Personal Project: Middle Eastern Food Photography

I've set myself a long-term personal project throughout 2023 that will push me to think, style and shoot more creatively.

Each month I choose a cookbook from my bookshelf that I love and select two to four recipes to make and photograph from it. The idea is that I use what I have in my home to challenge myself. My cookbooks vary from baking to cooking, from Asian cuisine to European, and this is really exciting from a creative perspective! I hope it will encourage me to style and shoot cuisines that are unfamiliar to me, as well as try new colour and composition techniques that I've had sitting in my "to-do" list for too long.

This is my project from January where I chose my all-time favourite cookbook, Jerusalem by Yatam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. Middle Eastern food photography is something I'm a little familiar with, as I adore eating it! But I used the shoots to practice colour theory and pour shots.

Let me walk you through the recipes and shoots!

Middle Eastern Food Photography with Jerusalem by Yatam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi

Semolina, orange marmalade & coconut cake

The first recipe I chose was a simple loaf cake made with semolina, orange marmalade and desiccated coconut, served with orange blossom yoghurt.

I went for a monochromatic orange colour palette, which served to enhance the orange colour of the cake and act as a flavour cue for the audience.

I started with a few hero shots of one slice of cake served with the yoghurt on top. I made the scene feel larger by composing it with plates and glasses at the edges of the frame.

Then, I wanted to add a stronger element of storytelling to give my audience a change to reply engage with the images. I prepare a wider scene where the table edge visible, so that I could sit at the table and capture myself in the shot. I wanted it to feel as if I had just sat down to enjoy my slice of cake whilst reading.

I took another shot with just the chair, so that the viewer could imagine themselves sitting down and eating the cake.

Pearl barley & parsley salad

The second recipe is a really tasty and light lunch made with pearl barley and lots of fresh parsley, then topped with feta marinated in olive oil and ground coriander seeds. I used to make this salad a lot back when I worked in an office!

This shoot didn't turn out as I had hoped or envisioned. I had a migraine on the morning I'd planned to shoot and should have left it for another day, but I was stubborn and went ahead with it once the migraine had subsided a bit.

Needless to say, I struggled with the colours of this shoot - even in editing I wasn't able to get the look and feel I had in mind. The composition isn't very interesting either, you can see I couldn't really think of anything different to do once I changed the backdrop. I guess I learned from this experience to never shoot when I'm feeling unwell!

Classic hummus

I can't do a project on Middle Eastern food photography and not include hummus! I LOVE hummus and could happily eat it every single day for the rest of my life, no joke.

An analogous colour palette of green, yellow and orange worked well for this shoot, creating a lovely calm yet vibrant mood. I styled the hummus on a very shallow plate then topped it with chopped cucumber and za'atar spice mix for texture. The extra virgin olive oil adds another, different, texture as well as a beautiful pop of colour. I loved how the light shone through the oil bottle too, casing a yellow glow on the backdrop. The torn flatbreads then add a lifestyle element, as if someone is about to dig in!

The sun came out during this shoot too, so I had the opportunity to shoot with some hard light shown in the image below far right.

Editorial food photography

I wanted to see how my Middle Eastern food photography would look in an editorial style. I created a few mock-up magazine pages and inserted my images along with the recipes and text taken from Jerusalem.

I hope you enjoyed this post - stay tuned for February's cookbook project!