Monday, April 27, 2015

Photographer as Food Stylist

More and more these days it seems that clients expect food photographers to act as food stylists. I'm not talking about the really difficult jobs like ice cream or packaging shots but smaller clients will hand you a job and expect it to just get done. The image above was one such job. I was duplicating something that someone else had shot with new product. My first job was to go grocery shopping. I needed to hit 2 or three stores before I found similar breads to the original image. The only thing I could not find was the third from the left. The original was some kind of cheese bread. I thought that baked shredded parmesan would look better so I made some. The rest of the job was made up of selecting, slicing and daubing until things looked good. Of course, the final work to be done was all in Photoshop. My client asked me to bend the herb around the salami: Photoshop. She asked for less fat and more meat: Photoshop. Thicker almond slices: Photoshop and corrected angles for the pecans: Well, you get the idea.
In the end this job required a food stylist, photographer and retoucher. All me. I did get paid well though. And it was all just fun!

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Belmont Foods


Belmont Foods is rapidly becoming my favorite clients. Not only have they been sending me jobs to shoot but all of the food they send to photograph is absolutely yummy!
The hardest part is making sure that I have enough product to shoot before I eat it all.
I just kind-of fell into food photography 25 years ago but it's got to be the most fun of any photography out there...