Food Photography Pricing
What does it cost to shoot professional food photography and video?
Simple pricing.
No surprises.
Flat rates from $495 with unlimited images, delivered in three business days. Affordable packages for small businesses, independent restaurants and cafes.
Pick the shoot
that fits your menu.
Full day shoot
Your whole menu, your space and your team, with hourly options in between.
What is included
Everything you need from one shoot.
Unlimited images. You never pay per photo. Every usable shot from the shoot is yours to use.
Delivered in three business days. Edited, color-corrected and sized for print, web and social.
Vertical videos
Let’s make it delicious.
Tell me how many dishes, your city and roughly when you need them. I will come back with a straight number within one business day.
What Food Photography Actually Costs
Flat rates available along with small business packages:
Starter rates from $495 (unlimited images)
Two-hour, four-hour and full-day rates, plus hourly if you need five hours rather than eight. Every rate includes unlimited images. I do not charge per image, and I never have.
Turnaround
3 business days
Edited images land within three business days of the shoot. That is the standard, not a rush fee. If you are against a menu print date, tell me and I will work to it.
What you get
100+ images
A typical four to five hour shoot produces over a hundred usable images, because each plate is shot from four or five angles rather than once.
Why I don’t charge per image
Per-image pricing means counting shots on set and negotiating over the twelfth dish. It makes everybody cautious at exactly the moment you want to be trying things, and it is the reason so many restaurants end up with six good photos and a menu full of gaps.
I charge for the time, and you get everything from it. A hero shot, an overhead, a close-up, a medium vertical and a horizontal of the same plate is five images you can use in five different places — the menu, the website, the ordering app, the Instagram grid and the story.
What a shoot day actually looks like
About thirty minutes to set up lighting and equipment and get it dialled in. The camera runs tethered to a laptop, so you see every frame as it is shot, keep quality control and give feedback before we move on rather than three days later.
Once the dishes start coming out, five to ten minutes per shot. We work the shot list we agreed beforehand, and we can cover your menu shots, your ordering-app shots and your creative social shots in the same visit.
Photography and video in the same day
Photography uses strobe lighting. Video uses LED. They are two different set-ups, so we either split the day or build both rigs — and there is a discount for booking them together rather than as two separate shoots.
A video day can produce ten to twenty finished videos, cut vertical for Instagram and TikTok as well as wide.
What changes the price
How long you need. A half day suits most independent restaurants. A full menu, or photo and video together, usually wants a full day.
Styling load. A burger that has to hold up under lights is a different job from a plated dish shot in ninety seconds. Ice cream, melted cheese and anything with foam are the expensive ones.
A hired food stylist, when a dish genuinely needs one. More on that below.
Travel. Orange County, Los Angeles and San Diego are normal territory.
Set build. Shooting in your dining room is included. Props, specialty surfaces and backgrounds beyond my kit are quoted separately.
What you don’t pay for
Per-image fees
Licensing tiers or usage renewals
Rush fees for the standard three-day turnaround
Tell me what you’re working with
Send the number of dishes, your city and roughly when you need it. I will come back with a straight number.
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Flat rates start at $495. There are two-hour, four-hour and full-day options, and hourly rates on top of that, so you are not paying for an eight-hour day when you need five.
Most independent restaurants I shoot for need a half day.
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No. Every rate includes unlimited images, and a typical four to five hour shoot produces over a hundred usable frames.
Each plate gets four or five angles — a hero, an overhead, a close-up, a medium vertical and a horizontal — so one dish gives you images for the menu, the site, the ordering apps and social.
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Often you do not. Most kitchens are perfectly capable of preparing food for camera, and I will tell you beforehand what to prep differently — food for a photograph is built differently from food going out to a customer.
When a dish genuinely needs a stylist — a cheese pull, a built sandwich, a stacked pizza that has to hold for an hour under lights — I bring in experienced food stylists and quote it. It is not bundled into every job just to pad the invoice.
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Yes, and there is a discount for booking both together. Photography runs on strobe lighting and video runs on LED, so they are two different set-ups — we either split the day or build both rigs.
A video day can produce ten to twenty finished videos, cut vertical for Instagram and TikTok as well as wide for your site.
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Within three business days of the shoot. That is standard, not a rush fee.
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Yes. The camera runs tethered to a laptop on set, so you see every frame as it happens, keep quality control and redirect before we move to the next dish. Nobody is waiting until delivery to find out the shot was wrong.
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Everywhere, indefinitely. Menus, your website, delivery apps, social, print and paid advertising. No licensing tiers, no usage renewals, no expiry date.
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Props, specialty surfaces and backgrounds beyond what I bring, a hired food stylist when a dish needs one, and travel outside Orange County, Los Angeles and San Diego.
There are no per-image fees, no licensing tiers and no rush fees for standard turnaround.
Food photography pricing questions
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My flat rates start at $495. Two-hour, four-hour and full-day rates are available, plus hourly if you need five hours rather than eight. Every rate includes unlimited images.
The number moves with how many dishes you need, whether we add video, and whether any dish needs a food stylist.
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No, and I never have. Per-image pricing means counting shots on set, which is the wrong thing to be thinking about while the food is going cold. You get every usable frame from the day.
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No. The images are yours for a menu, a website, a delivery app, social, print advertising or a billboard, forever. There is no second invoice when the use changes.
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A typical four to five hour shoot produces more than a hundred usable images, because each plate is shot from four or five angles rather than once. A full menu day is usually thirty to forty-five dishes.
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Three business days for the edited set. That is my standard turnaround, not a rush fee. If you are up against a menu print date or a launch, tell me the deadline and I will work to it.
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No, and you should be wary of anyone who says it is. Most plated restaurant menus do not need a stylist: your kitchen team plates for camera with me directing, which costs you nothing extra.
Ice cream, melting cheese, foam and any hero dish that has to hold up for hours under lights genuinely benefit from one. When a dish needs a stylist I bring one in and quote it separately, so you only pay for styling where it earns its keep.
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Not within Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, Corona, San Bernardino and Palm Springs. Beyond Southern California, travel is quoted up front and agreed before anything is booked.
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Yes, and it is the cheapest video you will ever buy, because the lighting is already up and the food is already on the table. It is a smaller add-on than a dedicated video day, and you get vertical and wide versions from the same footage.
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How many dishes, your city and roughly when you need them. I will come back with a straight number within one business day — not a form, not a range, and not a call you have to sit through first.