Why restaurant and food in Berlin
A food photographer in Berlin works across a very wide range of kitchens: street-food counters, cafés in old tenement buildings, restaurants with open kitchens and tasting menus. Many places here sit on the ground floor of those buildings, with large shop windows onto the street and deeper, darker rooms behind. Daylight at the window tables is often ideal for dishes, while the back of the room comes alive in the evening with lamps and candles. The photographs end up in many places — your website, delivery apps, guides and social media — each wanting a different shape. So the session plans not only the dishes but also the room, the team and the work at the pass, to produce a set that covers all of those uses.
Sessions fall between lunch and dinner service, roughly three to five, when the kitchen is prepared and the dining room is empty. Places that only open in the evening use the late afternoon before service. In winter, daylight is gone by half past three, so in the darker months we start earlier. A new menu is best photographed one or two weeks before it launches.
How the session runs
In advance, you send a list of dishes and the order in which the kitchen can prepare them. On site we set up at the brightest window table, and plates come out one at a time so each is photographed fresh. Between plates come shots of plating, hands at the pass and the team. The session ends with the dining room once tables are laid and lights are on. Thirty edited photographs, in portrait and landscape, follow within five working days.
What’s included
- 30 edited photographs
- Up to twelve dishes plus room and team frames
- Scheduled between services
- Portrait and landscape crops for the menu, the site and delivery platforms
- Gallery within five working days
