Food Photography Project: Cheeseburger & Buffalo Chicken Burger
Brief.
One of my go-to comfort meals is a juicy burger! Being in London, we’re totally spoiled for places to go to grab one, or to have one delivered right to our door. My favorite, however, is a homemade cheeseburger or chicken burger - usually made in the Summer when we have family coming to stay as it’s a real favorite of theirs.
Inspired by all of the amazing burger imagery I always come across and at the time with a smaller amount of strong burger food photography in my portfolio - I decided to produce and shoot a short-form food photography project.
The goal of the project would be to have two types of burger food photography scenes captured; one of a traditional cheeseburger, and one of a Buffalo chicken burger - both using my own personally developed recipes that use toppings that I feel are the best representation of each style of burger, and styled in two separate scenes.
The outputs would be a traditional burger hero shot, an integrated product and recipe pairing, and a collection of graphic imagery showing the juicy layers of the burgers.
To start off this food photography project, I treated it just like one of my client commissions - by having a written brief. My inspirational mood boards were built from looking at brands and restaurants that produce the best burgers and products that are used in burgers.
Approach.
For the art direction, I went to my local food photography prop house and selected complementary props for each burger based on my mood boards.
The styling for the cheeseburger was based on traditional TGI Fridays and classic American imagery of wood backgrounds, clean white props for the burger and fries, along with a frosty-styled beer and a glass bottle of Heinz Ketchup for the feature product. The essential cheeseburger toppings are a toasted bun with a base of mayo for glue; followed by Green Leaf lettuce and tomatoes - with the patty having melted American cheese and topped with red onions + pickles for bite.
The Buffalo chicken burger was inspired by a more grungey approach, often used by M&S Food - using zinc backgrounds to contrast with the beige tones of the burger. Splashes of green were brought in with a favorite of mine, peppery yet sweet Lambs Lettuce on a bed of creamy slaw for a contrast to the richness of the chicken. Its then finished with dressed cucumber ribbons (instead of pickles), and drizzled with Franks Buffalo sauce for heat. This would also be the product pairing.
All burger ingredients were prepped in the kitchen, then assembled in layers within the photography set - with each layer being individually captured
These were shot over a 1/2 day in studio, and I had a great time putting together a studio lighting setup that profiled the ingredients whilst highlighting the shine of the buns - for use in future brand food photography shoots and restaurant photography shoots.
Once captured, the imagery was then retouched and graded to bring it to the standard of my mood board imagery that inspired the project. I’m really pleased with how they turned out and I learned a lot along the way. Once I wrapped on this project, I picked up a few burger shoots so I was able to apply these learnings to that for better results.