Food photography
Everyone has probably noticed that food almost always looks better in photos than it does in real life. Such is the harsh truth of life - everything is a lie :) Everyone has had a case when you see an advert for McDonald's and their new burger, order it, and in reality you are served something very remotely resembling the delicious burger from the poster, right? - It's all the work of a professional food photographer. I think that each of you will agree that food photography today plays a big role in the food industry. Whether it's a restaurant, cafe, food delivery company or pub, everyone needs beautiful and creative food photography.
What is food photography?
Food photography is a genre of photography in which the main hero of the photo frame is food (who would have thought). At the same time, food photography is divided into several areas: food photography for cookbooks, for restaurants, for billboards, for product packaging, for social media...
Professional food photography is a rather complex process that requires the photographer to understand the processes of food preparation, serving, combination of products with each other. And one should not forget about the vision of composition, observation and experience. All this distinguishes a professional food photographer from an amateur.
The main task of food photography is to trigger the salivation process in the viewer and encourage them to buy a particular product.
Some dishes are extremely difficult to photograph. You may have heard of the tricks for food photography that food stylists and food photographers use when shooting adverts. For example: instead of ice cream, they shoot a specially prepared substance consisting of starch, shower gel and colouring. The thing is that ice cream melts very quickly, especially under the light used in photography. And if you take a picture of real ice cream, the photographer has literally a few seconds to take the shot. But when it comes to a large commercial project and a complex shot, it is much easier and more appropriate to photograph artificial ice cream than to spend time and effort trying to photograph real ice cream.
As a food photographer, I try to always photograph real food whenever possible so as not to mislead consumers. Yes, I know a lot of tricks for food photography, but if there is an option not to use them, I use it. I'm all for honest food photography!
If you would like to book London-based food photographer Sergey Melnikov to photograph a restaurant menu, cookbook and other commercial story, or to purchase images you have seen on my website, please contact me.