Firing Up The Grill...

It's another grilling season and we can't help but take full advantage of it.  Call it a primal instinct, or just football fever settling in for the winter, but something keeps drawing us back to the grill. In fact, year-round grilling has become increasingly popular.

Each of these shots was unique, but they all had the grill in common.  When shooting pics that require a grill, you can do it in a few different ways.  You can shoot on an actual grill, you can fake the grill, or you can photograph when food has come off the grill.  Each of these shots demonstrates one of these options.  

Shooting on the grill is tough, because you have a limited time to get the shot before you have to pull the food off the set, and shoot the next hero.  But with a good team, it can be done without having to worry.    

We touched on how we created the grill shots in a previous post on our blog.  There we went into detail about each step of the process.  So, if you are wondering how we accomplished the fired-up looks, check out our blog post here.

3-Way Grilled Corn on the Cob...

Corn on the cob is a perennial favorite this time of year, and hot off the grill, it’s even better. Grilling corn on the cob changes up this traditional side dish; in fact, most kids don’t even consider grilled corn on the cob a vegetable! When we set up our grill for the upcoming football season, we will definitely have corn on the grill, right along side of the burgers and dogs.

To light this shot, we needed a large unbroken light source to catch all the places the butter had melted. We put a couple of those light sources around the product. One was from the back right and directed toward the left. Beyond that, we had a small point light source from the back left. Even with the soft light sources around the set, we noticed a bit too much contrast, so we put a white card up, over the top of the set, to reflect some of the light back down and fill in the shadows.

Butter is a challenge. The butter started to melt instantly, so we had to move fast. Needless to say, we had to melt the butter a few times to get the effect we were looking for.

Mushroom Ravioli...

Making your own ravioli isn’t a job for beginners, but the taste is well worth the effort.

You can see how this shot developed in the "how we did it" photos below.

Once the pasta is created, you can craft the stuffing – cheese, spinach and meat are all fine options, but mushrooms are the pièce de résistance. Don’t bother with a marinara or Arrabriata sauce for this recipe. A basic garlic and oil sauce, aglio olio in Italian, with a winning combination of fresh basil and chopped walnuts, topped with crushed red pepper, shows off the shape of the pasta and complements the mushroom flavor without overtaking it.

Lighting the set was fairly simple. We created a window-lit setting, by placing a large, soft light source on the right, slightly to the back. This light accentuated the beautiful highlights on the sauce that coated each square of pasta. Since the light was relatively close, the inverse square law (the power of the light will be inversely proportional to the square of the distance) was making the left side of the plate darker than we wanted. We brought in a small white card to bounce the light back and fill in the shadows.  At this point, the ravioli appeared somewhat flat and needed a enhancement.  From the back left, we brought in a small point source light to catch the rim of the pasta and add the ‘punch’ we were seeking.

The Stand-in:

Click to Expand

Lamb Chops....

Our client requested both a searing on-grill shot and an impressive plated shot of single rib portions. We started with a full rack of lamb and our food stylist, Janet Middleton, cut the rack into chops. 

Fired-Up Lamb Chops.

The concept was to create an outdoor shot, but keep the control afforded by our indoor studio. We rigged up a stationary grill top, and used a long lens (150mm) to come in close on the food. This accomplished a few key points: 1. We could capture the nicely charred look of the meat and juicy accents. 2. We didn't need to use an actual grill in the studio; using a real grill limited our lighting freedom and perspective. 3. We would have had a large black rim surrounding the food and a very shallow bowl for the coals; we also didn't want it to look like the grill grate was resting right on the coals.


In our set up, we had a huge bed of coals farther under the set, allowing us to use our lights to illuminate them, without affecting our food/set high above it. Creating the appearance of a grill also allowed us to have our light sources unimpeded by the black rim of most grills and we were free to light 360 degrees around the food. We had numerous lighting sources. Again, we wanted to create an outdoor feel, so we had to recreate the sun as well as the sky. We put a very large broad source above the set to emulate the sky and control our shadows and contrast. We then positioned a point source coming from the front right to represent our sun. A meat shot really benefits from specific highlights, so we brought in a "meat light." This is a very small point source light, which we placed behind the meat, to highlight the juiciness and detail on top of the meat. Since our coals and fire were too low to cast any real light from the underside of the grate, we put a point light source under the food as well, to simulate the fire. We also focused a light on the coals, so they would be appropriately lit.


