Chapter Seven: Styling
I recently sent out a Call for Struggles on my blog … to find out what foods and dishes were presenting readers with the most difficulty when they tried to style them for photographs. Yet as I read the submissions and examined example shots, I realized that most had good styling ideas and form. Folks were struggling to tie it all together. They were having a tough time managing the light and setting appropriate camera modes, exposure, white balance and depth of field.
That’s exactly why this content on styling follows chapters on lighting, camera settings and other basics. It’s important that you understand the fundamental techniques of photography before you dive into styling food for your images. It all works together. So while some aspects may seem less exciting than others, no part of the equation is unimportant.
This chapter addresses common styling issues. It outlines proven tips and techniques that can help you achieve beautifully natural shots. I encourage you to experiment with these ideas and find the processes that work best for you—in terms of the time you want to put into food styling and the look you’re hoping to achieve in your photographs.
Thankfully, styling food isn’t as complicated as building spaceships. Although some take it as seriously! So we’ll focus on using materials and tools to style your dish that you probably already have. You’ll get some easy techniques to enhance the appearance of your food while keeping it edible. From there, it’s up to you to decide how much time you can invest in styling.
Whether you work on it for five minutes or thirty-five, the amount of effort you put into the details of your scene will make a big difference in the photograph you produce.
Herbs and Spices
As mentioned in Chapter 6: Setting Up for Capture, an easy way to enhance your composition and styling is to include herbs and spices from the recipe you’re photographing. So if the recipe calls for ground thyme, you could place a few fresh thyme leaves or sprigs in the scene. Set them next to the dish or tie a few sprigs together with kitchen strings to make a little bouquet.
Styling is the process of spicing up your pictures. Oh la la!
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The trick to using herbs, spices, bread crumbs and other ingredients to enhance your food shots is to present them in a coherent way. So if you’re making ravioli with sage brown butter sauce, and sage is the only herb called for in the dish, please don’t use basil as a garnish!
Keep herbs fresh by storing them between sheets of wet paper towel in a plastic bag in the fridge. When you’re preparing your composition, place them in a bowl of cold water until you’re ready to use them. Once everything is ready, pat them dry slightly and position them in the scene. If your photo session lasts longer than anticipated, either place the herbs back in water until you’re ready to shoot, or spritz them with water to keep them vibrant. But if things start looking wilted or bent out of shape, just replace the item with another, fresher piece of herb.
Keep fresh herbs on hand to season your food as well as your photographs!
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At all costs, avoid using wilted or bruised herbs that have oxidized in the fridge. Basil, for example, does this quickly. It’s much better to skip this type of garnish if your only option looks haggard.
The oregano leaves are a perfect garnish for this roasted potato salad with herb vinaigrette.
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Salt, colorful peppercorns and herbs are wonderful styling items.
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In the image of roasted potato salad (above left), ground oregano was listed as an ingredient in the recipe. You can bet I jumped on the opportunity to use oregano leaves as part of my styling. After briefly considering chopped oregano, I decided to go with the fresh leaves. They look like pretty flowers to me.
Consider using coarse salt, as shown in this image, when styling savory dishes. There’s sure to be salt in the recipe, so either sprinkle some right on top—especially if there’s a nice beam of light; the effect is beautiful—or place a little container with salt somewhere in the shot.
Another idea is to use three-color pepper mix. Grind some between your fingers right above the dish. The specks of red and green peppercorns add a nice touch of color and don’t demand much space in your scene.
Bread
Bread, crumbs, croutons, rolls … these are enhancements that can really help round out the styling of a dish nicely. Whenever I style a soup or salad, I try to use some bread in the shot. For soup, it suggests a sopping action, so look at the recipe to find out if a specific type of bread is suggested. When styling a salad, consider using fresh croutons or vegetable chips. Crumbs scattered on the table of your setup is one of the easiest ways to convey, “Pull up a chair and come share with us.” A viewer can relate to this everyday scene, and the setup is inviting.
Pumpkin soup and a bread basket create an inviting scene.
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The shot of pumpkin soup (right) appeared on my blog when I covered this dish a few years ago. It was actually my first time using bread in such a relaxed way. I had just finished a job with an amazing photographer, Peter Frank Edwards, and he had really pushed my comfort zone for two days. He kept saying, “Make me feel like I want to dig in … not that it’s too pretty to eat.” It was excellent advice. And while I’m not suggesting that you trail bread crumbs all around your dish or create a messy scene, a few pieces of bread or croutons in a basket or on the side can be a nice inviting touch for a realistic setup.
Make me feel like I want to dig in … not that it’s too pretty to eat.
