The picture-perfect food image

Nagpur: It was temptation at the traffic light. A massive hoarding at Law College Square, draping an entire face of a building, came up in late April this year. On it was a cascade of chocolate, velvety smooth and an unholy shade of brown. ‘Chocolate fondue’ was the name of this sinful creation. On the Sitabuldi flyover, an image of bruschetta – crusty bread, fresh tomatoes, no-need-for-adjectives cheese – drew the attention of motorists briefly away from the road.
The hoardings were teasers for Zuree Urban Kitchen, a fine dine restaurant on Mount Road, that opened a few days later.
Zuree was one of the few city restaurants to have created a buzz about themselves by showing off inviting images of food items from their menu on hoardings. However, there are a handful of other such places that have taken to professional-level food photography to draw in patrons.
These aren’t just photos of a preparation plopped on to a plate and garnished with dhaniya, or, worse, generic stuff downloaded from the Internet, watermarks and all. These are images that have been painstakingly constructed after much fussing and fretting, preparation and planning by chefs, food stylists and speciality food photographers. Many restaurant owners flew in food photographers and stylists from outside Nagpur to capture perfection on a plate.
So, why has photographing food become such a, well, consuming obsession? “It’s deeply psychological. People see something beautiful, they instinctively wish to have it. It’s the same with food,” says Dhaval Kothari of Zuree. He said having a professionally-shot profile of the speciality items was essential for Zuree to make a mark.
Agrees Aditya Nanivadekar of Hibiscus and Copper. Nanivadekar got professional photo-shoots done for both the places. “Having a portfolio done lends genuineness to your brand. Otherwise, if I use a downloaded photo for advertisements and serve something else at my restaurant, my patron is going to feel cheated,” he said.
Both Kothari and Nanivadekar wanted to showcase the character of their respective restaurants through their dishes. “A photograph is a perception of a restaurant. Looking at the photographs, a person can tell what kind of restaurant a particular place is,” Nanivadekar says.
To grasp something as abstract as the restaurant owners’ vision and render it into something as tangible as a photograph is difficult. Therefore, the two roped in experts for the job, which are scarce in Nagpur. Zuree’s photographer was Gurgaon-based Saurabh Saxena, who specializes in food and product photography. For the Hibiscus shoot, Nanivadekar took help from a food stylist from South India, whose name he didn’t wish to reveal.
Saxena, a former marine engineer, travelled around the world where he says he got to taste different cuisines. However, he decided to shift careers and follow his passion for photography. But Saxena is not just a food photographer; he’s a foodie photographer. “If you don’t love food, you won’t do justice to food photography. If you love food, you will take extra efforts to portray a dish better,” he says.
So, what, to him, makes a good food photograph? “Food is such an important part of us. Its sight immediately triggers various emotions and associations within us. A good food photograph, therefore,” he says, “should also excite a person’s hunger. It should reach the level of tempting him or her.”
Indian food presents a different challenge. Because one type of – or very similar-looking – gravy is used in multiple dishes, “shooting, for instance, butter chicken and kadhai chicken and making them look distinct in difficult,” Saxena explains.
The physical act of clicking a food photograph takes between one-twentieth to one-hundredth of one fleeting second. However, the process leading up to this moment is equal parts laborious, exacting, messy and constantly demanding improvisations. It stretches several hours. On a good day, food photographers typically make no more than four or five use-worthy images.
Zuree’s head chef Akash Prasad says five or six dishes each from Zuree and its sister concern Bean Box Café were chosen for the photography shoot. “Not only were they colourful but also specialities of the two places,” he says. Structure and colour of the dishes were the other factors at play. Once the dishes were finalized, the chef and photographer sat together to discuss how each dish should be presented.
“We drew sketches and everything,” Prasad says. He then personally visited markets to pick up the freshest and best-looking ingredients that would be used in the dishes. Back at the restaurant, Prasad and his team of chefs prepared the dishes while Saxena simultaneously made preparations to set up the shot, adjusting the lighting and working the angles. Prasad says they also did trial shots using dummy elements first to avoid last-minute glitches.
With this amount of work, it’s no wonder that food in professionally-shot images looks perfect. “For a restaurant, food photography is like making the first impression,” says Prasad. “It has to be ‘Wow!’”