Food photography for brands
Make your product look as good as it tastes.
Great food photography makes people hungry.
Whether it’s destined for packaging, a website, a campaign, social media or sales materials, the right imagery can completely change how a food or drink brand feels.
We help brands plan, art direct and produce food and product photography that fits the identity and gives marketing teams useful assets they can use across multiple channels.
Photography with a purpose
Start with where the images need to work.
A beautiful photograph isn’t necessarily a useful photograph.
Before planning a shoot, we’ll look at where the imagery is going to be used and what it needs to achieve.
- Is it for packaging?
- A website?
- A campaign?
- Social media?
- POS?
- A retailer presentation?
- An ecommerce store?
Different applications create different requirements.
Thinking about those before the shoot means we can create a more useful library of images rather than discovering afterwards that the perfect shot doesn’t fit the space.
Food photography
Make people want to eat it.
Food photography needs to do more than document what’s on the plate.
Lighting, styling, composition, props, backgrounds and art direction all influence how the product is perceived.
We can develop an approach that fits your brand and coordinate the people required to produce it.
Depending on the project, that can include:
- Creative direction
- Art direction
- Food styling
- Prop styling
- Location planning
- Shot lists
- Photography
- Retouching
- Image preparation
The result should feel like part of your brand rather than a generic library of food photography.
Product photography
Sometimes the product itself needs to be the hero.
We can create clean, consistent product imagery for:
- Websites
- Ecommerce
- Retailer listings
- Sales presentations
- Catalogues
- Product launches
- PR
- Social content
For brands with larger ranges, we’ll plan the photography as a system so new products can be added without everything looking different six months later.
Photography for packaging
Plan the image around the pack.
Photography used on packaging has particular requirements.
The composition needs to work within the available space.
Important parts of the image need to avoid logos, product names and mandatory information.
Colours need to reproduce effectively.
And the image needs to remain appetising after it’s been through the realities of print production.
Because our packaging designers can be involved in the photography process, we can plan imagery around the actual design rather than trying to force an existing photograph into the layout afterwards.
Campaign photography
Campaign imagery has a different job.
It needs an idea behind it.
We can develop photography as part of a wider creative campaign, creating imagery designed to work across advertising, POS, digital, social and other applications.
That means the photographer isn’t simply handed a product and asked to make it look nice.
The shoot has a creative direction connected to the campaign.
Photography for websites and ecommerce
Create the imagery your digital team actually needs.
Website projects often uncover the same problem.
There aren’t enough good images.
Or the existing photography is inconsistent, outdated or impossible to crop into the spaces required by the new design.
When we’re creating a website, we can identify the photography requirements while the site is being designed.
That allows us to create a shot list based on the actual layouts and content requirements.
- Hero images
- Product shots
- Landscape crops
- Portrait crops
- Ingredients
- Lifestyle imagery
- Behind-the-scenes content
- Mobile formats
Planning these together can make the photography budget work much harder.
See the idea before the shoot
AI-assisted creative visualisation.
Photography can become expensive if you’re still trying to work out what you want while everyone is standing in a studio.
We use AI and other creative tools where appropriate to help investigate visual directions before committing to production.
That can allow us to explore composition, styling, environments, lighting ideas and campaign concepts earlier in the process.
It gives clients and photographers a much clearer idea of what we’re trying to achieve before the shoot begins.
The result isn’t about replacing professional photography.
It’s about using modern tools to make pre-production more efficient and reduce expensive experimentation on shoot day.
Explore more before you produce more.
AI-generated imagery
Sometimes a camera isn’t the only option.
Generative imagery is developing rapidly and there are situations where AI-generated or AI-assisted images can form part of a creative solution.
We assess that on a project-by-project basis.
Sometimes traditional photography is absolutely the right answer.
Sometimes CGI, retouching or compositing makes sense.
And sometimes generative tools create possibilities that would otherwise require disproportionately expensive production.
Our job is to recommend the approach that best fits the creative idea, required quality, intended use and available budget.
Not to use AI simply because we can.
Get more from every shoot
Food photography can involve photographers, stylists, locations, ingredients, props and production time.
So it’s worth planning properly.
We’ll look beyond the immediate requirement and consider what else your marketing team is likely to need.
- Could the same setup produce campaign and social assets?
- Do we need different crops?
- Can we capture website imagery at the same time?
- Are there upcoming products that could be included?
- Could behind-the-scenes material be useful?
A little more planning can turn a single shoot into a much larger bank of useful content.
One creative team
Photography works best when it’s connected to the rest of the brand.
Our designers can develop the creative direction, plan the imagery and work with photographers and specialists to produce it.
Then the same team can take those assets into packaging, campaigns, websites, print and digital.
That keeps everything connected and means you don’t need to translate the brand between multiple suppliers.