-Peter Frank Edwards
Nuts
I love using nuts as a garnish. They can do a lot to boost the styling of your dish. Of course, choose nuts listed in the ingredient list of the recipe you’re styling. That is, if the recipe suggests that you top your pastry with sliced almonds, then your nut garnish should be … you guessed it, almonds!
You get more freedom if the recipe suggests garnishing with nuts in general. For example, let’s say a recipe for rice pudding says to use toasted chopped nuts as a garnish. This means you can use whatever kind of nut you prefer. You can use them toasted to golden brown to add oomph or use pistachios for a little color splash.
Of course, perhaps your recipe says nothing at all about nuts. That’s okay, too. If, as you consider a dish or taste it, you think that a sprinkle of chopped nuts would be a good addition, then by all means throw some into the scene!
Pistachios are a terrific addition to this thin Pear Tart.
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Pistachios were not part of the recipe for the pear tart shown here, but there’s something delicious about pairing toasted pistachios with pears and cardamom. Since this was a picture I shot for myself, it was okay to take some liberty with the styling. If I had been working on a magazine feature, a cookbook or other commercial project, I would have double checked with both the recipe developer and the art director to verify that it was okay for me to add the pistachios.
When using spices and nuts as garnish, start with a small amount and add as you go. It’s easier … and looks better … to add chopped nuts to a mound of whipped cream than to remove them and start over.
Fruits and Vegetables
The color guard of food photography, fruits and vegetables bring a subtle—and sometimes elaborate—sense of refreshment to an image. Styling these foods is all about enhancing their simplicity in fresh and surprising ways.
To get started, explore the shape of the food once the recipe is executed … whether it’s cooked or raw ... to see how they appear in the final dish. It may be helpful to reserve a small portion of a fruit or vegetable that’s used in the recipe to help you style your final dish. For instance, let’s say you’re cooking a gumbo. Well, reserving some okra for the final plated dish may improve the presentation, especially if some pieces have fallen to the bottom of the plate and ar
e no longer visually prominent.
If a recipe calls for a cooked vegetable or fruit, it’s usually best to use that cooked form in the dish you’re styling. The shapes and structure of cooked vegetables and fruits are so different from their raw form that using the different version might appear forced to a discerning eye. But if the ingredient becomes unrecognizable once cooked, place a few raw ones in the scene to help viewers identify it.
Even when styling purées or chopped vegetables and fruits, make extra effort to keeping the food as appealing as possible—raw or cooked. For example, if cooked broccoli is a side dish accompanying a steak, be sure to keep the color and texture of the broccoli as appetizing as possible. It will help the steak look even better. And if a fruit or vegetable is the main player of a dish, keep in mind that you have one shot at making the viewer want it.
My best advice for working with fruits and vegetables in your shots is: Handle with care!
Fruits
For presenting recipes in which fruits are cooked through (like crumbles, pies and crisps) or they’re used in purées (as in layered mousse and panna cotta), it can be difficult for a viewer to identify what’s on the plate. By referencing it with styling, you can better emphasize the character of a dish.
An easy way to do this is to place whole or cut pieces of the fruit on the dish itself … perhaps as a topping. You can also position pieces of the fruit in other areas of the composition as a reference. Just make sure that the fruit you use is as fresh and visually appealing as can be!
Use fruits from the recipe to style your dish.
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When baking the blackberry pie shown in the photograph on the left, I knew that the blackberries inside the tart shells would turn to a purée, so I saved some of the fresh blackberries and used them as a suggesting element in the styling.
When working with fruits that are poached, grilled or baked whole or sliced, it’s important to always handle them with care, especially when positioning them on top of other sweet items, like mousse or ice cream. It’s best to spoon them carefully rather than grab them with tongs that could leave marks or squish them too much.
For this kind of setup, consider styling a practice version first. Use the least-nice looking item in the bunch for your practice run, and use this setup to compose the shot, get your camera settings ready and adjust the light. Once you have styled the practice shot to your liking, replace it with the hero food, a term used by stylists to describe the best version of the dish. Doing this will eliminate your need to worry about things moving, being squished or losing freshness when it’s time to really shoot.
When styling this shot of grilled peach slices and ice cream, it was important to show grill marks and shapes.
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For the picture of ice cream with grilled peaches and poached cherries on the right, I had gotten nice grill marks on about two peach slices. The rest were just so-so. Since I was also incorporating ice cream in the picture, my practice item was actually a cup filled with paper towels with the fruit on top. I used that stand-in to set up my exposure and white balance. When everything was all set, I scooped real ice cream inside the cup and used only the fruit that had the nicest grill marks and the best shape. These pieces show nicely in the foreground.
