Food photography

Dishes that sell even as a thumbnail

Square frames on black for the menu and the catalogue, finished ready to publish. The frame that has to work is rarely the full-screen one — it is the card in a delivery app, recompressed by someone else at a fraction of the size it left here.

Why square, why black

One file, three jobs

These are the sizes the same photograph is actually served at on this page. Nothing is mocked up — each is a real crop at its own pixel size. A frame composed for the first one and left to fend for itself in the third is the usual way a menu ends up looking cheap.

  1. Caesar salad with prawns, quail eggs, cherry tomatoes, croutons and grated parmesan, shot from above

    On the page

    Where the detail is judged: the sear, the crumb, the shine on the sauce.

  2. Menu card

    The size a customer actually chooses from. The dish has to be readable in one glance.

  3. In the cart

    Down here only silhouette and colour survive. Everything else was decided before the shutter.

The set

Sixteen dishes, one service

Fried chicken wings in spicy red glaze with sliced green onion, stacked on a black reflective surface
Golden fried potato wedges piled on a black reflective surface
Shakshuka with eggs in tomato and pepper sauce, topped with green onion, served with white bread slices
Caesar salad with prawns, quail eggs, cherry tomatoes, croutons and grated parmesan, shot from above
Tagliatelle bolognese with cherry tomatoes, basil and grated parmesan on a black plate, shot from above
Slice of classic cheesecake with drops of berry sauce, shot from the side
Tiramisu slice with cream layers, ladyfingers and cocoa dusting on a black reflective surface
Ukrainian borscht in a clay bowl with sour cream, garlic bun and sliced salo, on an embroidered towel
Slice of Napoleon cake with custard cream layers and puff pastry crumbs, on a black reflective surface
Creamy chicken and mushroom salad topped with grated cheese, tomato wedges and fresh basil
Slice of pistachio cheesecake topped with chopped pistachios, with dots of cream, shot from the side
Scrambled eggs on rye toasts with arugula, cherry tomatoes and mushroom salad on black slate, shot from above
Golden french fries piled on a black surface with a mirror reflection
Four-tier white wedding cake with fresh flowers and a green ombré tier, on a black background
Four-tier pink and white birthday cake with Happy Birthday topper, doll figure and sprinkles
Green birthday cake with dinosaur gingerbread toppers, chocolate truffles and a number five

How it is shot

A kitchen sets the clock

  1. The dish has minutes

    Steam settles, cream slumps, herbs wilt, ice sweats. The light is built and metered before the plate leaves the kitchen — the frame is exposed while the food is still what the kitchen sent out.

  2. Sixteen frames, one shoot

    A menu is looked at as a set, not as single pictures. Height, angle, exposure and colour hold across the whole service — a salad and a dessert sit on one page and neither looks borrowed.

  3. Black, so it can go anywhere

    Isolating a dish on black instead of dressing a table costs the scene — and buys reuse: one file drops into a dark menu, a light catalogue card and a marketplace listing without fighting the layout.

  4. It has to survive somebody else

    The file will be recompressed by a CMS, re-encoded by a delivery app, cropped by a marketplace. Contrast and detail are placed so the dish still reads after all three — a different decision from one beautiful full-screen frame.

  5. Retouching that stops in time

    Crumbs, fingerprints on glass, a stray drip — removed. The shape of the portion, the colour of the sauce and the amount on the plate stay as served: a frame that oversells the dish is a complaint already waiting at the table.

The process

Six steps around the kitchen

  1. Brief

    The menu, the number of dishes and where the frames go: the site, a delivery app, print. This decides the format and the number of shooting days.

  2. The day plan

    The serving order is agreed with the chef: cold and stable dishes first, hot and melting ones onto a ready-built light. The kitchen works at its own pace; the shoot adapts.

  3. Light

    The setup is built and metered on a test plate before the first real serving. From then on it does not change — which is what keeps the set uniform.

  4. Shoot

    The dish leaves the kitchen and goes straight into the frame while it is alive. Several angles per item, checked on a large screen rather than the camera back.

  5. Selection

    A first cut goes out for your choice before retouching — hours of processing do not sink into frames that will not be used.

  6. Retouching and delivery

    Clean-up, colour, crops for each platform. Full resolution plus web sizes; the delivery date is agreed before the shoot.

More work

Other shoots

All 7 photography projects

Also shot

The rest of the camera work

  1. Interiors

    The room the food is served in — straight verticals, windows that keep their view, and one colour of light in a space lit by three sources.

  2. Product photography

    The same discipline applied to things that are not edible: catalogue frames shot to one specification so a whole range looks like a range.

Questions

Before you write in

In or next to the venue's kitchen, with its own light. Dishes are shot in the minutes after plating, so a studio across town is not an option. What the venue provides: a table near the kitchen, a socket, and the cook working as usual.

It depends on the plating and the kitchen's pace: a salad and a dessert with one arrangement go faster than a hot dish assembled for the frame. The estimate is made against your menu — before booking, together with the quote.

Yes, and for a venue that is the usual order: the room before opening, the dishes when the kitchen is ready to serve. One visit, two sets of files. More about interiors — on the interior photography page.

Yes. In Kharkiv there is no travel charge; a shoot in another city is agreed before booking, together with the estimate.

The date depends on the amount of retouching and the number of crops — it is named before the shoot and fixed in the quote. The selected frames you see right after the shooting day.

Start

Send the menu

How many dishes and where the frames go — the site, a delivery app, a printed menu, or all three. That decides the format and the number of shooting days; both are quoted before booking.

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