I spent two days with Darlene and Gina for Gigi’s Cupcakes. We shot 31 different flavors. What a great team to work with. The cool thing about this food shoot compared to others is that the product was very nice to start with. The folks at Gigi’s did a great job designing these cupcakes. They are beautiful.

When it comes to styling what is a great looking food product to begin with there are certain challenges to arise. The camera sees everything. I mean everything. That’s the advantage (and sometimes disadvantage) of shooting with a 40 megapixel PhaseOne digital back. Shooting at super high resolution provides fantastic image quality and huge files but it also shows any slight oddity that might present itself in the food. One example were some teeny tiny sugar crystal garnishes that hitched a ride on an unsuspecting cupcake during transport.

So, the food styling wasn’t anything too terribly crazy on this shoot, just different than keeping a burger patty looking fresh or making sure pasta didn’t dry out. There’s nothing better than having a beautiful subject, and I can tell you, these cupcakes were outstanding creations … and very cooperative as well.

After we completed the photography I had a little fun dissecting a number of the cupcakes and … well, uh … we had a cupcake ping pong party here at the studio. Thanks to John, Michael, Elvis, Cory and Burk for coming by to share in the left overs from the shoot. The only thing missing was a nice tall cold glass of milk.

-Kyle