We wanted to show the chops at their tender peak of perfection, so Janet cooked the lamb quickly and achieved well-defined grill marks. We timed the shots beautifully and even caught detailed herb and seasoning particles intact on the surface of the perfectly grilled meat for the plated shot.

The Moist and Tasty Pork Chop....

Nothing says summer, like grillin'...

A griller's choice and challenge,


     An outdoor feel was a must for this summery shot. To keep control, but still have the natural light look from an afternoon sky, we placed a point light source to come from the back right. This light gave us direction and also produced all the specular highlights on the chop.

By doing this, our indoor set became a realistic afternoon sky with a controlled, simulated sun. To create the look of a natural light, you can't just create a sun, you also have to create a sky. We put a large white flat behind the set and wrapping around towards the left, thus creating a sky-like impression and producing a large, unbroken highlight on the sauce. Since the front was going a little dark, we filled in with a mirror to light the front and captured the delectable details of both the meat and potatoes. 

The shoot was fun, fragrant and we all spent a lot of time licking our lips.

White BBQ Pulled Chicken Pizza...

Pizza comes many different ways.  Size, shape, layering, are all something that are different depending on where you are in the country.

A unique White BBQ sauce accents this wonderful pizza.

Chicagoans traditionally think pizza is thick, hearty and the sauce goes on top.  Other Chicagoans think pizza should be on a thin cracker like crust.  This particular recipe is a lot lighter and had more of a crisp taste to it, thus we wanted to keep the crust thin.

The product has a lot going on with it, so we wanted to keep everything else simple and clean.  Our client had this wonderfully weathered pizza stone, and it was an obvious choice when propping to use it.   We had a very large soft light source coming in from the right, to give us our main light direction.  We also had a soft light source coming from directly behind to help give some incidence on the surface and parts of the pizza that have a sheen.

To add some interest, we put a glass shower block on the surface to play with the soft light.  That glass block is giving us the white incidence on the back right of the frame.  The left side of the fame then got empty and dark, so we put a small measuring cup of parmesan cheese to break up that negative space.  We didn't want our shot to be completely flat with soft light, so we brought in a point source from the back left to punch up the contrast and make the shot come alive.

The front of the shot was going darker than we would have liked, so we put a white card on the front left to reflect some of our main light coming from the right, then used a hand held mirror on the front right to reflect the point source light back onto a desired part of the product.

Maker's Mark...

Patience now a days is a thought of as a thing of the past.  Everyone wants instant, now and later can't wait.  Some things demand patience and if you can wait, some of the best things life has to offer will be waiting.  About 6 years of waiting will give you Maker's Mark Whiskey...

Again Brian and Ryan had one of those days where they decided to shoot a very similar project.  This project was a bottle of whiskey.  They again separated and did their respective shots.

Brian's Shot

Brian set up a window frame behind the set and created an over exposed, soft light  coming through.  This helped give a great natural look and feel to the photograph.  To fill the photo so it wasn't just back lit, he brought in a soft box on a boom from high left, and a white card on the right to reflect some of the light back onto the bottle.

Ryan's Shot

Ryan decided to keep this shot clean.  "The whiskey sells it's self" was the approach he wanted to take. This shot was also very simplistic in its approach.  He put the bottle and the glass on a very small white pedestal to get them up off a surface.  This allowed for the highlights to run top to bottom with out a break.  A smoked plexiglass was put behind the bottle, and a large point source with a grid was used to get gradations in the liquid.  A large soft light source was positioned very close to the bottle on the left side, which gave a solid highlight.  On the right, a white card to reflect that light, and to also act as a light source.  A small point source was aimed at the top of the card which gave a subtle highlight on the top right of the bottle.