Commercial Menu Photography On Location in Ipswich.
This was a fun but challening commercial shoot at Endeavour House, Suffolk County Council’s Headquarters in Ipswich. Vertas Group (formerly Eastern Facilities Management) commissioned me to do some Menu Photography On Location in the canteen at Endeavour House.
The challenge was to capture food, drink and bakery items in just a few minutes as they came out of the oven and before the canteen opened early in the morning. The shoot took place in the open canteen very early in the morning, just as Endeavour House was coming to life.
This was Menu Photography On Location under extreme time pressure with serious space and lighting constraints, with a very early start thrown in for good measure… and I’m not the best early morning person!
The ladies in the canteen were great and the food came out of the oven fast and furious once we had the the portable lighting set up organised. The portable lighting rig used Speedlights, reflector boards and seamless backdrop paper on a roll, all of which was set up in super quick time in the main canteen.
The main issue effecting the lighting was the mixed overhead lighting in the canteen from spotlights, halogen lights, flourescent and tungsten lights. The other lighting issue was the ever increasing natural sunlight that was coming in through the huge plate glass windows of the canteen. The shoot had started when it was dark outside, but as dawn broke, the natural light coming into the canteen cased havoc with the lighting set up!
On top of the lighting challenges, the main issue was time! Each item had to photographed in a few moments, as the whole shoot had to be completed before the canteen opened. There was no time for styling the food or getting the perfect lighting set up or the perfect shot! The brief was to get the best functional shots possible in the shortest possible time and to bang through a large number of items in under half an hour from setting up the lighting rig to wrapping up the shoot. And we did it !
