OOEY GOOEY WAFFLES

Quite often, breakfast is either a muffin on the run, a cup of Joe, the familiar over easy egg and quick out the door, or it’s morphed into a lunch/brunch something or other.
The Factory Café asked me to create an organic, accessible, and enticing representation of their breakfast vision, which was fun to produce and capture.
They serve mostly waffles and they have great ideas on how to pair them with other foods. I sampled a number of their creations and they were remarkably delicious; many crossed over into a waffle ‘brunch’.
The challenges in capturing unique pairings of different foods are endless, but the trick here was to give them the same visual ‘continuity’. Construct them, mess em up, add some action, and keep it fun! These types of projects are always the best; they're not exactly editorial, but not truly advertising images either. Long ago, I coined the term for this kind of Food Styling as “advertorial”.

It’s my opinion, that 80% of all food images appear sterile. The food just doesn’t look real. Many times over the years, I’ve styled a natural looking dish, leaving something like well placed crumbs on a plate. All too often, an art director will ask to remove them, rendering the image sterile and staged.

Look at the images on the menu boards at your favorite fast food chain restaurants, breakfast houses, or hotels. They may provide a quick ‘read’ for the customer and even enhance the sale of that item, but they all look stiff and somewhat forced.
When we make food at home, the result is natural and relaxed. Instead of picture perfect food, we pile food on our plates and eat. The trick in producing these types of organic images is a little like jumping off a cliff and landing on your feet. You have to get a “feel” for the right amount of structured messiness.
Here are a few final tips. It is important to play with a ‘stand in’ on the set. See what you can do with it to make it fun. Break it open. Stick a fork in it and mess it up. Most of all, get a feeling for how to build the hero. We shot these dishes in one day. However, much thought went into the finished image.

Chilling syrup before pouring it is a good idea. Always have a second hero ready for the next take. I used hot water to melt the cheese. Finally, my ultimate goal was to make sure everything looked gooey and moist.
Mama always said ‘don’t play with your food’, but of course, I didn’t listen.