The Food Photography Blog

If there’s one thing that the current recession has really affected, it’s the quality of advertising not only by the major brands but more by the smaller advertisers. More and more it can be seen that, rather than spend the money to have professional, creative and quality images shot for their advertising, they are making do with poor quality images that they’ve either shot themselves with their digital camera or had done by a local wedding/portrait photographer or by an employee, relative or friend who is ’studying photography’ or is a ‘photography enthusiast.’

What they don’t seem to realise, however, is the damage poor quality images do to their brand and the ongoing perception their potential customers develop about their business as a result of this temporary saving. Nowhere is this truer than in the food and hospitality industry. Let’s look at a couple of examples. These are sections (with the relevant details omitted to protect the guilty) of advertisements in a glossy magazine. One is for a restaurant and the other for a cooking school.

Now you’d think that for both of them, the crucial message they’d want to communicate was the superior quality of their food. But the images they portray in their ads communication quite the opposite. Let’s take a look at the restaurant ad first. I’ve cropped it down to just the main image because I’m not critiquing the ad as a whole (that’s another matter entirely) but the quality of the image itself.

The first thing that srikes me is that we have fresh seafood left out in the hot sun (and the Queensland sun is very hot). The dish has been placed on a dirty piece of jetty without any covering like a cloth. More importantly, the dish shows a complete lack of styling. I can imagine the scenario when this was taken. First, the chef (or more likely, a sous-chef) prepared the dish just as they would for service. Indeed, they may well have spent even less time on plating it up than they would during service. What they don’t realise, of course, is that whereas a served dish has 3 dimensionality, smell, anticipation as well as a visual presence, a photograph is purely 2 dimensional without any of those assisting aspects. The result, of course, is that we are subconciously much more critical of a food photograph than we would be if the dish itself was placed in front of us (photographs rarely make us salivate, for a start. A dish of food placed in front of us always does!)

Once the chef had prepared the dish, the owner or a waiter/ress carried it out and they placed it on top of a jetty pier (I know this because I know the restaurant). The somebody took a digital pic of it. Because they weren’t a professional food photographer (and by the looks of it, not a photographer at all) they didn’t diffuse the image. The didn’t reduce the contrast ratio of exposed daylight by fill light or reflection. The result is that the highlights are burnt out to pure white and don’t display any texture at all. Now, what’s the main product? Lobster (more accurately, cray). And what colour is the flesh of this product? That’s right, white. And it’s burnt out in the image so there’s no texture to it at all!

Now in truth, this is a fine dining restaurant. It’s in a great location (Noosa locals will know who it is), has white linen covered tables and the food is excellent. But what image of the business does this ad convey? If I didn’t know the restaurant and only had this ad to go on, I’d assume that it was more of a takeaway fish and chippie than a fine seafood restaurant. There’s also a subconcious doubt raised by the seafood being placed in a dirty location and being left out in the hot sun. And the complete lack of food styling makes the whole dish look thrown together and done without care. Now, I know that this isn’t the case as this is one of my favourite restaurants and I’ve eaten there on a number of occasions. But if I were a visitor to Noosa, I wouldn’t seek this restaurant out if I was looking for a fine dining experience. And if I turned up expecting a fish and chip cheapie, I’d be disappointed and somewhat angered by the crisp linen tablecloths and not inexpensive menu. So far from reinforcing a brand value of quality and excellence the advertising has cheapened the brand and introduced a dichotomy between expectation and reality that can only harm the restaurant’s positioning.

Now let’s look at the second ad, one for a cooking school. Maybe it’s me, but I’d have thought that the product for the cooking school is pretty much the same as for a restaurant; that is, the finished food dish. For a school it’s a little more complicated. The food needs to be at the right level of presentation although personally a dish of tortellini doesn’t really make me want to reach for the phone to book. But then, being a Balmain Boy, I’m used to attending workshops by the likes of Chris Manfield, David Thompson, Luke Mangan and others. But I would have thought that anyone wanting to go to cooking classes would already be capable of doing a simply pasta dish. But maybe I’m wrong.

