Behind a Restaurant Menu Reshoot

Menu reshoots live or die on the sequencing. Here's how we ran a 42-dish brief in one afternoon with the kitchen still open for lunch service.

Pre-lit sets, not pre-styled dishes

We lock two identical overhead rigs with tethered strobes. Chef plates dish A while dish B is being shot. Handover is a 20-second slide-in.

Steam that reads on camera

Real steam disappears in a single frame. We use a small pipette of glycerine on hot dishes for a lingering vapour that renders on 1/200s.

Menu-crop and social-crop in one pass

Shoot 4:5 tall for menu, then re-angle for a 1:1 social version — same dish, same lighting, two deliverables. Doubles the value of the shoot.