This was a fun shoot
Yesterday, I spent a few hours taking some photos for a restaurant chain. They are expanding their catering services and changing up some of their menu items and wanted me to get shots for their website and social media.
I've eaten their multiple times and I really enjoy their food. So when they asked me to take some photos for them, I was pretty excited because I knew I was gonna be able to eat a bunch of food during the shoot and they made sure to hook me up with plenty of food to take home as well.
The shoot did not take place at one of their restaurants, so they brought one of their food trucks with them that served as a mobile kitchen where they cooked all the meat. Their steak tacos are amazing and it was cool to get photos of one of their cooks preparing it. It was pretty cold outside that day and it all of the steam coming off the hot food was pretty cool. I also like the diagonal light in this shot above.
The venue we were at for the shoot was really nice. The venue mainly caters to wedding parties and it was the perfect place to show off the restaurant's catering menu and how they set up for events. They had about six people there to assist me during the shoot. They allowed me to set up the tables where I thought they would look best and rearrange things on the tables to get my shots.
It was a pretty cloudy day and the sun was moving around quite a bit, so we had to move things around during the entire shoot, so it was nice to have people that I could direct and they just moved everything into place for me. It made it a lot easier than trying to get it all done myself.
For this entire shoot, I used natural lighting because it gives the most natural look to everything. Using a flash will change how things look and their colors. You want things the colors to look the same throughout the entire shoot because if a company is using your images for their website, it will need to have a cohesive color palette and you want to make sure the food looks the same throughout the entire site.
I captured some shots of their catering team in action serving the food to someone. For these shots, I wanted to show off the food as well as the service they provide to their customers.
It was pretty cool trying to think of how the images will look on their website as I was shooting. I always get nervous before a shoot when I taking photos in a style I am not familiar with. But as I am shooting and interacting with everyone, I get a lot more comfortable with it all and it starts to get a lot easier to think of different angles. They key is to try and tell some sort of story with each of the shots you take.
A lot of the shots where I have to showcase large amounts of food was pretty challenging. Mainly because the windows had beams across them that cast shadows across everything. If the windows were a lot larger and didn't have beams in them, it would have been so much easier because I wouldn't have had to deal with shadows being on top of different parts of the shot.
To deal with the shadows, I set my camera up to shoot a series of three shots. One shot was perfect exposure, one shot was under exposed and one was over exposed. Then I combined the images in Lightroom and merged them into one image that gave the shot a larger dynamic range. This allowed me to pull more out of the darkest and whitest parts of the images.
They got a shot of me taking the pictures. It was a really cool job and a lot of fun to take pictures in a way that I haven't ever done. It will be cool to see what they do with all the images I took for them. I will be doing another shoot for them soon that will take place at one of their restaurants. That one will be pretty fun to do and it will pose another challenge for me as I try and figure out how to make the best of the light that the place has. It was good to get out and take some different types of photos yesterday.
I hope you enjoyed these shots. The food was really good and I think I am going to warm up some of the queso they gave me and have a snack.
Great photos man, you are very good at food photography too. It's good that they photographed you taking the photos. Wes on the work!
Thanks man. I appreciate it. I enjoyed it a lot. It is a lot better trying to pose food and not humans.
Because they are not moving and stand still 😂
Haha in regards to the shadows, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?! 😂 I've seen my husband achieve some pretty unique poses and ideas in order to get the right shot.
And the food looks incredible! I am unfamiliar, I see guacamole I believe, is it Mexican catering?? 🤤 Mmmm regardless, everything looks amazing! Incredible
Yes it was a Mexican restaurant. They have some of the best steak tacos I have ever had.
Nice shots. As its related to food, they look colourful. THis definitely would be a nice exposure to your career. All the very best for the next photoshoot with them at the restaurant.
Thank you.
That sure looks great. Great job! The photos made me hungry!
Great to see an action pic of you too.
Thank you. The food was so good. It was a really fun shoot.
Ermmmm, the photos just made me hungry. Nice shots, and congrats on the yummy gig.
They made me hungry again after I was done editing them. Good thing I had a lot of stuff to make tacos for dinner.
You did a great job, the photos came out awesome. That food though, I just ate dinner and it's making me hungry 😅. It looks SOOOOOO good. Maybe it's because I'm living in europe and it's hard to find good tacos here, but it looks delicious.
Thank you. The steak tacos and the queso were my favorite.
Damn, it's lunch time and you're making me hungry
I was hungry for most of the shoot. Then I started snacking on stuff between shots.
Damn!
Those pictures are so clean
I’m sure those people will never regret taking you for this job
Thanks. It was a really fun shoot.
Excellent work, and the food looks delish!
Thanks man. All of it was really tasty.
The best part of the shoot
They really did a great job and this food is really getting tempting for me actually
Getting to eat the food is the best part of food photography. My most favorite is definitely the staff in action, it makes a good picture for their restaurant website if they have any.
I love eating during the shoot. I like how the action shots came out too. It was a lot of fun.
Oh.... normal exposed, under exposed, over exposed... and combine them! 😲 this is the first time I hear this!
You must have really steady hands and able to get the perfect angle, or was there a preset where you can just switch without touching the camera in order its position is not compromised?
I used a tripod for the shots where I needed to combine the images into on. It was fun trying to adjust the tripod into the different positions to get other angles.
Nice! I think that must be the way too otherwise you will be the one with the steadiest handa in the world.
It's great to see different work of yours. Your portfolio is expanding!
Muy lindas fotografias ,un lugar muy especial ,gracias por compartirlas amigos saludos desde Venezuela
Thank you
This is awesome dude!
Thanks man. It was such a fun shoot and they hooked me up with so much food.
Great reportage!