YRSFood,
Ashby de la Zouch Food Editorial & Publishing Photographer.

Food editorial photography isn't only for magazine owners and editors - it's for everyone who makes a product and wants to sell their food product through a magazine or advertising channel direct or indirect. A lot of jargon there we know and what it means is that magazines, yes, produce images for editorial but so do manufacturers and processors who now provide images directly for either an editorial piece or advertorial item. Food photography at an editorial level has extended the entire food business chain. So it's vitally important. This means we are asked to produce food photography for features lists of magazine editors, business owners and PR teams. This may also include working with their selected food stylist on location - often in London, Edinburgh or Glasgow. It may also be a complete outsourced food photography commission, which entails working with the copy writer, cooking the recipes for them, styling the shoot and then photographing the results - we love this type of commission! This is rarely for a single image and often requires a series to accompany the article. We then ship the images down through FTP or Dropbox for the planners to use. This means we can work internationally - so long as there's a recipe and a style guide.

Food photography for books has taken an interesting turn for us over the past years - no longer do you have to be a renowned world class chef to get a book published - everyone is doing it thanks to ebooks.

The process of producing the images is the same though - perhaps with only one or two differences - we now get enquiries worldwide not just in the UK and the author doesn't always have to be doing the cooking in front of you, like in the past - someone else can do it. There is also the new trend of recipe collection books, which are totally outsourced as the author is a collator rather than a recipe creator so to speak. What is the process - as said above, it starts with a long conversation, where we try to understand the book, the style, the audience target etc.

This aside we then move on to the dishes themselves identifying ingredients that are specialised and need sourcing - a big issue with overseas clients who use local ingredients. Then there's translation, so we know what to use - scallions to them, young onions to us cups or grams! After that, it falls into the outsourced food photography process - we then ship the images to them in light-box form to approach editorially and from a chef level. Simple. The latest trend we are working on beyond publishing to books is blogging - so why not go here to read more.

As before said, we do this locally and internationally. But as said before, it isn't always about editors. More an more editorial styled images are being asked of use by marketing teams and owners as they do their own editorial and online work. This may be recipecards, online recipes for the website, news-letters therange of editorial and promotionally based food images is growing daily. Lifestyle images shot to strong design and editorial requirements are handled in an outsourced fashion.

We even source the recipe for the food product when required. Our clients then simple let us get on with the production of the shoot: find the recipe, cooking the dish, style the dish and props, photograph the dish and then produce the image. As we also have design skills in-house, we even drop them into Adobe InDesign templates for leaflet use.