Jumpstart Your Food Styling at Home
With most of us still social distancing at home, we are turning more and more to creativity in the kitchen. We’re measuring the passage of time with loaves of banana bread and Zoom happy hours. Whether it’s Dalgona coffee or pancake cereal, you probably have created a culinary masterpiece in the past few months that you’ve wanted to memorialize in a photo on social media. Here are a few ways you can level-up your food styling game to capture your creations in the most stylish, enticing way.
Photo by Emily Hawkes - Styling by Hadley Hauser
Make a Mess. Process shots often have more visual interest than heavily-curated scenes, which can often come across as sterile. When I’m creating a scene, I like to first style a pristine, “beauty” shot and capture that. Then I mess it up, just a little bit. For me, this means a few loose pieces of garnish, drops of sauce, and stray crumbs. It’s usually these slightly disheveled scenes that end up being the winners.
Add A Human Element. Show people how to interact with your dish. Include a hand or two entering the shot, reaching for a dish or grabbing silverware. This adds motion and draws a viewer’s attention to a specific part of the photo that you’d like to highlight. Adding this human element in photos often increases interest and engagement from followers on social media, giving people more of a tactile, personal connection to your dish.
Build It Up. Add layers and depth to your shots. If your culinary creations are flat, they likely won’t read well on camera. If you have enough food, by all means use that to create depth. You can also build up your dishes, however, by crumbling balls of foil or parchment paper and positioning them underneath your food. This will give your photos a 3-dimensional quality. Dimension is important especially for dishes like soup, which are often monochromatic, with heavy ingredients sinking to the bottom. In smaller bowls, invert half of an apple or potato, and rest contrasting garnishes that would otherwise sink to the bottom on top.
Refresh. Certain ingredients, especially greens and garnish, can lose their luster very quickly on set. To revive them, I’ve found that the best rejuvenator is Evian Facial Spray. It has much smaller water droplets than alternative spray bottles that you can buy at home goods stores such as Muji, though those can certainly help.
Make It Steamy. You may want to include steam in your shot. One trick for doing this is soaking cotton balls in water and microwaving them. Once steaming, place behind your bowl to obscure the cotton. You can also place an extinguished candle behind a bowl for a smokier steam effect.
Just Add Oil. Be sure to add oil to pasta dishes so that your noodles don’t stick together as they cool. This will allow you to continue to manipulate them as they drop in temperature. You can also add interest to dishes like soup by adding olive oil with an eyedropper.
Wonderful Windex. Use Windex to clean smudges or fingerprints on glasses and other props before your final snap. I always carry a small bottle of Windex with me when I’m on set.
Use Props. Your background and props are also important in creating a believable scene. Invest in colorful photo background boards or handmade craft and wrapping paper from Papersource to achieve your mood. You can also make your own boards if you have the time and the space. While on a professional set, there is typically a Prop Stylist that focuses solely on prop sourcing and curation. You will have to both style your food and props to create compelling photos during quarantine, and may have to get creative with items from around the house!
Interested in styling professionally? Here are a few of my tips for taking your food styling a step further!
Lend A Hand. Consider assisting on a professional shoot in the future. Figure out whose food styling techniques you admire. Research food stylists in your area and reach out to the ones that inspire you. While there may not be immediate jobs available right now, you can foster connections with individuals that you can reconnect with when advertising and editorial shoots are back on the calendar. Food styling assistants often cook most of the food that’s on set, so being comfortable in the kitchen is a must!
Build A Portfolio. The easiest way to do this? Befriend a photographer! Having a diverse portfolio for clients to look at might make or break their decision to hire you. Start building relationships with photographers who also want to build upon their food portfolios. Plan to collaborate on test shoots in the future, creating images that you both can use to bolster your respective portfolios.
Create A Food Styling Kit. Food Stylists typically bring their kit of kitchen tools with them to jobs. This way they are sure to have everything that they need, when they need it. Consider building out a basic food styling kit and adding to it as you tackle new dishes. Start your kit with a few sharp knives, Evian spray or small water spray bottle, small bottle of Windex, foil, salt and pepper, and a container of wax for holding items in place.
Practice, Practice, Practice. Cook meals at home as often as you can. Play around with props and light and negative space. Cook the same meal ten times and style it ten different ways. The more comfortable you are manipulating food, the more it will love you back when you’re on set during crunch time!
