5 Tips from Pro Food Stylist Rachel Grunig
San Francisco based food stylist Rachel Grunig has been styling
food (as well as interiors and soft goods) professionally for eight years. She
imparts her magic for a variety of commercial clients such as: Gatorade,
Sahale Snacks, Amazon, Target, Pacific Coast Feather, and Minted.com (just to
name a few). We interviewed Rachel to learn the secrets of creating mouth
watering images.
1. What do you love about food styling?
I love food styling because pictures of amazing, delicious food
can elicit incredibly strong, visceral feelings. I was working on a shoot
recently where one of our shots was of pancakes....beautiful, thick, pillow-y
pancakes with blueberries and a pat of butter and syrup streaming down the
sides. The shot looked amazing; everyone on set, all day, couldn't stop talking
about how they wanted to have pancakes for dinner. I love being able to create
a picture that makes someone immediately think "I want to eat that. Right
now."
2. What was your most challenging and or memorable food or
beverage shoot? What made it so?
My most challenging food shoot included a Thanksgiving turkey that
I styled for Amazon a couple of years ago. I hadn't styled a turkey before and
was really nervous about it being a complete disaster. I did a ton of obsessive
research on how to make the turkey look just right. The method actually isn't
that complicated - basically, you cook the turkey halfway so that the skin is
taut, then paint on a colorant mixture to make it look properly browned. I was
just so nervous that it would end up looking "un-turkeylike."
It ended up looking beautiful in the shot and stayed perfect for
the rest of the day. I got curious about how long the turkey could hold his
pose, so I told my assistant to let it sit out overnight. When we came into the
studio the next day, the turkey looked exactly the same as it had when I'd
first styled it!
3. What are the five most important things to consider when
preparing and shooting food?
1. Timing. A lot of food won't last long once it's been prepared,
so make sure you have a stand in dish to use when you're composing your
picture.
2. Get the freshest, prettiest produce you can find.
3. Be patient. There can be a lot of minuscule adjustments needed
to get a dish looking perfectly thrown together without being overtly styled.
4. Prepare as much as you can ahead of time. If you're working
with grains or noodles, you can cook them the night before so that there's less
to deal with the day of the shoot.
5. Don't go in blind. If you're shooting something you're not very
familiar with, do a test run to get a feel for the dish and how to handle the
ingredients.
4. What are the five most important things to have in your bag as
a food/table top stylist?
1. Good, sharp knives. I have three - a chef's knife, a paring
knife, and a serrated knife.
2. Paintbrushes and basting brushes. You can use them to oil food,
place droplets, and move around or clean up crumbs.
3. Lightweight prep bowls and trays. I use metal bowls and baking
sheets; plastic bowls and trays work great too.
4. Cleaning supplies - paper towels, glass spray, and dish soap.
It's mind blowing how many paper towels I go through on a food shoot.
5. Chopsticks. They're so useful for moving tiny bits of food
around.
5. Is there something about a food shoot that would surprise
people, sort of a “who knew,” idea?
There are a lot of little quirks and tricks in food styling.
One thing that always amazes me is that often, hot dishes are
assembled and photographed cold.
Also, condensation or water droplets generally are not pure water,
but a 50/50 mix of water and glycerin. The glycerin increases the viscosity of
the water, so it moves more slowly and forms bigger beads.
My favorite trick is perking up herbs. Fill a shallow bowl with an
inch or so of water and add a drop of dish soap to the water. Trim a little bit
off of the stems of the herbs, then pop the herbs into water, standing straight
up as if they're flowers. The dish soap weakens the surface tension of the
water, so the freshly trimmed herb stems can suck up the water and get
refreshed quickly.
Comments