Even if that is the right level of product, I’d still have thought they’d want to make it look as delectable as possible. After all, no-one wants to cook unappetising food, do they? And they certainly don’t want to go to school to learn how to do it - they want to learn how to cook delicious, beautiful-to-look-at-and-to-taste food. So why not show what you offer in all its glory? A large, beautifully styled and presented (although not too complex) dish that would be aspirational to the sort of keen cook that comprises their customers and that says, ‘Just see what you can do when you’ve been to one of our classes!’ would achieve far more in lifting the brand value of this cooking school.

I realise that both these establishments, and many more like them, are facing tough times at the moment. Visitor numbers are down and in the midst of this global financial crisis businesses of all sizes are looking to cut costs. Frankly, our business is no different. However, when you’re looking to cut costs you really do need to look at what you’re cutting and anticipate the effect it would have on your brand. Remember, the recession won’t last forever. But the damage you do to your brand now (and every business has a brand even if they’re unaware of it. And no, it’s not your logo!) will continue to impact on your business for a long time after the recession is over.

Recessions come and go; I’ve been through half a dozen of them over the years, and this one too will come to an end. The best way you  position your business right now to take advantage of the upturn when it comes (and it will) is to ensure the brand values you present in your marketing communications are truly those you will want to go forward with when the good times roll again.

For an example of branding through excellent imagery, view our photography on the cicada group web site.

While we’re primarily known as food and studio still life photographers, we do often get called in for beauty and fashion shoots. Last week we did a beauty shoot in our Noosa studio - 2 girls and 1 guy for a Noosa hair salon, Tachi. The shotes were for entries into a national hair design competition and it got me thinking about the similarities - and the differences - between lighting for beauty and light for food images.

The first similarity is the need for accurate colour. As the hair competition was sponsored by a manufacturer of hair colour products, accurate colour reproduction was essential, just as it always is in shooting food. It’s because we have to reproduce colour accurately when shootinmg food that we use digital strobes that we’ve tested for accurate colour temperatur shot after shot and at varying speeds over their 7-stop range. We use Korean made Hyundae strobes because of their unvarying accuracy.

The second similarity is lighting for form, getting that essential transition from diffused highlight to detailed shadow that conveys depth when a 3D subject is reduced to a two dimensional image.

The major difference is in texture. In beauty photography the essential need is to smooth out the skin texture, reducing or eliminating any blemishes while still maintaining the structure and porousness of the skin and the tactility of the hair. For this purpose I used a 120cm x 80cm double-diffused softbox. I placed a large silver diffuser on top of my studio posing table, angled slight up towards the face area to kick light up into the under-chin area and placed white rolling flats on either side of the models.

The male model was themed as Sweeney Todd so I made small changes to the lighting to increase the contrast on his face slightly more and to pick up the texture of his skin.

When lighting food, however, I frequently want to emphasise its texture more while at the same time controlling the contrast ratio of the image. For this reason I will usually still us a large soft light source but will position it at an angle from the side or rear. I’ll fill the shadows with a low power soft light over the camera lens axis but frequently I will add a harder light source, usually a small Westcott Master’s Brush softobox (designed for portrait photography) to rake the surface of the food and bring the texture out. However, it’s important that the lights are balanced so that to the eye there is only one apparent main light source.

I hope this explains my approach to lighting, whether it’s attractive models or delicious food. Each assignment presents its own unique challenges and formula-lighting just doesn’t cut it. The aim always, though, is to maintain accurate colour and descriptive texture while keeping the images contrast ration within the dynamic range of the output device, whether it’s on a web site or the much more restrictive colour CMYK colour space of offset printing.

What an interesting week. First off we travelled down to Logan to photograph some 70 products for a wholesale baker’s web site. Although they actually sell raw pastry and pastry shells, they wanted to feature yummy looking baked products on their site. Sell the sizzle, not the steak according to the old marketing cliche.

After a hard day’s work we returned to our motel and had a great dinner at Michael’s modern Asian restaurant. Next day we drove down to the Gold Coast to photograph a new product for an old client - Keith’s Foods. The new product was a battered saveloy.

Now these sort of products are not that easy to shoot. It’s not that the lighting is difficult, but that you have to cook and cut open a large number of products to find one that looks great on the outside and on the inside.

