Portfolio
Shot for the feed, the campaign and the room
Feed and advertising photographs carry a harder job than menu photographs, because they have to build appetite in someone who is not in your restaurant and is moving fast. I shoot vertical and square from the first frame, style every plate on set, and hand you a set your team can schedule instead of improvising every week.
There is a burst of strong photographs right after an opening or a menu shoot, and then a slow decline into phone snaps taken during service, because somebody has to post something today.
Usable frames from one shooting day, which is six weeks of daily posting.
Dishes covered on a content day, each shot in several formats.
Production day instead of five rushed evenings, and the result looks like one restaurant.
The same food as your menu, photographed under different rules. Moodier light, tighter crops, steam and movement where they earn their place, and vertical framing so the platform does not crop your best frame into nonsense.
Cocktails, wine and coffee carry a feed better than food does. They photograph beautifully and they are what people screenshot when they are deciding where to meet on Friday.
Hands, service, the pass, your chef working. Nobody chooses a restaurant on plated food alone, because they are also deciding whether the room looks like somewhere they want to spend an evening.
Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub crop to their own shapes and reward a clean, bright, unambiguous picture of exactly what arrives at the door. These are shot as a separate set, because a moody campaign frame performs badly there.
Where photographs go into advertising we shoot with the format already in hand, leaving space for text, producing a version without it, and covering square and vertical. You get enough variations to test properly.
Pour shots, cutting, steam, a plate coming together. Filmed on the same day on the same set, because a second production day means cooking everything twice and paying twice for the same food.
We start from your calendar rather than your menu, work out how many pieces of content the day owes you, and only then choose which dishes get cooked. Each dish is shot several ways rather than once.
Usable posts from one plate and one lighting setup: a clean vertical, a tighter crop for stories, a version with space for a caption, and a horizontal frame for the website.
Menu photographs stay honest, quiet and tight, because they sit beside a price. Feed and campaign photographs are allowed to seduce, because their job is desire rather than description. Many restaurants book both in one visit.
Every frame goes onto the screen the moment it is taken, while the dish is still on set. You say what is wrong and it is changed right there, so nothing leaves the shoot unapproved.
Reshoots requested by a client in twenty years of working this way.
Send me what you are pushing next month and how often you publish, and I will come back with how many pieces of content one day would produce for you and what it costs. If none of that is decided yet, send the menu and we will work it out together from there.
We build a shot list together, then I select props and backgrounds for your dishes.
I arrive with lighting and props and shoot right in your dining room before opening.
I select the strongest shots myself and send you a finished gallery.