More beautiful than there is: Food stylist about tricks on the set of food
Virtually every food photograph, which we see is the result of the work of a team of stylists. They think over packaging, decorate menus, magazines, cookbooks and billboards. Many people are convinced that food stylists replace all food in photographs with inedible, but appetizing-looking objects. At parties, I often hear conversations like "instead of ice cream, they use mashed potatoes, and instead of milk, PVA." Personally, I have never replaced mashed ice cream, the glue dries out, so that it cannot be removed, and as whipped cream we use not shaving foam, but whipped cream themselves (in extreme cases, Cool Whip topping).
Milk and its substitutes
In the 60s, the Federal Chamber of Commerce filed a complaint against Campbell's Soup advertisers for putting glass balls on soup plates so that the noodles in the plate would not sink to the bottom. By law, we have no right to give out inedible items as food, but if we take pictures, say, about a hot dessert, the ice cream in the same photo does not have to be real. If flakes like Fruit Loops dye the milk, you can fill it with something else, such as the smelly white hair tonic that was used in the 50s. Now it is difficult to find, but it is one of the few fatty foods that do not turn cereal into porridge. At the same time, if we remove the advertising of milk, we must use it.
The art of ice cream
It is difficult to remove ice cream even physically - you have to spend at least several days in the cold among dry ice. It melts quickly and must be frozen for several days before beautiful balls can be formed from it. At the same time, natural ice cream freezes better and faster than the one that is full of guar gum. And it is better for a stylist to have pumped up hands in order to cut up hard ice cream — on the already soft one, those grooves that the client wants to see are not visible. If I take an order with ice cream, I usually take it off without additives, because with them is even more difficult. Cherries or nuts can spoil the appearance of the ice cream itself - punch a hole in the ball for example. In general, I try not to work with ice cream.
Chocolate River
In advertisements of bars, where chocolate flows like water (that is, almost in every), stylists do not pour them bars themselves, but huge plaster casts. The fact is that real snacks are too small and it is impossible to pour chocolate on them beautifully. On one such model can take about 20 kilograms of chocolate. At the same time, the film crew can choose the desired viscosity for a week to create exactly the same chocolate flow that everyone wants to see in the commercial. As a result, almost 400 kilograms of chocolate of different consistencies can be purchased for one shooting. I have been to such shootings: stylists literally poured rivers of chocolate, and it flowed into huge cisterns.
Hot trays, spinning tables and "nail program"
Another situation: we remove advertising for a restaurant that uses frozen chicken breasts for cooking. Of course, for shooting we will take chicken breast from Whole Foods (American supermarket chain specializing in organic products. - Ed.), Because they look better - more appetizing and smoother. If you need to artificially browns the edges of a hamburger, we darken them a little bit with the help of dye - so that the burger does not end up looking either too hot or too ruddy.
On the arrangement of the shooting takes so much time that by the time when everything is finally ready, the food has cooled. For example, seemingly steaming baked potatoes next to a steak are not at all as hot as it looks in the photo. Just during the shooting around the plate, containers with hot water are placed, due to which it seems that the potatoes have just been taken out of the oven, although in reality it is at room temperature.
A plate with a dish is often placed on a special rotating table. While cameras are scurrying around to and fro in search of a beautiful picture, an individual closely watches so that not a single extra crumb, a drop of water falls on the plate, or some dirty stains appear. There are about 30-40 doubles ahead, and the hot plate needs to be changed every couple of minutes, so you spend the whole day with a “doubler” plate at the ready, trying to seamlessly integrate into the work of the whole team. The plate, which is removed the latest, we call the "nail program." As soon as he appears on the set, everything is laid out on the full and the whole process is a bit like a ballet production.
Food Styles Trends: From Sterility to Realism
Food styling today is realistic; fashionable when the dish looks at home. When I was 23 and I was just starting to work in this area, the price, on the contrary, was sterility - food led to the most accurate, clean look, God forbid, to keep crumbs on the plate. Today, stylists speak another language.
For example, I worked a lot with cake makers. Previously, if I needed to cut a square piece from a cake measuring 20 by 30 centimeters, then this should have been the perfect square. Today, there is no such requirement and no one is disturbed by the natural shape of the piece, just as the fact that the icing on the cake breaks slightly and crumbs get on the plate does not bother anyone. The image of the cake on the box should not scare the average buyer with its ideal - it is necessary that he decided to buy it and cook it yourself.
Pizza is hard
Pizza to shoot almost the most difficult. After a couple of hours, the cheese may not look as appetizing as it should, and even warming up will not help it. You have to dance with a tambourine near the oven, tracking the moment when the cheese will look exactly as the client needs. Despite the fact that it is difficult, I try to take on the work with the pizza, because if it can be removed well, a truly beautiful picture comes out. For example, recently I was shooting pizza from an unusual angle, they put a lot of prosciutto on it, so the light shone through the pieces of meat. As a result, they were almost transparent.
Styling without styling and natural looking food
I always notice the misses of other stylists. Buttered burger in the picture can shine like it never will. Once I wandered into the department of frozen food in a supermarket and saw a pizza package for which the stylists “married” two pieces of cheese so that it dripped nicely from a slice. But in the photograph was visible border along which they spliced these two pieces.
Clients often give out unsuitable recipes, according to which it is necessary to prepare food for taking pictures, so you have to find out everything yourself. We need to understand how to cook the meat so that when it is cut, there is no blood left in the center of the piece, but the meat is perfectly pink. You need to know how to melt different types of cheese so that they look appetizing on the pizza. And you can have a beautiful piece of ham outside, in the cut of which a layer of fat is found. Therefore, you should always have a plan B, understand the chemical processes that occur during cooking and at the same time be able to produce a beautiful picture.
Interview: Whitney Kimball, Hopes & Fears
Photo: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 via Shutterstock