Food & restaurant photography

Three hours usually cover 10 to 15 dishes and drinks, each from two or three angles, plus the dining room, the bar and the kitchen at work. The best time is a quiet morning or the day the restaurant is closed, with the kitchen cooking each dish as it would for service, one at a time, and the chef plating it fresh in front of the camera; a plate that waits more than a few minutes loses its shine. In a parrilla the grill and the fire are part of the story, in a bodega restaurant the wine and the view, in a bar the pour and the glass, and the dish list is agreed with the chef before the day.

The room is photographed twice, before guests arrive and again with the lights on at dusk. Diners who would be recognisable in the frame sign a release or are kept out of focus, because article 53 of the Código Civil y Comercial requires consent to reproduce a person’s image; many restaurants invite staff, friends or regulars to fill the tables instead. The 30 edited files arrive within 5 business days in crops for menus, delivery apps, the website and social media, with each dish on a consistent background so the menu reads as one set. Check each delivery app’s current photo rules before the session, since they change.

Food photography is about the plate and the place. If you also need short vertical videos of the grill, the pour or the kitchen for Reels and TikTok, social media content adds 6 edited clips from the same visit; if the chef is the brand, personal brand photography makes portraits and working scenes; and a restaurant inside a hotel or an estancia may be better served by hotel and estancia photography, which covers the whole property in a day.