 One thing for sure, the life of a food photographer is never boring. You never quite know what’s around the corner. We returned to the studio just before the long weekend to find an enquiry for a recipe book waiting for us. And an exciting one at that. More later….

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed the latest food styling trend that’s been creeping in to the upmarket food magazines lately. I refer to it as “styling that looks like a stylist hasn’t been anywhere near it.” My wife and stylist, Clare, is more succinct. She calls it “splodge styling.”

To put it simply, it’s styling a shot to look like it’s been cooked by Mum and snapped by Dad with his digital point-and-shoot while she’s in the act of serving. The fact that Mum couldn’t cook baked beans without ruining them and all Dad knows about photography is what he’s gleaned from late-night sojourns on porn sites doesn’t matter. The point is to give the impression that the average punter could easily cook, plate and present a dish just as easily as a fully qualifed chef. It’s all part of the dumbing down of our society. People feel they have a right to be able to do something simply because they want to, whether they have any training and experience or not. It’s their right to be able to do it.

So the professionals pander to that perception by producing images that are “splodge on a plate.” If you’re lucky; often the splodge is on the background, again conveying the impression that the dish has been prepared by your average punter.

So it was with great pleasure that, browsing the food magazines in my local newsagency this morning, my eye landed on the latest (June/July 2010) edition of Donna Hay magazine. Recognised for her beautiful food styling - Delores Custer refers to her as one of the most influential stylists in the world - surely Donna Hay isn’t likely to have succumbed to the latest no-styling fad.

And I wasn’t disappointed. The cover shot was a superb image of pasta with pancetta and porcini crumbs. The pasta was beautifully presented, curled, layered with not an end in sight, let alone pointing at the camera. The pancetta and porcini pieces were placed with great care and the parmigiano had obviously not simply been shaken over the top. The dish was presented on a gorgeous blue antique-patterned plate. I sighted with relief and opened the magazine.

Inside the food shots were mostly presented in the by now traditional style of white on white with the front of the dish in focus and the back out of focus to varying degrees. We’ve seen so much of this during the noughties; I’ve been responsible for much of it myself.

But then, as I turned the pages, I came across several images which were presented in the current “splodge” styling. Pieces were cut out of food with crumbs scattered on table top or in the pan or burnt pieces adhered to the inside of a baking dish. Dirty knives were laid across food while milk or cream was artistically splattered on the background.

Then I realised something else; there was a clear difference in some of these images. While some were, clearly, “splodge on a plate” others drew me in to the image, making me want to taste the food that was on that page. And I realised something else - while this type of styling looks deceptively easy; to do it well is really very difficult. And while there are currently very few who do it well, that number can only increase as more stylists embrace the “deliberately unstyled style” as I know refer to it.

Recently completed a shoot at a new Noosa restaurant, the South Pacific Bar & Bistro on Weyba Road, Noosaville. South Pacific style food, including Tahitian Salad, Penang Seafood Curry, Banana Leaf Chicken, and Coconut Prawns. In one morning we prepped and shot four dishes plus a final shot which included all four - and they were preparing for lunch service the whole time. A very difficult shoot - restaurant shoots usually are for a variety of reasons - but I think we pulled it off ok. Now we just have to design their menus, stationery and web site

I just tried some of the Crystal Bay farmed prawns from Proserpine in north Queensland. They are just beautiful; delicate, sweet and tender without any of the toughness or sourness deep sea prawns can sometimes have. So I picked up a brochure and Oh My Goodness it is just so bad. The photography is just apalling, with inconsistent product colours (everything from bright orange to almost colourless), spelling and punctuation errors (the dreaded misused apostrophe!), a couple of really naff recipes and the printing is underinked.

When will food companies realise that the image of their product is indelibly interwoven with the image presented by their marketing collateral? In this case, the story told by the brochure is that the quality of the product is inconsistent; that attention isn’t paid to detail and that the cultivation and packaging is likely to be sloppy.

Now I’m sure this probably isn’t true, but there’s nothing in their communications to tell me that’s the case. Come on guys! Hire specialists to create your marketing materials. You may have to pay more, but at least you’ll be reinforcing the quality of your product rather than undermining it.