Food
Photo Production
What a food shoot covers
Most F&B clients need some combination of five things.
- Menu photography, where every dish has to look like it belongs to the same restaurant. Consistent angle, consistent light, consistent plate scale.
- Hero and campaign frames for billboards, print and paid ads, where one dish carries the whole message.
- Delivery platform images for Talabat, Deliveroo and Careem, cropped and weighted for a small tile on a phone.
- Packaging and product shots for FMCG, retail listings and cans, jars, bottles, boxes.
- Social content shot alongside the main set, including short vertical video from the same setup.
Angle is a decision, not a habit. Flat plates and bowls read top-down; burgers, stacks and layered desserts need a lower camera so you can see what is inside them. Backlight is what makes a drink look cold and a sauce look glossy, and it is also what kills a dish photographed flat from the front.
How the shoot runs
- Brief. You send the dish list, the references you like, and where the images will be used. A menu print and a Talabat tile want different crops, and knowing that on day one saves a re-export later.
- Prep. We agree the shooting order with your kitchen so dishes come out in batches rather than all at once. Stand-in plates let us build the light before the real hero is fired.
- Shoot. Capture is tethered, so you and your chef approve each dish on the monitor while the set is still standing and a second plate can still be sent out.
- Post. Colour corrected against the real dish, crumbs and spills cleaned, exports built per platform.
- Delivery. Files named by dish, in the crops and sizes agreed in the brief.
We shoot in our studio or on site. In your venue, the natural light is unreliable and the kitchen is busy, so we bring our own lighting and work around service rather than through it.
Who books this
Restaurants and cafés refreshing a menu. Cloud kitchens that live or die on the delivery-app thumbnail. Hotels shooting several outlets in one production. FMCG and packaged food brands preparing retail and e-commerce listings. Caterers and event companies who need images of the food, not of the buffet table. Marketing agencies looking for a production partner with a studio attached.
Why SL Media
The studio is ours, in Dubai Investment Park 2, and the same in-house team plans, shoots and retouches. That matters more on food than on almost anything else, because when a dish comes out wrong the decision to reshoot has to happen in the next two minutes, not in an email thread the following week.
Food sits next to our product, beauty and CGI work, so a client who needs a packshot, a campaign frame and a 3D render of the same product gets them from one team. Our production reel is at vimeo.com/slsdxb.
Related: photo production, product photography, e-commerce photography, CGI production. For the craft side in more depth, read our guide to food photography costs and styling in Dubai.
At SL Media, we specialize in food commercial photography that makes dishes look as good as they taste. Our images are crafted to trigger appetite and attention — ideal for advertising, restaurant menus, packaging, and digital platforms. Whether you're launching a new menu or promoting a product line, we bring out the flavor and freshness in every shot.
From styled studio setups to on-location shoots, our Dubai-based team handles lighting, composition, editing, and food styling. We work with restaurants, food brands, and marketing agencies to create high-quality, professional visuals that help your food stand out in a crowded market.