Professional restaurant photography: how to prepare the shoot

The first decision is where the photographs will be used. The usual places are:

Each of them asks for a different format. Websites tend to need wide landscape frames. Instagram lives on portrait ones. Delivery platforms mostly need a single dish, clearly readable and on its own.

If the pictures are meant to work in several places, those crops have to be considered during the shoot rather than afterwards.

A binding shot list keeps an important room or dish from being forgotten. It should be ordered by priority.

Possible subjects are:

Photographing the whole menu in one appointment is rarely worthwhile. A handful of dishes that carry the concept says more than a long row of similar plates.

Photograph the dishes that stand for the house: the specialties, the plates that are ordered most often, and whatever sets the kitchen apart from the restaurant next door.

These questions help with the selection:

A dish that leaves the menu the week after the shoot deserves priority only when it belongs to a campaign that is already planned.

Food changes fast. Sauces dry at the edge, ice cream melts, herbs wilt and anything warm changes its surface. So a plate should be finished only once the camera, the light and the frame are ready.

A sensible order of work:

The kitchen should know the order in which the dishes are needed. That is what removes the waiting and the plates that have to be made twice.

Food photography should make a dish attractive. It should also match what the kitchen actually serves.

A guest expects the plate that arrives to look broadly like the one on the website or the menu. Ingredients, portion size and plating are therefore not things to change for the photograph alone.

A clean rim, fresh ingredients and careful placement improve the picture without making a promise the kitchen cannot keep.

Plates, glasses, cutlery and table tops carry as much of the picture as the food does. They should suit the style of the house and the dish in front of the camera.

Worth checking before the shoot:

Too many props pull attention away from the plate. A small, well-chosen set is usually enough.

A photograph shows every irregularity at once. Before the frame is taken, tables and chairs should line up, and menus, glasses, cutlery and napkins should add up to one consistent picture.

A few more things to check:

The dining room is usually best photographed before opening or between two services.

An empty dining room shows the architecture and the furniture, and it can read cold. Pictures with staff, or with a few guests, show the place in use.

Situations that work:

These scenes should look like the house on an ordinary evening. Too many people in one frame pull attention away from the room or the plate.

If the team is being photographed, everyone involved should know when and how. Uniforms have to be complete, clean and consistent.

Settle these in advance:

A short briefing saves time on the day and holds the look of the series together.

The facade, the entrance and the terrace depend on the weather and on where the sun is. Hard midday light drops awkward shadows. Dusk, on the other hand, often gives a warm mix of interior and exterior light.

Before the exterior frames:

Where a subject depends heavily on the weather, a fallback date is worth agreeing in advance.

Not every subject works everywhere. Google rewards clear frames of the facade, the entrance, the dining room and the food. Social media allows something looser and more varied.

So alongside the classic subjects it is worth recording:

Planned that way, one shooting day produces material for several weeks or months.

Most of these are avoided by preparation alone:

A clear order of work matters more than the sheer number of different subjects.