Food and beverage photography can give any audience an exciting, inviting taste of a brand, welcoming viewers into a dining room or bar scene to enjoy one-of-a-kind offerings and luxurious delights.
The best food and beverage photography can make a viewer feel like they’ve just ordered a dish or drink — and like they’re already part of the action.
That can inspire, attract, and engage in ways that other media simply can’t. It can also foster brand loyalty from the moment a viewer sees stunning food and beverage photos.
Alias specializes in cocktail, drink, and food photography for all types of high-concept, high-end, and aspirational brands, offering custom, turnkey, and value-focused photography services.
Explore some of our work and offerings in the galleries below. To get answers about food and beverage photography services, check out the FAQs that follow — or just reach out to our team at your convenience.
We eat with our eyes first, before our mouths ever touch a bite of food.
That’s not just a truism in the culinary world.
It’s also one of the inspirations behind the food and beverage photography services offered by the world-class photographers, luxury brand videographers, and creative experts at Alias.
Here’s why, along with a closer look at what our services entail and how our team of professional photographers, creative experts, and marketing specialists has become the photography partner of choice for restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels, resorts, and other businesses nationwide.
The best food, cocktail, and beverage photography doesn’t happen on the fly, with a smartphone, or in spur-of-the-moment shots taken while serving guests.
In fact, while candid shots can add some excitement and fun to food and beverage photos, what it really takes to capture the highest-quality food and cocktail pictures is:
Planning
The right equipment
Knowledge of food and beverage photography
Decades of creative experience
Bringing all of that and more to each engagement, the Alias team has the expertise, resources, and skills to perfectly capture mouthwatering details, unique textures, and delightful elements that can be just as inviting and invigorating as they are elegant.
To make that happen, the Alias team takes great care to combine technical skills, artistry, brand identity, and the following to snap extraordinary food and beverage photos:
Lighting to enhance natural color, leverage shadowing, and put tablescapes in the ideal focus
Composition to highlight subjects and focal points and keep the eye engaged with elements at different depths to create more dimension
Perspective to provide the ideal angles for viewing dishes, drinks, tables, dining rooms, and more
Thoughtful styling to enhance the character, charm, mood, and overall vibe of the scene
Editing to adjust for different exposures, tweak contrasts, and make certain items sharper (or softer), giving the final photos an unparalleled finish
At Alias, our goals are always to exceed expectations and deliver magnificent photos that brands can use for any number of campaigns, projects, or objectives, from promotional materials and websites to digital marketing campaigns and beyond.
Tablescapes for professional photo sessions are set up carefully, with extensive planning before the shoot and exceptional attention to detail in the construction to ensure:
Unique visual appeal
Cohesion with the brand
An ideal balance of focus, and perspective
Delectable details that capture various textures while delighting the senses
To make that happen, the expert food and beverage photographers at Alias leverage a proven process for brand discovery, photo session planning, and beyond. Here’s a high-level view of what our process generally entails and why it’s become our gold standard for capturing extraordinary food and beverage photos for newer, growing, and established luxury brands, hospitality brands, and others.
1. Define the theme or concept.
The theme is the foundational concept for the photo shoot. It could include anything from special events and holidays to vintage luxury, the tropics, a specific season, or anything else. As we zero in on the theme for a photo shoot, our team will dedicate time to understanding the cuisine, menus, venue(s), and overall atmosphere of the space, so we can advise on props, styling, models, and more.
2. DIal in the color scheme.
Knowing the theme, our photographers can begin figuring out the color palette for the shoot. Keep in mind that food and cocktail photo sessions don’t always have a single color palette for the entire shoot. Our team often devises multiple color palettes for different phases of photo shoots, including:
Plated food and tablescapes
Cocktails and barscapes
Restaurant dining rooms
Patios, al fresco dining, and other exterior spaces
3. Select tabletop items & arrange them.
Dressing the table takes a discerning eye. Our team has deep experience selecting every last item necessary for the perfect tablescape, food, and beverage shoots. That includes stylized:
Plates, bowls, glasses, and cutlery that reflect the brand while adding to the atmosphere
Tablecloths and napkins to match the table and the greater scene
Centerpieces, vases, flowers, ornaments, and/or other decorative items that complement tabletops without overwhelming them
Always mindful of the setting and the message of each photo, Alias will set up tablescapes, props, models, and the scenes around them to be:
Aesthetically pleasing
Interesting and visual engaging
Balanced in terms of flow, space, and perspective
Whether food and beverage photography features one table, a dining room, a bar scene, or another space, Alias can capture the distinct spirit and vibe of the space.
