Taking photos for a restaurant – how should you do this?

Photographing for a restaurant or cafe is a completely different fairy tale than photographing food at home - for yourself, for a blog, or for producers. This requires different arrangements with the client at the stage of planning and conducting the session. How to do it?

Pre-session agreements

There is no single standard session for gastronomy. Each time, everything depends on the agreement with the client-and you should do it even before we send them a quote. It is influenced by many elements that need to be considered in conversations due to the different nature of each implementation. What questions should I ask?

1. Should the session be strictly food-based or more imaginative? - should we focus on food or more on showing the atmosphere (mainly with photos and videos on sociale) - guests, joys, drinks, interior of the establishment, etc.
2. Do we only use what's in place, or should they be fully stylized photos? - Where do we get your backgrounds, accessories, etc.? Usually stylized sessions are more expensive because they require more careful preparation and take longer on-site. 
3. What is the indoor lighting? - my favorite indoor photography is using daylight, but this is not always possible, because, for example, the room is located in the basement or outside the window during the winter, daylight will not give us much. If we have the opportunity, it is worth looking at at least photos of the room or approaching it yourself before shooting. Even when I plan to take photos in daylight, I always have a small continuous light bulb just in case. 
4. How many photos does the room need and for what purposes will it use them? - otherwise, we will rate photos that are used only in social networks, otherwise those that will be printed on menus, flyers or billboards. 
5. How many days can we devote to the session? - if you need a lot of photos (and sometimes videos), sometimes you may need to split the session for several days. 
6. What dishes and how many of them should we take pictures of, and what pictures should we keep in mind? "sometimes there is more freedom, sometimes less. If a client needs content on social networks, they may be interested in including a specific event, seasonal menu, or recording certain videos to their chosen music. 
7. Will we work with models/models during filming? - if the session will be themed (for example, a Christmas session), you should also determine how they will be dressed. 

When we know what and how, we move on to the next step, i.e.:

Scheduling a session

The planning stage will also depend on our arrangements with the client. Regardless of them, always the most important thing is to get acquainted with the offer and climate of this room. Is the atmosphere more rustic, with traditional food, or more youthful, with fast food? Even if we only take photos and don't run social networks, it's worth analyzing in advance who our client sends their offer to. Imagine a situation like this: you're doing a session for a gourmet restaurant and you create photos of the team sitting on the couch in sportswear, sipping drinks. No, this is not the right climate, not the right place (unless it is). Similarly, if we're photographing a young, casual diner, we won't be photographing hot dogs and French fries on a wooden background surrounded by elegantly dressed guests.  We need to know what the restaurant serves, who its customers are, and what the atmosphere of the interior is-because this is what we want to show in photos or videos.

source: author's material, Pelmeni Staraya Melnitsa

This is already a matter of our previous agreements with the client. If we want to create a stylized session, we need to analyze what accessories and backgrounds we will need. Sometimes it is useful to take more of them or find out their scope with the client. If we want to make a session more Lifestyle or one for which we don't need our own accessories, it's easier. Then you should record all the planned frames and their number so that you don't forget anything.

In any case, of course, we must remember to pack equipment - in addition to the camera, tripod and lenses necessarily don't forget to bring extra memory cards and batteries! There is nothing worse than interrupting your session halfway through because the camera is dead or the card has stopped working. It is also worth packing a pear for cleaning the matrix (especially during sessions, for example, the bakery likes flour to appear on it, which may later be visible in photos) and a lens cleaning cloth. You can also use cotton swabs and cosmetic sticks to wipe away the stains on the plates and a small spray of water to spray, for example, fruits and vegetables to make them look fresh. Some also like to take a laptop with them and use it during a session with a so-called laptop. modem, that is, connecting the camera to the laptop to have continuous viewing of photos on the big screen. Personally, I don't do this, because I just didn't like this method, but for some people it really makes the job much easier.

If we use artificial lighting, we take a suitable lamp with us. If we want to shoot only photos, both a flash and a powerful continuous lamp will work perfectly. Remember, however, that it is often not possible to turn off the lighting in the room – then too weak a continuous light bulb may not be able to cope with it, and we will have a yellow (or worse-blue or pink) color of photos. Flash is much better at this task. If we want to shoot video, we should put it on a continuous light bulb, because the flash will not save us here. 

There are also obvious things like trip planning for the session, its start time, parking options, and so on. These are small things, but they need to be remembered.

Everything is already set up with the client, we are ready, we arrive at the place – and then what?

Session Implementation

First, coffee. Laughter giggles, but here's what it looks like in practice This coffee will not only wake us up, but also give us time to organize – at this time, we talk about what order we will take photos in, when the chef will serve the dishes, whether we will start with drinks first or with an internal session, etc. This is also a good time to choose a location or locations where we will be photographing, especially if we are shooting in a given location for the first time. Let's take a look at the environment: what can we use for photos-plants, vases with flowers, a brick wall?

Then we arrange all our equipment and accessories so that we are comfortable and that the session process does not interfere with guest service. If possible, please turn off the restaurant lights to avoid including the yellow color in the pictures. 

The course of the session largely depends on previous agreements, its nature, cooperation with the kitchen and waiters. I really like the sessions that I do for social networks, where the team of the institution poses for photos. They usually have a lot of slack and laughter with them. Here, in addition to photographing the food itself, we must have at least minimal ability to photograph people, make them laugh - to make everything look natural. 

Source: author's material, Joy Bistro in Bielsko-Biala

Regardless of the type of session, the first fiddle is always playing food-here's why it is very important to work with the kitchen.. Dishes that come out of it, you need to quickly photograph. The alternative is to determine in advance which of the dishes can wait for some time and this will not affect their appearance much, and which of them we should wait in standby mode with the camera (for example, hamburgers with liquid cheese). We extract as much as possible from all the dishes. It is important to place the plate on the right side, determine whether the dish will look better from above or from the guest's point of view, and also arrange the side dishes – cutlery, drinks in the background, the hand twirling the pasta on the fork.

Source: Sweet joj in Bielsko-Biala

If we don't create a session that is stylized on our backgrounds, we should show the interior of the room instead, so that we can quickly find out where the photos were taken. Don't be afraid to ask the staff to brew a cup of coffee or pour a drink to create a background for photos – these small elements create the atmosphere of the entire session.

Source: author's material, Joy Bistro in Bielsko-Biala

When taking photos, let's also remember their purpose. This affects cropping. Instagram crops photos to 4: 5, so we need to keep this in mind when working. Sometimes we get special recommendations from a graphic designer who will create a menu from our photos – we set all this in advance and, being already in the room, we have in mind.

After the session, the best part is to eat everything that was photographed! Most often in the "cold" version, but this is compensated by the smell of food that floats for several hours during the session. The next part of the work will be waiting for us after returning home, that is, while processing photos. When processing, also keep in mind the atmosphere of the establishment-darkmood post-production will not correspond to neobistro, and super bright-to a village hotel. Depending on the agreement with the client, we send either a ready-made number of processed photos, or so-called snapshots – that is, raw images to choose from. The client selects a certain number of them, and only after that we subject them to a thorough post-processing. 

Shooting for a restaurant takes a lot of preparation, but it's a great experience, especially when we get on a cool team! In addition, it's an interesting step away from the sessions held every day in our own studio, when we have to prepare the dishes for them ourselves.