Tag Archives: food styling tips

Two Minute Noodles with Broccolini and Almonds styled and photographed for Amazing Almonds.

What is food styling? Is it the artful placing of a garnish, the careful drizzle of some sauce, the precise placement of food to best display its charms? Well yes, it’s all those things but it’s so, so much more, too.

Denise Vivaldo Food Intensive

A few weeks ago I attended a two-day food styling workshop at Sydney Cooking School with visiting American super food stylist Denise Vivaldo. Denise has been in the food styling business for 30 years  and has an enormous amount of knowledge about both food styling techniques and the business of food styling. She’s down to earth and funny, too, so the days passed quickly and happily.

It was the first time such a comprehensive food styling workshop had been held in Australia and I felt fortunate to be one of only a dozen attendees able to attend. There were some Sydney-siders of course, but people had also travelled from interstate (like myself), Singapore and New Zealand to attend the workshop. Some attendees were already working successfully in the food/media/advertising industries while others hoped the course would help kick-start their food styling careers.

I was a food blogger before branching out into paid recipe development, food styling and food photography work. So learning about the world of commercial food styling, and in particular, food styling for advertising and packaging, was fascinating to me.

In this world, the food has but one job: to look as appetising as it possibly can for the camera. A good photo can change the fortunes of a company so how the food tastes, or indeed, if it is even edible, is unimportant.

To achieve the desired ‘hero’ shot, commercial food stylists use a whole range of tools and tricks to enhance and manipulate food. I was pleased to learn that some of the techniques I’d figured out myself were staple devices but a lot of the techniques commonly used when styling food for television, packaging or advertising went far beyond my usual styling methods. The trend in Australian food styling is for a very natural look, too, and this has undoubtedly influenced my own technique.

Hamburger and chips styled by Denise Vivaldo. Photograph by Dario Milano

Over the course of the two day workshop we learned to style a whole range of common dishes and drinks, including burgers, ice cream, dessert, soup noodles, and a roast chicken.

Roast chicken styled by Denise Vivaldo. Photograph by Dario Milano

Boy, that roast chicken looks enticingly good, doesn’t it? Perfectly browned and seasoned – I want to sink my teeth into a juicy leg right now. Unfortunately eating this chicken would give me at best a very sore tummy as it’s only been cooked for 10 minutes. Underneath that seemingly perfectly roasted exterior the chicken is raw.

Commercial food stylists often use undercooked or semi-raw meat in food photography because it looks better than fully-cooked food. If you fully cook a chicken (or indeed any type of meat), the meat shrinks and dries out so you lose the plump and juicy look of it. Have a look next time you’re roasting a chicken and you’ll see what I mean. So Denise has devised a method to emulate roasted meat that looks just like the real thing.

After Denise worked her magic on a chicken we were invited to give it a go ourselves.

This is my finished chicken below. What do you think?

Over lunch one of the ladies in my workshop, Anna brought up the question of ethics of food styling. Like me, Anna favours a natural approach to food styling and she wondered whether creating a heavily stylised version of a dish for photography was somehow dishonest.

In my (biased) opinion? No. Assuming a recipe had been thoroughly tested all the stylist is doing is making the food look its best for the shot. That’s the job of a food stylist, just like it’s the job of a make up artist, hair dresser and clothes & accessories stylist to make a model look his or her best for a fashion shoot.

Having said that, every recipe I’ve ever made for this blog has been edible. I cook, style and shoot the food, and then we eat it. But as a blogger I have the luxury to scrap a blog shoot if I’m not happy with the photos. As a freelancer with a busy schedule I don’t usually have this option – I have to be able to deliver the goods. This is where commercial food styling techniques can be extremely helpful if not invaluable.

Check out this video made by McDonalds to answer a customer’s question: “Why does your food look different to the food on the ads?”

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The Business of Food Styling

I still have a long way to go in terms of my food styling technique but I have picked up a few things about the business of food styling and and am more than happy to share them. So with thanks to Denise and the other food stylists and photographers who have generously contributed to this post, here are my top tips and resources.

Brownies styled by Sally Parker. Photograph by Gerry Colley.

