The appointment decides the result before anything is plated. Between lunch and dinner service — roughly between three and five — the kitchen is set up, the room is empty and there is still daylight. Shooting during live service produces hurried photographs, costs the kitchen throughput and irritates everybody involved; after dinner service the room is free but has no daylight in it, and then it looks like a different room altogether.
The work covers up to twelve dishes plus frames of the room and the people working in it. The dishes in both portrait and landscape, because a menu, a website and a delivery app want three different shapes and a single crop always sits wrong somewhere. The room is photographed as it looks in the evening rather than as it looks in the afternoon. Thirty edited photographs, gallery within five working days.
The kitchen is best prepared as if for a table of twelve ordering one after another. Decide beforehand which dishes will be photographed — the ones that sell best and the ones you want to sell — and plate each one when its turn comes, not all at once. Salads, ice cream and anything with foam or fresh herbs loses its shape within minutes. Have the plates and bowls you actually serve on ready, along with napkins, cutlery and glasses for the table. It also helps to have one person whose only job for those three hours is the plates.
The written confirmation names where the photographs will appear: the menu, the website, your Google business profile, Instagram, delivery platforms. Name the delivery apps explicitly, because there you are uploading the images to a third party and the rights of use should cover exactly that. More than twelve dishes, or a second session for a seasonal menu, extends the work and is priced beforehand. You receive the figure by phone or email after enquiring, binding and before you book. Guests in the frame are not an issue here because the room is empty; if your team is to appear, ask your staff first whether they agree.
