Restaurant Photographer

Look at the portfolio, not the promises. You are checking whether the lighting looks intentional — are the highlights shaped, is there depth, does the food look like you want to eat it or does it just look documented?

Then check they have shot restaurants specifically. Shooting one plate in a studio with all day to do it is a different job from shooting forty dishes in a working kitchen between services.

It depends what they're for. Menu shots are tight and clean, and most restaurants want twenty to thirty. Social content is looser and more varied, and a shoot usually produces thirty to fifty usable frames across different angles and crops. Lifestyle images with hands, tables and people land around fifteen to twenty-five. Product and packaging work is slower and more technical, so figure ten to twenty finished images.

Most restaurants book a mix. A half day focused on menu items delivers twenty-five to thirty-five images; a full day covering the menu, the room, lifestyle and a couple of chef portraits often delivers sixty or more. I don't charge by the image, so there's no cap — once the lights are set and the kitchen is plating, you get everything that works.

Yes, that is most of what I do. We go through the menu beforehand and decide what gets shot, what gets a hero treatment, and what can share a lighting set-up. A four to five hour shoot produces over a hundred images, with four or five angles of every dish. Plenty of restaurants get a whole menu rebuilt in one day.

Flat rates start at $495 and include unlimited images. There are two-hour, four-hour and full-day options plus hourly, so you are not paying for eight hours when you need five. Full breakdown on the pricing page.

Both, and I shoot the video myself. Fifteen years of it, out of a film production background, which is unusual — most food photographers do not shoot professional video.

8K capture, 240fps slow motion at 2K, motion control for moving shots around a plate, macro lenses, and lighting built for motion. See the restaurant video page.

The equipment is the smallest part. Video wants LED lighting rather than the strobes used for stills, a camera that holds up at high frame rates, and someone who can move the camera around food without it looking like a property tour.

If you want to try it in-house: shoot vertical, keep clips short, and light the food properly rather than relying on the room. If you want it to look like the brands you compete with, adding video to a stills day is far cheaper than booking it separately, because the lighting and the food are already handled.

Nearly always the lighting — too soft, too hard, or unmodified. Every food reacts differently, so getting dynamic images means shaping the light for the dish in front of you. Restaurants send me their old photos constantly and this is the diagnosis almost every time.

No. I work around service regularly and often prefer it, because real plates coming out of a real kitchen look like it. It is slower than an empty room, so we build the shot list around your rush rather than fighting it.

Often not. Most kitchens can plate for camera with a bit of guidance, and I will walk your chef through exactly what to do differently beforehand.

A stylist earns their fee on the harder builds — cheese pulls, stacked sandwiches, anything that has to hold up under lights for an hour. When a dish needs one I bring in an experienced food stylist and quote it, rather than bundling it into every job.

Every image gets a colour grade — saturation, vibrance, contrast and highlights balanced across the set. Beyond that I fix what the food needs: a crack in the bread, a burnt spot, lettuce that is not green enough.

For ordering-app and product shots I clip out the background and drop in a clean digital white so the whole set matches, keeping the original shadow so nothing looks like it is floating.

About 70% of my work is small business. I have shot for Chipotle, Subway, Coca-Cola and Disney, and I have shot for family restaurants with one location and a tight budget.

Independent places usually have better food than the chains they compete with. They just need images that say so.

Within three business days of the shoot. That is standard, not a rush fee.