How my background in chemistry shapes the way I work as a food photographer, stylist and creative

When people find out I have an MSc in chemistry and spent years working in research laboratories before moving into food photography and creative work, the reaction is usually one of two things. Either they find it genuinely interesting (a different kind of background for this kind of work), or they assume it’s a marketing story — a nice detail for the bio that makes me sound unique but doesn’t really change anything about the photos.

I understand why. “Background in science” can mean a lot of things, including simply being interested in science. What it means in my case is a BSc and an MSc from the University of Bologna (with several publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals along the way, before I had even finished my MSc), and years of applied research across laboratories in Italy, Spain, and Ireland, which eventually took me to the point of almost completing a PhD before I chose a different path.

That’s a specific kind of training that builds a specific kind of thinking — and that thinking shows up in my work every single day, whether a client is aware of it or not.

What thinking like a chemist actually means on set

Science trains you to approach problems with a combination of curiosity and methodology. You ask what’s happening and why before you decide what to do about it. You don’t assume — you look for the cause, you consider the variables, and you work from evidence rather than instinct alone.

That approach transfers directly into food photography and styling in ways that aren’t always obvious from the outside. Before I think about a backdrop, a composition, or a colour palette, I need to understand the brand, the product or service, the audience, and the goals. Not as a checklist I need to get done before the end of the day, but as a foundation for every creative decision that follows. My science background is a significant part of why I work that way. In a lab, you don’t start an experiment without understanding what you’re trying to find out and why. On a shoot, I don’t start without understanding what the images need to do and for whom.

Most food photography projects start with a different assumption: that a good food photo is one that’s in focus, looks appealing, and features food that looks good for the general public (as in “it’s common knowledge this should look this way to look good, so if the photo does that, it’s good to go”). Those things matter, but they’re the starting point, not what will help a brand stand out. A photo that checks those boxes and nothing else is a photo that could belong to any brand. What makes content actually work for a specific brand is everything that goes into it before the camera is involved — and that’s where the scientific method, applied to creative work, makes a real difference.

The chemistry that shows up in the work

Food science is present on every shoot, in practical ways. Understanding why a sauce separates and what actually fixes it. Knowing which produce will start to discolour within the first ten minutes of being cut and planning the shoot around that. Understanding how fat composition affects whether a product holds under different temperature conditions. Knowing when moisture on a surface is helping the image and when it’s working against it — and understanding why, not just from experience but from understanding what’s happening at a physical and chemical level.

The Maillard reaction, emulsification, enzymatic browning, the behaviour of different fats under heat, how moisture affects browning and texture: these aren’t things I look up when they become a problem on set. They’re things I factor into the planning before a problem has a chance to occur. The science of food styling post covers six of these principles in detail if you want to understand more about what that looks like in practice.

A more specific example: a few years ago, I was styling and photographing a recipe that featured red cabbage. Red cabbage contains pigments called anthocyanins that are highly sensitive to pH — in acidic conditions they stay a vivid purple, but in alkaline conditions they shift toward blue. The recipe as written was pushing the cabbage toward blue, which doesn’t look great in photos and, more importantly, isn’t what most people expect to see on their plate. I identified the cause, found a solution to adjust the pH, proposed a change to the client, and the recipe ended up being updated. This option was better for the photos and for anyone cooking it at home, plus it required no confusing footnote about why their cabbage had turned an unexpected colour.

I tell this story not because it has some sort of “wow effect” (it doesn’t, it’s just a normal problem with a straightforward solution), but because it illustrates something I’ve had to make peace with: the moments where the science background makes a direct difference tend to feel routine to me, which means I’m often the last person to recognise them as unusual. I’ve heard enough times that “nobody needs chemistry to take food photos” or “nobody needs chemistry to cook” that I’ve internalised the doubt. But the red cabbage story is a good reminder that some problems have quick and effective solutions only if you understand why they’re happening in the first place.

How it shapes recipe development

The chemistry background changes recipe development most visibly. When I was asked by a brand to develop original recipes for a product launch (dishes that would make their product feel relevant and accessible in their customers’ everyday lives), I didn’t start from my cooking experience alone. I mapped the flavour compounds in the key ingredients, identified ingredients with complementary profiles, and built the recipes from there, while also accounting for the brand’s identity, their audience, current trends, and how each dish would photograph.

