Food Photography for Salerno’s, Oundle
People choose a restaurant with their eyes, usually on a phone, usually while hungry, and usually in about ten seconds. That decision is almost always made on a photograph — and a bad photo of a genuinely good dish costs a restaurant covers every single night it stays online.
Salerno’s in Oundle asked me to photograph a new menu/refresh their website and social imagery & capture the restaurant interior ahead of a relaunch.
The brief
Salerno’s needed a set of dish images that looked like the food that actually arrives at the table, plus interior shots showing the atmosphere of the room in the evening. The images were destined for the website, Instagram, Google Business Profile, and printed menus.
[MENTION ANY CONSTRAINT — e.g. the shoot had to happen between service, giving a fixed window of [X] hours with the kitchen team.]
The approach
The thing that separates good food photography from bad is honesty. I shoot real plates, prepared by the kitchen as they’d send them out, rather than styling dishes with inedible tricks. If a customer orders that dish, it should look like the picture.
I worked with available light near the window where possible, supplemented with a single soft light source to keep the look natural rather than lit.
Working with a kitchen mid-service means moving fast: dishes were plated in an agreed order, photographed within a minute or two of leaving the pass, so nothing had time to dull or sink.
What was delivered
- Images delivered in 4 days
- Web + print resolution
- Square crops for social
- Full usage licence
Restaurant, pub, café or producer?
Get in touch — I’ll come back with ideas and a quote.