Guerilla Food Photography - Hester’s Cafe
When it comes to photographing food, I prefer taking my time and contemplating lighting / styling / backgrounds / textures for each shot. Occasionally, however, a project comes along that is more utilitarian in nature which necessitates a faster, unorthodox approach to capture multiple plates during actual food service. This project for Hester’s Cafe was one of those times. Jason (awesome name, I know) from Hester’s reached out to me about creating a catalog of products so they could launch online ordering for their restaurant. Ultimately the goal was to capture everything on the menu including dishes, sides, some drinks, and merchandise. In addition to speeding through the whole menu, the decision was made to set up shop within the kitchen, right off the pickup line, on a small two-top where the expo would place and remove each plate. All this would be happening with live plates headed out to customers so I wouldn’t be able to do any touching / food styling (nor would I have time to) because we wanted to knock this out in an hour. In the words of Barney Stinson, “Challenge Accepted!”
Altogether, the entire kitchen worked professionally and feverishly to ensure never-ending hot plates right off the line, cold dishes & baked goods rushed from the front-of-house to the kitchen, and merchandise sitting by idly to fill in the gaps.
10/10 would do it again in a heartbeat (so if your south Texas restaurant is in need of basic imagery of your menu, I’d love to chat with you.)
On another note, if you ever have a chance to give Hester’s Cafe a try, these are my favorite recommendations:
The Blueberry Muffin (I know I’ll catch hate for this, but Hester’s Blueberry Muffin is everything that Andy’s Kitchen blueberry muffins were)
The Oatmeal Raisin Cookie (the perfect amount of sweet, spice, and salt - all in a chewy cookie)
The Cheesy B.E.A.T (bacon, eggs, avocado, tomato sandwich topped with queso)
The El Campo Scramble (for the omelet lover - bacon, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, pepper jack cheese)
Hester’s Cafe in Corpus Christi - IG: @hesters_corpus_christi
You’re still here? Awesome. So, another challenge with this setup was space. If you have ever seen the inside of a commercial kitchen, you know that many of them are built out with a place for everything and no place leftover. Their kitchen is the same way. While we could squeeze in a small two-top table, there was absolutely nowhere I could have put a light stand. My solution? Bounce it. I photograph homes on a daily basis and have learned how to bounce light like nobody’s business. This setup was as simple as an AD200 standing on it’s own about 2’ from an off-white ceiling with a small fin deflector to direct light away from the shooting surface and towards the wall and stainless fridge. It wasn’t necessarily a pretty setup, but I’m very comfortable using unorthodox methods to get the shot.