When you shoot for clients do you do the food styling yourself, or do you work with a food stylist?
If you’re a food blogger or influencer, chances are you do your own styling. However, there are photographers working today that offer food styling services as well, especially if they shoot commissioned work at home.
As a professional food photographer, you definitely need some competency in food styling—if only to work with harmoniously with a food stylist, or direct one on a shoot.
I’ve worked on small shoots where I’ve done my own very basic food styling, but I work with a pro food stylist most of the time.
Here is what I’ve learned about working with food stylists.
What Role Does a Food Stylist Play in the Shoot?
In a nutshell, the food stylist’s role is to make the food look great on camera.
However, this is not the only role the food stylist plays on a food shoot. They can be responsible for cooking and preparing the food, developing recipes, and even the prop styling.
If you’ve been shooting food for any length of time, you know that food styling requires a very different set of skills than photography does. In fact, styling food for the camera is different from plating food for consumption. A chef can be great at plating food, but that doesn’t mean that food is going look good on camera. If you’ve shot for restaurants, then you may have already noticed this.
A food stylist shops for ingredients, and cooks and preps as much as possible before shoot day so it can all be assembled at the last minute. Depending on the scope of the shoot, they may have at least one assistant to help out.
In smaller cities, a food stylist may also function as a prop stylist. Prop stylists are typically hired for large scale productions. Small clients don’t usually have a budget for a prop stylist. As a photographer, you may elect to do the propping, but this role can be undertaken by the food stylist, and often is.
This service comes at a cost, however. Food stylist charge for sourcing and returning props, and for the prop styling itself. Many food stylists keep a large inventory of props, which they keep off site, such as a storage locker.
What Kind of Training and Experience Does a Food Stylist Have?
Food stylists come from all sorts of different backgrounds and walks of life. Many have culinary training, but many do not. What they all have in common is a passion for working with food.
Food styling has gone from being an incredibly niche industry to driving social media platform like Instagram, and food styling schools and courses have proliferated in the last decade. It wasn’t long ago that getting information about food styling was next to impossible, but now there are so many resources on food styling such as books and online courses that one could effectively be self-taught.
The first step in a career is a food stylist is becoming an assistant to an established food stylist by leveraging connections or establishing new ones. Just as a photographer must metaphorically pound the pavement to find new clients, a food stylist must connect with photographers and other food stylist to jumpstart their career.
When Do You Need to Work with a Food Stylist?
As a professional food photographer, you should work with a food stylist most of the time. However, if you’re shooting commissions in your home studio and have great styling skills, you may never have to hire a stylist. You’re working remotely and the objective is to get the clients the images they want. They don’t care how you get them as long as you stick to the agreed upon budget.
Some food photographers only shoot at home remotely, but most work on set or location with art directors and clients in some capacity. When shooting in restaurants, you most likely won’t be working with a food stylist. Restaurants tend to have small budgets and most that can afford to hire a photographer have chefs with decent plating skills.
However, we all know that plating for the human eye and plating for the camera lens can be two different things. This is why when discussing the shoot with a client, you should always make sure that they are confident in their chef’s presentation skills. You can suggest that they hire a food stylist to work with the chef to ensure the food looks perfect for the shoot.
The shot of the poke bowl below was taken for an advertisement that was displayed in a subway station. Poke is a melange of different textures and ingredients that can look messy ifs not styled, thus the client hired a food stylist with a professional culinary background to style the shots.
Whatever the case may be unless you’re getting paid as a food styling in addition to the photography you are not responsible for how the food looks. You are responsible for the capture and lighting and need to communicate that to the client. Yes, you can make some small tweaks, but how the food looks fall on their chef.
How to Hire a Food Stylist
Most of the time, the food photographer hires the stylist. I have a couple of stylists that I prefer to work. Whenever I get asked to provide an estimate, I check their interest and availability in the shoot and ask for a quote to for the project.
I typically include the creative brief and any information I have about the shoot, so the stylist understands the scope of the project. This allows them to determine how much time they will need for prep and on set, and if they will need an assistant or two, which will be reflected in their estimate. I include their total as a line item in my own estimate.
It’s crucial that the photographer and food stylist work well together. Butting heads on set is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Sometimes the client will have a certain food stylist in mind, but more often than not, you as the photographer are free to choose who you want to work with.
The best way to see if you and a food stylist will make a good team is to do a test shoot together. This is where you exchange a stylist’s service for photos for their website or portfolio and split the cost of the groceries. Not only will it give you an idea if you and the food stylist can work compatibly together, but it will also allow you to plan some images that will fill the gaps in your portfolio.
Conclusion
As a photographer you may be doing some styling, but unless you are shooting for food bloggers and are required to style and shoot the dishes on your own, it’s best to work with a food stylist whenever you can.
Shopping, cooking, and preparing food add a whole other dimension to a project, so if you agree to this, make sure you are compensated. It’s much cheaper to hire a food stylist than pay a photographer double time—which is what it will take you if you agree to doing the food styling as well.
To some degree, food styling skills are necessary for food photographers, but ultimately, your job is the lighting, composition, and image capture.
Are you struggling with the technical side of photography? Do you want to learn more about artificial light and don’t know where to start? Check out my eBook LightShaping: Getting Started with Artificial Light for Food Photography. You’ll get a bundle of four PDFs: an eBook that is over 100 pages, a gear guide, and exposure guide, a principles of light cheat sheet that you can have handy when you’re shooting to help you understand what your light source is doing as you adjust it.
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