the research phase, then bring their refined selection into Canva to produce the final, polished result.
Organize Your Mood Boards
The primary purpose of creating mood boards is to help you curate all the images you collected. Without some organization, it’s easy to end up with hundreds of saved images that are hard to navigate or make sense of. Giving each board a clear, specific name goes a long way.
Rather than saving everything to one general board, consider creating separate boards for different clients, projects, or themes.
If you’re using Pinterest, the Sections feature lets you divide a single board into categories, so everything stays in one place but remains easy to browse.
In Canva, you can create individual files for each project and organize them into folders. The goal is to be able to open a board and immediately understand the direction it represents, without having to scroll through images that no longer feel relevant.
Regularly editing your boards, removing anything that doesn’t quite fit, will keep your creative vision sharp and focused.
Sharing Your Mood Board
Whichever tool you use to build your mood board, sharing it with clients or collaborators is straightforward. Most platforms, including Canva, Pinterest, and Milanote, allow you to generate a shareable link so anyone can view your board without needing an account. This makes it easy to send a mood board directly to a client, a photographer, a florist, or anyone else involved in bringing a project to life, and get feedback quickly before any decisions are made.It’s essential to show your mood boards to your clients when you’re preparing for a photoshoot.
For example, if you’re using Pinterest, go to your profile and click “Boards”.
Now click on the pencil icon at the bottom right corner of the mood board you want to share. Scroll down to “Collaborators” and enter their email. You can also use their Pinterest user name if they have one.
After you enter the email, click “Done”, and Pinterest will send an email or notification to your collaborators.
In Conclusion
When working with a client, creating a mood board may be a process of back-and-forth before a clear direction is settled upon. Once you come to an agreement on creative direction, you can rest assured that you’ll be delivering exactly what your client is looking for.
Of course, mood boards aren’t just for client work. Sometimes the most valuable board you create is the one you keep for yourself, whether you’re planning a shoot, developing your own creative vision, or simply exploring a new direction for your brand.
Building a mood board is the first step toward shooting with intention, and LightShaping: Getting Started with Artificial Light for Food Photography will give you the lighting knowledge to take it from inspiration to execution — get your copy here.
