I love shooting with restaurants, not only do I get to photograph a variety of awesome food, I also get to collaborate with some amazing chefs. This beautiful crusted salmon fillet on cedar planks was taken on a 6 day food photography shoot for Masso, in Bahrain. At first the chef was a little hesitant about my idea to plate the fillet directly on the planks, because that is not how the customer sees it. However after seeing the image, that is when the chef and I really started having fun.
Food Photography Of The Day
A photographer recently asked in the We Eat Together Facebook Group for advice on shooting restaurants. People have givne a lot of great answers there, but I thought I would create a short bullet point list of my own for you today. I think later I'll expand this into a much larger article, but for now here is my advice.
- Bring a mood board of your images to pin-point exactly what style the chef, marketing manager and or owner like
- Realistically go over the amount of images you can create in a day. I say 45 mins per shot, it might not take that long depending on the food but 45-60min gives you a buffer if you need
- If you have an idea for styling stick to it. Remember they are paying you for your creativity too.
- Find a place in the restaurant where you can have a bit of privacy
- Turn off overhead lighting or use a high shutter speed and strobes to over power the restaurant lighting
- Talk to the chef, find out their interests, what kind of photography they like, collaborate with them, ask them the story behind the dish and try to incorporate this into the photography
There is so much more I want to say on this topic, but those are my go to basics when working with new restaurant clients. I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!