5. Fine-tune the lighting and final elements.
Depending on the brand and their objectives, our team will adjust the lighting, bring in any necessary equipment, and take test shots to get it right.
We also bring extensive equipment for the photo session, including multiple lenses, batteries, artificial lighting, reflectors, and so much more to ensure the shoot proceeds efficiently — and to get flawless food and beverage photos that tell our clients’ stories better than words ever could.
The bottom line is that Alias has the experience, skills, and artistic vision to deliver exceptional food and beverage photography services — and some of the best high-quality photos and digital assets around.
Food and beverage brands, as well as businesses that operate restaurants, bars, and similar venues, can deploy professional food and beverage photos across nearly any marketing channel or promotional materials they have.
When they do — and when those food and beverage photos are exceptional — brands stand to win out in several ways. Specifically, smart brands can leverage professional food and beverage photos to:
Stand out in a crowded space
Create a lasting first impression that communicates brand standards
Establish, enhance, and crystallize brand identity
Communicate consistency, refinement, and luxury via visual storytelling
Develop a unique, visually distinct presence online
Fuel more engagement with digital marketing campaigns, particularly social media marketing where stand-out visuals can get astonishing traction
Ultimately, great food photos and beverage pictures can make an audience hungry for what a brand has to offer. The best food and beverage photography can keep customers craving a business’s offerings, ordering more than they normally would, while fostering stronger brand loyalty.
That’s why more and more high-end eateries, luxury resort groups, and fine dining establishments are relying on food and beverage photography from Alias to tell their story and serve as a foundation for both their visual branding and marketing efforts.
As a niche of food and beverage photography (and, really, still life photography too), cocktail photography invokes many of the same principles, rules, and aesthetics as food photography, with some slight nuances.
In fact, with cocktail photography, it’s crucial to pay special attention to the selection, lighting, perspectives, and greater settings for:
Glassware
Drink ingredients
Ice and drink colors
Garnishes and straws
Napkins and tabletops
Cocktail-making tools, like shakers and stirrers
Even condensation on glassware can add an inviting component in cocktail photography, making a viewer feel like they’re in the scene. So can the artistry of the bartenders.
Regardless of whether cocktail photos are for a small, chic bar or large, super luxe club (or anything in between), these pictures can welcome viewers into the scene while:
Communicating creativity, passion, and a distinctly “cool” vibe
Adding a sophisticated, classy feel in a high-end social setting
Generating more organic awareness of and attraction for a brand
Infiltrating an audience’s subconscious, so they remember that venue as an option for their next social outing or event.
Alias has conducted more cocktail photo sessions a month than most of our competitors do all year. That makes us incredibly effective at delivering streamlined services and unparalleled, jaw-dropping results.
Food and beverage photography costs vary from one session to the next because no two clients or photo sessions are exactly alike. Instead, factors like (and not limited to) the following typically affect the pricing (and timelines) for these sessions:
The scope of the project: How many different types of photos we take and the number of images our clients want will factor into the costs of these sessions.
Any special props or equipment needed: If the shoot will require models, props, and/or special equipment, pricing can be adjusted to reflect those inclusions.
Add-ons: If our clients want to include drone photography to show a high-level view of events, a bar scene, or a dining space in action, these add-ons can affect pricing too.
No matter what you want from your food and beverage photos, you can count on Alias for 100% transparency in all pricing. We never surprise our clients with hidden charges or extra costs, so there are never any surprises about what a custom food-beverage photo session will cost them.
We also:
Make every effort to identify our clients’ budgets upfront, during the kickoff of any project, so we can make prudent, budget-minded recommendations for every session
Offer custom quotes and packages for our food and beverage photography services.
Simply click here to contact our team now for more answers and a custom quote for our food and beverage photography services.