For recipes in which fruits are not baked or when you do ingredient shots, put a little extra care in selecting the best you can find. It’s not always easy to end up with a perfect specimen; because fruits, especially berries, bruise easily. But taking the time to find the best pieces of fruit for your shot makes a big, big difference.
I was working on a blog post featuring mixed berry pies when I created the picture on the left. An overhead shot showing the sugared berries in the tart shells prior to baking them seemed important. So I picked out the best-looking berries and the best-looking shells. And instead of packing the berries in tight, as the recipe suggested, I deliberately left space for people to see that the berries were really fresh. This opened up the view of the filling and encouraged people to notice what type of berries were used.
In some cases, it’s good to remember the old saying, “Less is more.” This definitely applies when photographing raw fruits (and vegetables, too) before they are used in a recipe. You do not need to show three pints of blueberries going into a pie to suggest that blueberries are indeed the main ingredient.
Always try to set aside the best-looking fruits for your garnish shots.
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A problem that can arise when photographing sliced fruits is oxidation, which is the browning that occurs when the flesh of a pear or apple remains exposed to the air. One easy trick that your mom or grandmother may have taught you is to squeeze some lemon juice over the fruit to reduce browning. That works if you know your styling process will be quick. But if your setup process might take a little longer, you can place the fruit in a bowl of lemon water and let it stay there until you’re ready to use it. Use two parts water to one part lemon juice.
For this shot, the pear in the copper pot was soaking in lemon water. To keep the cut pears from browning, I rubbed them with slices of lemon.
f/5.6, ISO 100, 100mm, Macro L
Vegetables
Keeping vegetables looking appetizing once they are not refrigerated anymore seems to be a food styling challenge that’s universal. It doesn’t matter if your vegetables are raw, braised, roasted, poached or sautéed, it’s always nicer to look at them when you don’t wonder if they just got ran over by a produce truck—unless of course they’re puréed. Ha.
Let’s think about salads. This seems like an easy-to-style vegetable dish, right? Well, you’ll find out soon enough that all salad leaves are not created equal and the shapes and textures of these leaves can make you feel scattered … in no time. To overcome this, some professional stylists who fill the bowl containing salad with a layer of mashed potatoes to anchor the first salad leaves and provide a good base for building a fluffy mound of greens.
I’m not a fan of this technique, because I don’t like having to wash salad leaves that need to be plucked out of potatoes to be rearranged for a shot. But I have used the mashed potatoes trick (as well as a similar version requiring leftover cooked rice) when I was on a job and the art director decided to add a bowl of salad in the background for color. There was not enough lettuce to fill the bowl and look good, so we used instant mashed potato purée to add some height to the little bit of greens we had. My point is: Never say never to such a trick. You never know when it might come handy.
The photo series on the right breaks down the process for building and styling salads used as a side or main dish.
1) Start by gathering all the components and picking out dish props.
2) Throw a handful of the selected greens into the bowl to get an idea of their shape and height. Then, add a lot more leaves.
3) Take a step back and do a little quality control. Look for any bruised leaves or dirt.
4) Without spending too much time, look to see if there are empty spaces or holes in the salad. If there are, fill them with more leaves. These dark holes are likely to soak up the light and appear stronger than they should be, which can distract the viewer’s eye.
5) With a good base of greens, start adding the other components, beginning with the larger items (e.g., the Granny Smith apple and radishes). This helps you avoid losing smaller components, like cheese crumbles and nuts, to the bottom of the bowl.
6) Add the smaller components last, targeting areas with empty space.
Spritz!
Throughout your set up process, keep a water spritzer nearby to give the salad a little pep if needed.
Try to make it all look as natural as possible. If something looks odd or out of place when you look through the viewfinder, don’t be afraid to adjust it with tweezers or chopsticks.
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, 24-70mm L
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Build and style a fantastic salad.
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Styling cooked vegetables actually begins when they’re cooking. If someone else is doing the cooking and you’re only styling, remember the advice in Chapter 6. That is, be sure to talk with the cook about your needs for styling and composition.
Unless you’re styling vegetables that are puréed, mashed or finely chopped to serve as seasoning—which don’t retain their shape when prepared anyway—try to stop the cooking process a couple of minutes before the vegetables are supposed to be done. They will continue to cook a little as they cool.
Fresh peas were blanched and cooled for a light summer pea salad with goat cheese and shallots.
f/3.5, ISO 100, 100mm, Macro L
Ensuring that vegetables retain a bit of texture helps when styling. It ensures that pieces aren’t squishing down on one another. For green vegetables like broccoli, asparagus and peas—whether they’re being presented as sides (as in broccoli salad) or main dishes—blanch and place them in an ice bath to stop the cooking process. This will keep these veggies looking their best … with good texture and color.
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