Cookbook Photography: Telling the Story Behind the Food
There’s something special about a cookbook.
photo by: Nick Drollette/Southern Bite
It’s one of the few things we bring into our homes that is equal parts useful, beautiful and deeply personal. A great cookbook doesn’t simply tell us what to make for dinner. It introduces us to a person, a place, a tradition or a way of gathering around the table.
I’ve spent nearly twenty years photographing food, and while I will always love creating a beautiful image, cookbook photography asks for something more. Instead of thinking about one photograph at a time, you’re helping an author tell a visual story from beginning to end.
photo by: Nick Drollette/Southern Bite
The food is obviously at the center of that story, but there is so much happening around it.
It’s the flour left on the counter after rolling dough. The stack of plates waiting for everyone to sit down. The ingredients that give a little sense of place. The hands preparing a recipe that has been made a hundred times before. And sometimes it’s knowing when the food needs absolutely nothing else… just beautiful light and enough room to be the hero.
I love finding that rhythm with an author and the creative team we have put together. What should this book feel like? What does the reader need to understand about the person behind these recipes? Which images need to teach, which need to inspire, and which ones simply need to make someone hungry enough to turn the page and cook? Those are the questions that make cookbook photography so creatively fulfilling for me.
After all these years behind the camera, I find myself wanting to pursue even more of this work. More stories built around food. More opportunities to collaborate with authors, chefs, publishers and creative teams to create something that will live beyond a campaign or a screen.
Because a cookbook gets to stick around. It gets stained with olive oil, dog-eared at the favorite recipe and pulled from the shelf when someone wants to make something they love.
And I can’t think of many better places for a photograph to live.
Cookbook: Supper Made Simple by Stacey Little / Countryman Press
