Food Styling for Photographers

BURGERS, SANDWICHES, AND BEYOND

pepper slices, pickles, etc., will need to be brushed with

water. All vegetable components in the hero sandwich

should look fresh for fi nal photography. And don’t forget

to remove the paper towel covering the top piece of

bread! Don’t laugh—it’s happened.

Building a Half or Cut Sandwich for Photography

Creating a half sandwich for photography is more com-

plicated than making a sandwich and simply cutting it

in half. You will need to build the cut sandwich with

bread and ingredients that have been precision cut for

the size of your sandwich. Constructing the half sand-

wich in this way gives you total control over the sand-

wich’s appearance and maintains the quality look of all

ingredients.

Elements in half sandwiches need to appear as if they’ve

been cut along the incision of the sandwich. Th ey are

prepped with the same techniques as described earlier in

this chapter for the whole sandwich. However, the build

process is a little diff erent. To achieve a realistic appear-

ance, you should cut the elements aligned with the cut

edge. Typically, I use a pair of sharp scissors for this task

right before building each element into the sandwich. I

have seen some printed shots of half sandwiches and cut

sandwiches photographed for advertising purposes built

with some elements on the incision edge that weren’t cut.

Th ey did not appear realistic.

Start your cut sandwich project by making a template of

heavy paper that is the shape and size you choose for the

hero sandwich bread. Position the template on one slice

of bread. Th e template will make you aware of any crust

edges that might be seen by the camera and thus becomes

a tool that allows you to better determine hero bread.

When you fi nd a piece of hero bread, cut it using a