Behind the shot – Tony Lendill

Read below to learn what goes into a food photography shoot.

This was shot as part of a series for the Betty’s Cookery School brochure front cover. It’s a traditional dish that they wanted a maritime/nautical feel to.

To achieve this I used complimentary props with light blue tones, and added splashes of blue light in the background. The dish is shot on an old whitewashed panel board with hints of green and blue within – perfect!

It was shot on location at the cookery school, so we recreated our studio conditions with black boards/cloth surrounding the set. I used flash to light it for more control, but wanted to give it a daylight feel, like you were eating this dish at the seaside. It’s mainly backlit, with mirrors reflecting light back in to the foreground.

The food styling was done by Betty’s cookery school’s Anne Reynolds, which involved a lot of prep before the shoot, making pie toppings and the fillings. The sauce was pipetted in, then layering on the topping which was browned off to show up more and give a nice crusted look.

Unfortunately I never did get to eat this, but it looked delicious. That’s typically the case for the food photographer!