Styled food photography, recipes and serving suggestions

A set built for that product

Surfaces, colours and props are chosen starting from what is inside the pack, not from a set already built for someone else. For Sicilian Factory's spreads, the jar balances on top of a glass jar full of its own ingredient — pistachios, hazelnuts — against a solid background chosen so the product stands out: violet for pistachio, green for hazelnut. For the citrus marmalades, coloured paper and long shadows. Four different registers for the same range, and one rule holding them together: next to the product there is almost always what goes into it.

The project Sicilian Factory · The jar and what goes into it

The product is the real one

The dish in the photograph has to be the one that comes out of your pack. It is prepared following the real instructions, and the work goes into presentation, not substance: what you see is what the customer gets at home. We usually handle the styling ourselves, so light and plate are built together; on larger projects we work with a food stylist. And products always arrive with a few more pieces than needed, because something gets sacrificed on set.

Outside and inside, in one photograph

Seen from outside, many products are a closed object: a rind, a jar, a whole wheel. What makes them unlike any other only shows once they are opened. That is why on set we often put the whole next to its cut: for Salumificio Lipari, on every board, the whole piece and its slices; for Spatafora Formaggi the wheel next to its wedge, so rind and paste are seen together. One photograph holds what you recognise on the shelf and what you find at the table.

The project Salumificio Lipari · The drawing is inside

Few images, and each one has to be enough

Not every job needs a hundred photographs. Spatafora Formaggi needed five, for the website and the catalogue, and precisely for that reason each one had to introduce its cheese on its own and, next to the others, look like it came from the same eye. The chosen style was clean, in neutral colours, leaving the whole scene to the cheeses: no dark backgrounds, no bright tablecloths. The only colour in the series comes from what the cheeses carry inside — olives, chilli, rocket.

The project Spatafora Formaggi · Every cheese has its own white

Recipes, back of pack, serving suggestions

Sometimes the recipe arrives already decided, by your marketing team or your agency; sometimes we propose it, starting from the product and the season. Either way it pays to shoot it as a series — the full scene, the plate on its own, the detail — so one day on set fills months of communication. And the images that end up printed on the pack are a job of their own: for Fratelli Sicilia they are dedicated shots, with their own set built around the demands of print, because on the shelf that photograph becomes the product.

The project Fratelli Sicilia · The boxes were still blank