Food Photography | Elizabeth’s at the Art Museum
After photographing the interior of Elizabeth’s at the Art Museum of South Texas, I was itching to make some time to give their food a try. At the time, reservations were filling up well in advance making it tough to get in. That’s when the marketing director of the Waterstreet family of restaurants reached out to me about scheduling an afternoon between lunch and dinner service so we could photograph their fall menu. I remained as cool as a cucumber and counted down the days to our shoot (and chance to sample some of the hottest menu items currently available in the Coastal Bend.)
The plan was going to be similar to our food photography session at the Oyster Bar - photograph the popular menu items, but this time I wanted to leave the entrees untouched until we had a table full so that we could take some secondary photos with a little organic and chaotic juxtaposition - just like what a normal table of food looks like when good friends meet for lunch. I was truly astounded by the variety their kitchen was putting out - a few appetizers, then some brunch, then a whole fish, and a few desserts, then some fresh focaccia, then more appetizers, etc. It was also a more relaxed shoot than Oyster Bar had been - some of the staff came over as we were shooting and enjoyed having samples when we scrapped plates. I can’t lie, I also enjoyed having those samples as well. If anything, it made me realize how great every dish was and when we returned for an actual meal, I’d have no idea what to order.
Gear wise I loaded in my Angler 88 with the wireless Godox 600, my trusty Canon 6Dii and 100/2.8L for most shots. There were a few wider table shots I swapped to my 50/1.4 ‘nifty-fifty’. When balancing the light, I decided to let a little more ambient bleed through in the shadows instead of bouncing from white foam core. It gave the shots a little more cozy warmth (and helped counteract some of the very blue sky-reflected daylight that comes in those beautiful big panoramic windows overlooking the Corpus Christi ship channel, Texas State Aquarium, and USS Lexington.
For the cocktails, I opted to throw up a Godox 200 with a 20” shoot through umbrella gelled 1/2 CTO and I let quite a bit of ambient light spill into the scene. Again, I really wanted to push that warm, cozy feeling that Elizabeth’s exudes, thanks to Studio Cecile who handled the interior design.
