Food Photography Project: Mandy Thompson

Brief.

Working as a food photographer on some amazing food photography and restaurant photography client projects, you always get lots of creative ideas that you want to try out but might not have had an opportunity to fit into a client shoot.

Having teamed up with talented food stylist Mandy Thompson who I’ve worked with on a load of client food photography bookings.

After a catch up over iced coffee and flakey pasteries, we hashed out a rough plan to develop and shoot a collection of food photography scenes using indie products that we're both passionate about.⁠

Once back at our desks, we both collaborated on a production deck - sharing mood board imagery, recipe ideas and cool products that we both liked and could be developed into the recipes.

Not only did we want to create content that we loved, but these would also great for testing new concepts, and can be great proof of concepts for ideas to pitch to clients.

Approach.

For our brief treatment, I developed these early mood boards and concepts into 3 core shot formats for each of the 3 product recipe scenes; one traditional food photography hero, a product and recipe pairing showing the product as a companion to the food, and graphic imagery - showing all of the texture of the food.

The recipes we settled on were, Rummo Riggatoni with Sausage, tenderstem Broccoli & Chilli, Aagrah Indian chicken wings using their Achari paste, and Al Pastor made with Cool Chile Co. Al Pastor marinade and tortillas.

Once we settled on the recipes and the product pairings, I took care of the art direction. I did this by spending an afternoon at my local food photography prop house and picked out complementary props for each recipe mood board.

The day before the food photography project, Mandy did all of her food styling prep work, so that we could come swinging out of the gates during our session.

During the shoot day, we worked from my home studio to create and dress three different scenes for the products, with different selections of backgrounds and props being used - alongside different types of studio lighting to create very distinct looks.

Once captured, the imagery was then retouched and graded to bring it to the standard of my mood board imagery that inspired the project. We’re both really happy with how the food photography turned out, and it’s great to see it on our portfolios, on socials and used as examples on client projects.