Luxury Hotel Food Photography
Welcome to View West Photography, we are a UK based photographic studio, we specialise in all aspects of luxury property photography including hotel photography and resort photography. Now under those headings there are a number of photography skills and services, architectural photography, interior photography, lifestyle photography to name a few. Today I am going to talk about a topic that isn’t always obvious when discussing luxury hotel photography which is food photography.
We have been lucky to work with so many property clients in the hotel and hospitality space, our food photography images are often used to showcase hotel fine dining experiences in everything from magazines to websites, social media and hotel brochures.
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So lets get started:
Before any food photography shoot, I like to find out the size of the menu, I usually communicate with the chef via the hotel marketing manager. On a luxury dining menu you could be looking at photographing approximately twelve dishes which will include starters, main courses and desserts.
Starter Dishes
The reason a hotel client will want their food to be photographed by a professional photographer is usually because there is a new menu being launched or there are seasonal changes in ingredients and the chef wants a new appealing look to the hotel food photography, obviously you can’t present flavours and smells but you can show off different textures and colours to appeal to potential hotel diners, this is important as it will determine if a hotel guest will want to dine and indulge in the hotel restaurant.
I usually try to work pretty quickly as I want the food to look as fresh as possible when it comes out of the kitchen, also you have to take into account of working in between the kitchen service.
Lighting is a big consideration, I like to work with two flash heads, flash heads will give you greater control and consistency over how food photography will look.
I use the Profoto brand, one key light and one fill in flash, the key light will wrap around the dish while the fill light will lift any dark shadows to give an appealing feel to the dish. I like to shoot tethered so I can see the shots coming into the MacBook in real time, this also lets the chef see straight away what we have captured, enabling him to make any last minute changes if necessary. I always like to have a set of chef’s tweezers on set to take out any unwanted garnish or imperfections.
Try to work out what is the hero of the dish, is it the main ingredient? Is it the colours? If there is a sauce to go with the dish, determine whether this will look better being poured rather than sat in a pot beside the plate, be carful as you will only get one attempt at this.
I always ask the chef which way the dish will be presented to the diner, then work out an angle around this.
Main Dishes
Desserts are usually the most beautiful colourful dishes on a hotel luxury menu, think about the colour palette, strawberries can make a wonderful pop of colour on a neutral white plate, desserts are about the little details, sometimes the most beautiful compositions are the shots that are kept simple and let the ingredients shine.
Think about the story you are offering to hotel guests, try and keep a theme connecting a set of images, with this menu photography all the dishes were very different, I decided to keep the backgrounds and plates completely neutral focusing in on the food rather than lots of props, this way they sat alongside each other as a cohesive set of pictures.
Dessert Dishes
Food photography requires patience attention to detail and a lot of practice, hopefully the above provides a few tips and pointers on improving skills within food photography photo-shoots.
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