Side by side

Preserves, pâtés, pestos, sauces and pasta. In 2025 and 2026 we photographed their products for the website, one by one on a light background: chopped and halved dried tomatoes, artichokes in oil, dried tomato, hot chilli and caper and green olive pâtés, pesto alla trapanese and pistachio pesto, ready-made cherry tomato sauce, basil sauce, paccheri, romantici and spaghetti.

Project: Dispensa Sicilia
Sector: Preserves & sauces
Year: 2025–2026
Services: Packshot & packaging

Eight Dispensa Sicilia products on a light background, in two rows: jars of chopped dried tomato, artichokes in oil, pistachio pesto and hot chilli pâté, then basil sauce, paccheri, pesto alla trapanese and cherry tomato sauce

The brief

Product photographs for the website: each item on its own, on a light background, the way someone buying online sees it. No styled scenes and no compositions, and for that very reason nothing to hide behind: in a photograph like this there is only the product, the light and a shadow. And on a website these images are almost never looked at one at a time. They sit in rows, in categories and on product pages, and one detail out of place is enough for one of them to look as if another photographer took it, on another day.

The constraint

The Dispensa Sicilia range has a strong identity you can recognise from a distance: the same blue band with Sicilian icons on every pack. But the packs are made of different materials, and each one responds to light in its own way. The jars are clear glass, and glass shows everything: the dried tomatoes in oil, the artichokes, the grain of the pâtés and pestos. The cherry tomato sauce comes in an amber glass bottle that darkens what is inside; the basil sauce in clear glass, where the red shows in full. The pasta is in a clear bag with a paper band: the film creases and throws highlights, the paper is matt. Four materials and a single rule: in a row, they have to look as if they were photographed at the same moment.

How we solved it

The background is the same in every photograph, and not as a figure of speech: measured in the files, it is identical from one to the next, not a single point of difference. So, placed side by side, the images become one continuous surface, as in the cover of this page. The same camera height, level with the label, so the jars stay straight and do not distort. The same soft shadow under every product, which sets it down on the surface instead of leaving it floating. Jars and bottles face the camera, with the label flat and legible down to the nutrition table; the pasta bags are at three-quarters, so the pasta shows through the film next to the band. Light passes through the glass, and the oil glows instead of sitting as a dark mass behind the label. On the lids, one soft highlight that gives the shape of the metal without giving back the studio.