Food Styling for Photographers

PASTA AND SAUCES

Dried herb fl akes can be added to each bag of pasta at

this time allowing the fl akes to be completely random.

After styling the pasta, any herb fl akes in undesirable

places can be removed with tweezers before fi nal photog-

raphy. Fresh herbs should be added immediately before

fi nal photography.

Sauces for Pasta and Vegetable Salads

Th e main object of a pasta sauce in photography is to

add color and interest to the pasta dish. Th e trick is to

achieve the desired look without weighing the dish with

too much color or liquid. Your goal is to make the

viewer automatically think this is a pasta dish with sauce.

(Th ese same techniques also work for potato, pasta, and

other vegetable salads that don’t contain salad greens.)

Th e most common pasta sauces are tomato, pesto, oil, or

cream based. Regardless of the type of sauce, you may

need to manipulate the consistency of the sauce before

applying it to the pasta. Good-quality pasta sauces are

available in grocery or deli markets and are a great time-

saving tool for food styling. However, some sauces are

too thick in consistency to use just as they come out of

their containers.

So the fi rst step with the sauce is to determine if it

needs to be thinned. Pour 1/2 cup of the sauce of

your choice into a work bowl and give it a stir. Notice the

consistency of the sauce. Conduct a test by dropping

one piece of the hero pasta into the dish of sauce.

Roll the pasta in the sauce until it’s covered. Hold the

pasta in your hand and look at it carefully to determine if

the coverage of sauce produces the look you want to

achieve. Keep in mind that after the pasta dish is built, you

will be able to add more sauce to the dish if you desire.

If you decide the sauce needs to be thinned, begin by thin-

ning 1/2 cup of the original sauce. Th e thinning agent you

choose depends on the specifi c sauce you are using. Some

helpful thinning agents are Wilton piping gel, which adds

a translucency and soft sheen to the sauce and will look

good to the camera; half-and-half; or olive oil. Start by

adding 1 tablespoon of thinning agent to the 1/2 cup

sauce. Test the sauce on one piece of pasta as before. If

more thinning agent is necessary, keep track of the amount

needed to reach the preferred consistency. During con-

struction of the hero dish, if more thinned sauce is needed,

use an additional 1/2 cup of the original sauce plus the

same amount of thinning agent. Cover the bowls of pasta

sauce by placing plastic wrap directly on the surface of the

sauce, and mark them to distinguish thinned verses origi-

nal sauce. If you are not shooting on the day you perform

this test, you will have to remember your formula for the

sauce and mix a fresh batch on the day of the shoot. If you

are shooting the day the test is performed, set the bowls