If it does not make you hungry, it has failed

I spent years in kitchens before I ever picked up a camera, and that is the whole difference in how I shoot. A food photo has exactly one job: make the person looking at it hungry. Not impressed, not intrigued, hungry. If they do not want to reach through the screen and take a bite, the photo has failed, no matter how well it is lit. Everything I do serves that one test.

Catch it at its best moment

Food has a window, and it is short. A croissant is perfect for a few minutes: the shatter of the crust, the pull of the layers, before it softens. Crema on an espresso holds for seconds. Steam rises and is gone. A cook knows this in their hands, and a food photographer has to shoot on that clock, everything staged first, the camera ready, so the food arrives and you catch it while it is still telling the truth about how good it is.

Shoot it like you would want to eat it

Angle is appetite. A tall drink or a stacked bake wants a low, near-side angle, the way it looks when it is set down in front of you. A flat plate, a spread of pastries, a latte from above, wants the overhead, the way you look down at your own table. I shoot the angle a hungry person would take, because that is the angle that makes them hungry. A garnish should look dropped by a cook mid-service, not tweezed into place, real, a little imperfect, alive.

Warm light, honest food

Food wants warm, soft light that makes it glow, a window, a warm key, never a cold hard flash that turns a bake grey and dead. But the food must stay honest: the colour of a real crumb, a real crema, real butter sheen, never oiled-up or fake. The surfaces are the cafe itself, warm wood, worn marble, a linen napkin, the ceramic you actually serve on. The finished frame should smell like the shop. That is when a photo sells a pastry: when the person can almost taste it.