12 Tips for New, Emerging and Aspiring Food Stylists

Can’t you almost smell the orange in that photograph above? That gorgeous image was taken by Grant Nowell, a multi award-winning professional photographer based in Adelaide.

I first met Grant when he was a presenter at the 3rd Australian Food Bloggers Conference. Afterwards Grant was kind enough to give me a few pointers and over the past few months I’ve appreciated his advice and support. I recently worked on the redesign of his portfolio website, too.

Grant has a wealth of knowledge about photography,  food photography and food styling so I was thrilled when he agreed to share some of his food photography tips and stories with us today.

Everyone, meet Grant!

C: Grant, when did you first become interested in photography and why?

G: When I was a teenager I hated school mainly because it offered no artistic subjects and I always felt quite creative. To balance my appalling applied science subjects I bought a secondhand camera with one lens and started shooting anything that moved. Instead of spending money on cigarettes and girlfriends I bought an enlarger and trays and set up in my dad’s garden shed. In 1974 I gave a few fairly bad black and white prints to a local newspaper for possible publication. To my amazement they published a few of the pictures. I then got lucky because they were just about to employ a cadet and ending up offering me the job.

How did you end up at a News Limited newspaper?

I spent the next 15 years working all over Australia and abroad and then I started breeding and had two gorgeous kids. I always had a love of the lifestyle, food and wine culture of Adelaide so I contacted the editor of The Advertiser and within a few weeks I was offered a job as a senior photographer. In 1992 I was appointed pictorial editor offering pictorial advice and management for the 30 photographers and darkroom staff and The Advertiser was the first News Ltd paper in the group to publish full colour pictures every day. Three years later I was appointed senior feature photographer: my main responsibility was to shoot all their food and wine images as well as fashion and other feature material.

What do you shoot with? 

I have a Nikon D700 that I use with the Nikkor f2.8 24-70mm lens (a fantastic all round lens) and the Nikkor 60mm macro lens. Apart from my first cameraI have always been a Nikon person. These days most of the big name cameras are quite brilliant but the stand out brands are Nikon and Canon. A good photographer will always get pretty cool pix even with a crappy camera but it’s the opposite for a photographer who just struggles pictorially – give them $20K worth of gear and they will still struggle and come up with culinary train wrecks.

What do you edit your photos with?

I don’t edit or enhance my pictures too much, I prefer to get things pretty right through the camera. I occasionally use Photoshop to improve or clean up an image or get rid of some grains of pepper or some stray spots of olive oil that I missed on the plate.

What gear or accessories do you always have in your camera bag?

I always have spare charged batteries and a cheapish spare camera body just in case my main Nikon baby crashes – a photographer’s worst nightmare is not being able to take pictures. I also carry another bag full of duct tape, bulldog clips, bits of white plastic I use to reflect light onto food, a few of my favourite plates which make even rotten food look brilliant, some pieces of material, toothpicks to stick into food so you can hold in position and a towel to clean up.

You once told me you can ‘read light’. What did you mean by this and why is this ability so important as a photographer?

Photography only exists because of light – you can’t shoot anything in total darkness. Whenever I’m on a shoot the first thing I always do is quietly walk around the space and see how the light is flowing out of windows, skylights or doorways. I use natural light so I always turn off any artificial light like fluorescent and down lights.

I read the natural light to see if it’s reflecting colors off interior walls. Available light is almost like water rushing out of a hose – it floods in a window or door, hits the walls and ceiling then comes back at you and your camera. A good way to read light is to hold your hand up and just look at you skin tones: if it looks natural then the light is pretty clean but if it has a tinge to it it’s time to grab your food and move.

I once had a major shoot at a Thai restaurant with a big reputation but the restaurant space was a pictorial nightmare with down lights and no natural light. I went for a walk to see how I could get beautiful food shots and found brilliant subdued available light in the toilet next to the wash basin. So  I set up a few boxes with my backdrop in place and off I went! The executive chef thought I was completely insane as I took his food into the men’s bathroom and I could hear him yelling out some exotic Thai swear words. After I finished the first dish I went and showed the chef the image to calm him down. He loved the image of his food – his smile lit up the kitchen and he stopped swearing.

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