Food Photographer based in Warwickshire.
To see the GULHOS - Food & Hospitality site please check here:
My first experience with food photography was when I was studying photography in Birmingham and I negotiated a day a week at the studio at Cadburys in Bournville, it was a great experience and I learned from masters of their craft. My career took me in another direction with many commissions in the travel and hospitality industries, so I often found myself shoot food on location for hotel and destination clients, it is an area that I love and now I am producing food photography for a variety of clients, from food manufacturing to gastro pubs and fine dining restaurants.
I am primarily a location photographer,so I am very used to creating a studio on location and have all the lighting and kit that requires, it's just a space that is near the kitchen that I need.
Ideally with light that can be controlled, a window with a blind or the ability to turn off the lights and work in a darkish room is ideal.
So much beautifully prepared food is sadly represented by photography that is taken by smartphones, the problem is usually due to the light that the food is in, in a kitchen the light is often neon or the equivalent , under the serving hatch or near it is a tungsten or 'hot' infra-red, these light sources are often transmitting on a narrow spectrum and even with a smart smartphone, the colour balance cannot be neutralised as the sensor only sees a limited amount of light, our eyes adapt but a camera has limitations . There are technical ways around this (CC gels and a Colour Temperature meter), but to do justice to food, it has to be photographed in a consistent quality of light and that will be a daylight window, or 'daylight' balanced lighting , that at least replicate most of the spectrum of daylight.
As a photographer it is obvious that you have to provide the studio quality lights on location and combined with the knowledge of where to place the lights is often the difference a food photographer makes, a great food stylist or chef is the one who has created the dish, it's the photographers job to show it in its best light (forgive the Pun).
There are tricks of the trade, often a thing of myths, Ice Cream made from Mashed potato and all sort of substitutes and colouring, most of that comes from the way old school photography worked, you needed long exposures under hot lights, or until recently you required loads of flash to work on a large format camera as you needed lots of light to provide the depth of focus (or depth of field), now with fast (lets in lots of light) lens and a style that often desires limited focus we can get away with a lot less light and so work faster.
