Eddie Phillips food packaging photography shoot to produce images for Dundee based venison producer Highland Game.
I was working as part of a team and had Gary from Design company Destination Create, an Edinburgh based company who did the design of the new food packaging and Maxine Clark the food stylist – without her, the shots just wouldn’t have happened!
Tethered shooting set up at Maxine’s kitchen. Food packaging shots were all overhead, so working near the ground makes life a bit easier – no ladders required! Lighting is simple – single diffused soft box with various reflectors to bounce detail in shadow side.
Maxine’s cooking skills and experience of food styling is immense – working in London for many years for the top food photographers on magazines, M&S shoots and cookery books. Maxine has also produced several cook books herself.
Venison grillsteaks – and yes, those griddle lines are done one by one with a metal skewer heated over a gas flame!
Being at Maxine’s kitchen/studio made life a lot easier. Venison is a tricky meat to cook, so having a professional kitchen to hand is essential. Packaging shoots are more difficult than they look as you have very limited space to get the product in and have to allow when creating food packaging photography for nutritional information bars, logos, sell by dates etc.
Venison meatballs in a tomato sauce. Finding and sourcing the correct/appropriate props are crucial to any food shoot – the right bowl, pan, lump of cheese or cloth have to be just right.
Gary would usually bring a template and as I shoot tethered to my MacBook using Lightroom as my preferred software, he can physically place the template on the screen and see what’s in and what’s out! I find Lightroom a great programme to shoot tethered with, as it is very quick to make simple adjustments and let the client see an almost finished image of the food packaging photography. (full screen size if you hit ‘F’ on the keyboard!).
Venison sausages – keeping the ‘family’ consistency with these shots is important as they have to sit together on a supermarket shelf and be recognisable as the same brand, so a few repeat props keeps the thread running through the range.
Having Gary from the design company at the shoot and being able to approve every food packaging shot is a huge relief and takes some of the pressure off the day.
Venison burger – slightly under cooked on the inside so it retains a bit of structure, but perfectly coloured on the outside, again with the hand made griddle marks. Incidentally, the background was a bespoke one made for the designer Gary by a specialist background company – wasn’t cheap!!
The main difficulties and challenges for the shoot is trying not to eat all the product! It is very tempting and a huge amount of will power is required. Highland Game is a major venison producer and these packs can be found in almost every supermarket in the country.
Here is the finished range of venison products – you can see the need for the dead space on the left hand side and also the importance of the texture and colour of the bespoke background of the food packaging.
If you are looking for food packaging photography in the Dundee area or elsewhere in the UK, then give the CPN a call on 0333 567 0002. Or email the CPN whether for just one location or all across the UK.
