Pizza Today Magazine Food Styling Makes all the difference
When it comes to fabulous food, you know how to make it. But do you know how to best show it off to increase your profits? Barry Childers, owner of the Houston, Texas-based chain Barry's Pizza, has been working with the same photographer for more than 20 years. "I've been working with my photographer for so long he can read my mind," Childers says. Childers is "extremely happy" with his photographer's results for in-house work like menus. But when he was putting together a newspaper package and a TV spot, he wanted a food stylist to come in and jazz things up. Barry's Pizza's regular pictures "look like you put a plate of food on a table and took a picture," says Childers. "A stylist can do more. From the get-go, I've used people with the skills I don't have." Your best side You know how to make a perfect-asting pie, but a food stylist is trained to manage food so that it will look beautiful in print and on television. A food stylist will know, for example, how to arrange pepperoni on a pizza using tweezers to get the toppings' effects just right, and how to use an eyedropper to place the right amount of sauce in the right places. They'll brown your cheese with a blow torch so it looks just right, and they know how to time things so that just when the cheese on pizza number one is congealing under the photography studio's hot lights, a second perfectly fresh pizza is coming out of the oven. (Incidentally, pizzas are usually coming out of the oven every 10 minutes during a pizza photo shoot when a stylist takes charge.) And most importantly, a food stylist will know how to get your critical pizza shot: the "cheese pull." The cheese pull, says Chicago-based food stylist Carol Smoler, comes at that moment when you're pulling a slice out of a pie and the cheese gets "that beautiful, stringy look. You get one pull on the cheese, and if it doesn't look good you have to make another pie." A food stylist can help you make sure your pulls go well using tricks you would most certainly never think of on your own. For example, Dan Macey, a New Hope, Pennsylvania-based food stylist and head of the food photography and stylist division of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, was recently shooting the cheese pull shot for a new line of frozen low-carb pizzas. "I created a special pizza-pull spatula with tacks duck-taped to a very thin spatula that allows the pizza slice to be pulled along with spatula," says Macey. So how do you locate a food stylist who can make your pizza and dishes look spectacular in print and on television? Barry Childers found his food stylists through several sources -- his photographer, the production people making his TV spot and a public relations specialist. It is fairly typical to connect with food stylists through other production sources. Making contact If you go looking for your own stylist, there are a host of resources open to you, many of whom are available online. Many food stylists have their own Web sites (doing a Google search for "food stylist" and your city should turn up a few), and many local and national professional associations also have online directories. A few of these are: - The International Food Stylists and Photographers Directory: www.foodesigns.com/directory.html - The Chicago Creative Directory: www.creativedir.com/html/16.html - The Colorado Production Resource Guide: www.cprgonline.com/2220.html Once you've made contact with several food stylists, you'll want to see each of their portfolios so you can find someone who creates the sorts of images you're after for your own restaurant, says Tina Ruggiero, a food stylist based in New York City. Ruggiero recommends examining at least three portfolios before deciding which stylist to hire. "Food stylists are like interior designers -- some are experts at particular things, others are generalists," says Ruggiero. So looking at the work a stylist has already finished helps you determine whether he or she knows how to work with cheese and meat and whether they can create the sorts of images you seek. In check Keep costs in mind when you're considering whom to hire. Some of the cost will be out of your control -- it'll depend on where you live and the complexity and length of the assignment. There will be a wide price range among food stylists. Dan Macey suggests that food stylists cost anywhere from $500 to $1,200 per day; definitely ask for prices up front, if cost will figure into your choice of stylists. Consider bidding the job out to stylists to see who has the best price; but, remember, the best price doesn't always ensure the best person for the job. You'll also want to make sure you're hiring someone who will listen to what you want and with whom you have good chemistry. "Communicate with the stylist so they understand your vision," says Ruggiero. Once you've chosen your stylist, you'll have a pre-production meeting to share the recipes you want the stylist to work with, and make sure everyone understands what the final result should look like, says Ruggiero. Here, you'll talk to the stylist about how long the shoot will take (pizza is difficult to shoot -- cheese is one of the most difficult foods to get looking great on film; the time frame may be longer than you'd like or expect). You'll also discuss what supplies you will need for the shoot and who will collect the tools and props. One of Childers' stylists had him pick up a bag full of preferred supplies and props for their shoots, while other stylists prefer to get their own goods together. The food stylist can also tell you at this meeting if you need to hire a prop stylist in addition to the food stylist -- the prop stylist chooses and arranges everything but the food and can be valuable, says Ruggiero, in shoots when there will be more than just plate shots. Your job doesn't end there. Smoler and Ruggiero both recommend making sure someone from your restaurant is on set on the day (or days) that the dishes are being filmed to ensure that the food being shot looks like the food you serve. It's also to ensure that the stylist and photographer get the shots you want. Finally, set the photo shoot date for a time when your restaurant is not at its busiest -- you don't want your kitchen crew worrying about the shoot when there are paying customers in the store. Arin Greenwood is a freelance writer living in Saipan, an island near Guam. |