We decided to take the photos yourselves. We thought we have a decent camera, and why not use the food we're making anyway for the photos. This was our thinking. But, as is the way with these things, it was a bit harder than first imagined for a non professional photographer/food stylist.
Substitute a beautifully lit artist studio with wonderful textured backdrops, for a tiled floor infront of a glass door. Combined some vinyl backgrounds brought of amazon, or what we could find in the cupboards, this became our canvas. Using plates, bowls, cutlery we've collected over the years as props, we set about trying to figure out how to photograph food.
We're keen to reflect the mood of St Helena with our photos and to show off the food in the best possible way. Inspired by the glossy full page photos found in those famous chef cookbooks, we kinda realised that we needed to add texture and layers of interest to create depth within the photos. To, you know make them be bit more interesting, not so flat.
One of the things we struggled with is variety. With the amount of different dishes we needed to photograph, one of our fears is that we don't make all the photographs look the same. Use the same plates, backgrounds or angles so that when you flip through everything looks to similar. Granted, we're not sure how to make every photo seem distinct while sharing the same tone, but we underestimated the number of props we need. So we're combing whatever we have to try and make it work best we can.
To reflect our personality we try and put as much colour as we can into the photos. To create photos which are as bright and fresh as the taste of the food.
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Some of the photos we're taken so far.
