Food Styling

Food photography and food styling are everywhere you look. On supermarket shelves, on packaging, on fine food and fast food billboards, food blogs, and the web. And the stylists at Anne Makeup & Styling help create unforgettable food photography while they enjoy the delicious creative process. We work either from layouts provided by a design team or create our own. And using skills of product or still photography but with “living” subjects. A moist, runny oyster, a juicy steak dripping with glaze, or steamy rice about to tumble. “Clothed” food like uncut fruit and veggies, or food plates, like seared scallops and shrimp over spinach topped with balsamic sautéed strawberries. Yum. Product photography offers the food stylist challenges, but the fragility of the food and the temperature of the set make food photography extra challenging. Often, two or three complete setups are photographed before the hero shot.

…and, tweezers for noodles, white glue instead of milk, paper towels soaked with syrup to top ice cream, soap in liquid blown with air through a straw, glycerin brushed on for fresh look, misting bottle for salads, cardboard under hamburger, toothpicks to hold every everything against gravity.

Food Styling Tricks

There are many tricks to food styling, acrylic ice cubes, motor oil for syrups and gravies, a blowtorch for browning edges of meat and creating goose bumps on raw chicken, spray deodorant for frosty grapes, hairspray for dried-out cake, fabric spray to prevent oil from seeping into a pancake, shoe polish for succulent meat, soaked and microwaved cotton balls for steam…

Ice cream?

And when you see a delicious-looking bowl of ice cream in an ad, it’s far from delicious. chances are it is fake ice cream. But how does the food stylist make fake ice cream? Whip up ½ cup corn syrup with ½ cup Crisco shortening. Work in ¾ of a pound of powdered sugar until the mixture has the consistency of frosting. Work in more sugar as needed. For additional thickening, add flour. It scoops best chilled and is most successful when the ice cream shows texture or barking. Food coloring works well for strawberry, ¼ cocoa works for chocolate. And voila.