The brief
Stills for menus, brand feeds and product listings across three very different subjects — plated food, gold jewellery and people — each needing to hold up at thumbnail size as well as full width.
The approach
One consistent principle across all three: light the subject and let everything else fall away. Food is placed on a dark ground and lit from behind so steam, crumb and edge separate from the background rather than being outlined in post. Jewellery is laid on deep textured navy and raked from the side, which is what makes filigree read as depth instead of a flat gold shape.
My role
Photography — lighting, shooting and grading the stills.
Product photography is mostly a problem of controlling reflection. Gold throws back every source in the room, so the jewellery sets were lit with a narrow raking key and heavy negative fill, letting the metal go dark where it should and keeping the sparkle to the stones alone. Food was shot warm against near-black to survive being printed small on a menu and cropped square for a feed. Portraits were kept to a single key with available fill, so a session stays quick and the subject stays relaxed rather than lit into a studio look.
02 — SELECTED STILLS
