Guest Post by Matthew, Food Writer at MarxFoods.com

I’ve been experimenting with photography for most of my life, but I’ve never had much practice photographing food. Mostly I’ve shot architecture or trees…things that don’t dry out, get cold, or melt.

Since starting this job I’ve been photographing food at home more, trying to get good at it. Here’s a white-chocolate-raspberry crème brulee I helped a friend make:

Once or twice I’ve had the chance to practice my food photography on the job, once Ryan (the MMM food photographer) has styled the plate and taken the primary shots going to be used on the Marx Foods web store and blog. He was recently kind enough to share one of my burger photos on the MMM blog.

Of course, it’s a lot easier to shoot a great food photo when you’ve had a pro style the plate for you, but I still had to jump on the opportunity immediately. Because MMM doesn’t use the sprays, lacquers and stand-in ingredients often found in the food photography biz, time is of the essence.

The camera has an unerring ability to pick up subtle visual clues in food that has already started to cool down or dry out. It’s hard to put your finger on what exactly you’re noticing, but somehow your brain knows when a dish is past its prime in a photo.

Here are a few more dishes from the last couple months. The motto of photographing food dishes we’d be willing to eat (no glues or any other plating tricks) was definitely appreciated as each of these were extremely tasty. And yes, those are fresh truffles in that last photo of the sandwich!

We had a wild photoshoot recently, cooking all kinds of foods that we have never eaten, let alone photographed. Here are a few selections from a shoot that included everything from Alligator to Squid Ink Pasta.

Food Photograph: Antelope Stew

Food Photograph: Roasted Alligator Tenderloin

Food Photograph: Vanilla Soup

Food Photograph: Maple Creme Brulee

Food Photograph: Squid Ink Pasta with Uni Sauce

We recently did a low-key photoshoot in our seattle office using portable gear for cooking. Here are some of the dishes we cooked up and photographed.

We all wear a lot of hats around here. Our food writer, Matthew, is an amateur food photographer here in Seattle. He took the reins at a recent photo shoot and came in with some solid photographs.

Here are a few more from our two day food photo shoot.

We recently had a two day shoot for MarxFoods.com. We’d had to cancel an earlier shoot this summer due to an emergency, so we combined multiple shoots into a two consecutive day shoot. The first day was mostly process shots, many of the dishes were braised and prepped on the first day. Which meant that on the second day, the dishes came out almost as quick as we could take the photos, requiring lots of last minute adjustments.  We probably photographed 15 finished dishes on the second day … maybe more.

Many process shots like this on the first day.

3,600 clicks of the shutter later we now had the job of editing down the photos to at least half for storage reasons, while picking out the shots for the MarxFoods Blog, processing them and getting them into the blog posts that will be released over the next few months. The whole process adds another couple of days to the project making it almost a weeklong event.

Justin’s brother Keith who runs one of our sister companies for the food service industry was in Seattle for the photo shoot. Well not exactly, but it was a good excuse to go all out with meat photography. He also demonstrated some fancy butchery for us like butchering a spider rack.

Here are a few of the more interesting finished food photographs.

The product below is an item available for sale on MarxFoods.com. The first person who can accurately name the photo below will receive from us a product that is made from what is pictured below. To get it right, you need to name it exactly as it is named in the MarxFoods.com store. For example, if this were a type of peppercorn (which it is not), you would need to provide the complete name of the peppercorn, not just “peppercorn”. To enter, leave a comment below with your guess.

 We’ve been doing food photography for almost three years now.

 In the beginning, we’d be lucky if we got two dishes shot in one day, we cooked it ourselves (Justin can really smoke out an office without half trying), we’d last minute shop for table settings until we’d find just the right set up for the shot. Our side dishes were basically just a mix of vegetables picked up in the morning, although somehow always included caramelized onions. We’d get the shot set up on a tripod with stunt food or other props.  And after a long day of shooting we’d have one shot to use on our home page, maybe another to use in a promotional email, but that’d be it.

Oh how I miss those days.

Now the shoots are a big production. There are plans made well in advance with a shoot list of 10 or more dishes planned plus many pulled from each recipe as separate dishes. There is another half day of shopping, and packing. Then the day of the shoot we all meet at the appointed place, Justin the CEO and resident dishwasher, a food writer, a chef, and the photographer. Each step of the dishes is caught on camera, inside on a stove, in an oven, over a sink, or out in the garden, on the grill etc.

As the days have grown so has our collection of tableware. I was spreading them out for easy access between shots the other day and thought how much easier it was back when we had one plate for the day.

To make sure we get the most different food photographs out of a product we’ll often use the same cooked food in a few different ways in order to create as much value as possible.

For these two shots, the chef cooked two duck breasts at the same time and then used them in two similar, yet different dishes yielding two separate applications and two different sets of photos from the one product.