gobble - recipe food photography

Gobble ‘til you wobble! How could you not with so many scrumptious looking recipes?

I think it’s safe for me to assume we all know about meal kit delivery companies, right? The originals; Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Plated (RIP) and companies that came after like Purple Carrot and Daily Harvest.

Gobble is a local Bay Area meal kit delivery company and for the first 3 years of Gobble’s entry into the market of meal kit delivery services, I worked directly with Executive Chef Thomas Ricci to capture every new recipe to hit Gobble’s weekly menus. And even a few that didn’t.

Photographing recipes calls for really long days. Ten hour shoot days, plus load in and load out time, and, for me, another 4 hours in round trip drive time. For the volume of recipes Gobble was creating, we’d have three of these long shoot days back to back each month. It was equal parts exhausting and rewarding.

So help me, I still love food photoshoots.

From the hundred’s of recipes I photographed for Gobble in those three years, here’s my absolute favorite image:

This close-up steak salad image was actually an alternative shot of a larger scene (you can find it below). This version is such a strong image, that it still has a place in my portfolio today and there’s a good chance that it always will.

In my opinion, it’s all about the texture. The specular highlights (those bright spots of light most prominently seen on the steak), the different vein patterns varying with each type of leaf, the charred ridges along the edge of each steak piece, and the smooth, glistening dressing with flecks of chilis all work together to create visual interest and evoke emotion.

It’s why people say “just looking at that makes me hungry.”