It’s not a standard approach. It produced recipes the client described as combinations they would have never thought about on their own and that worked scientifically, stylistically, and commercially at the same time. That’s what happens when chemistry, recipe development, food photography and brand thinking all come from the same person, rather than being spread across a team of specialists who may or may not be talking to each other (or respecting each other’s contributions).

The wider background and why all of it matters

The chemistry degrees and the lab years are the foundation. But I also have a certification as a nutritional advisor, a diploma in massage therapy, a professional diploma in digital marketing from UCD, two social media certifications, and nearly a decade of hands-on work with food, drink, and wellness brands. I mention all of these because the combination is what makes the difference: each one adds a layer of knowledge that shows up in the work.

The nutrition background means I understand ingredients and how they interact beyond what they look like. The marketing background means I ask targeted marketing questions even when a client comes to me only for photography, because a photo is always part of something bigger than itself, and understanding that changes the questions I ask before I even pick up a camera. The social media knowledge means I think about where the images will be used and who will see them, not just whether they look good.

This combination is difficult to find in one person. And I’m not just talking about the list of services (lots of people offer multiple services), but as someone who has truly done a deep dive into each of those areas through study, research, and years of real work. That’s what I mean when I say the background shapes everything: it’s not a marketing tactic or a simple brand story. It’s the actual reason the work looks and performs the way it does.

What this means for the brands I work with

The clients who notice this most clearly are usually the ones who have worked with other photographers or agencies before and found something was always slightly missing: the images looked fine but didn’t quite feel like theirs, or the content performed below expectations, or the process felt disconnected from the broader marketing picture.

As a food photographer based in Dublin and working internationally, what I offer isn’t just photography or styling or recipe development or social media strategy — it’s all of those things informed by the same underlying thinking, built on a foundation that comes from an unusual combination of scientific training, creative experience, and marketing knowledge.

I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and internationally on food photography and styling, brand and lifestyle photography, short-form video including stop-motion and UGC-style content, recipe development, social media strategy and management, copywriting and digital marketing consultations. Most of my clients work with me across more than one of those areas, and most of them stay for years.

Over the years, I’ve worked with everything from small Irish family businesses and independent founders to globally recognised food brands — and the approach is the same regardless of scale: understand the brand properly before making a single creative decision.

If you want the full picture of what working together looks like, that’s here.

If this resonates

The brands I work best with have built something genuinely good and feel like their content doesn’t yet reflect that. They’re ready to work with someone who will think about their brand as carefully as they do and who brings a perspective that goes well beyond knowing how to take a good photo.

If that’s where you are, get in touch today using the button below. I am a food photographer based in Dublin, working with brands across Ireland, the UK and worldwide.

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The science of food styling: how chemistry shapes what food looks like on camera

Most conversations about food styling focus on the aesthetic decisions: the props, the composition, the light, the negative space. Those things matter, and they’re a significant part of what makes one image work well, while another doesn’t really hit the spot. But there’s a layer underneath all of it that rarely gets talked about — the food science. The way food behaves chemically and physically under heat, light, and time determines what it looks like on camera, often more directly than any styling choice made on the surface.

I came to food photography from a background in chemistry, which means I’ve always thought about what’s happening inside the food, not just on it. Over the years on set, that thinking has changed the way I approach everything — from how I plan a shot to what I do when something stops looking right. This post is about six of the food science principles I apply most regularly in styling and photography, and what each one actually means when the camera is in front of you.

Browning: the Maillard reaction and what it does to a surface

Browning from the Maillard reaction is obviously a flavour story, but it’s also a visual one, and understanding what it does to the surface of food changes how you think about capturing it.

When food browns (whether it’s a crust, a sear, a roasted vegetable, or a toasted slice of bread), the surface undergoes a chemical transformation that produces hundreds of new compounds. Those compounds absorb and reflect light differently from the pale, unreacted surface beneath them. The result is depth, texture, and dimensionality that a camera responds to in a way that raw or unbrowned food rarely achieves. Browning creates the visual contrast that makes food look properly cooked rather than just heated — and that contrast, between a deeply coloured surface and a lighter interior or background, is part of what stops someone mid-scroll.

From a styling perspective, this means browning is something to work with deliberately, not accidentally. Achieving it requires dry surfaces and sufficient heat (moisture keeps the temperature too low for the reaction to proceed), which is why pressing moisture out of food, patting surfaces dry before cooking, and not overcrowding a pan are all styling decisions as much as cooking ones. It also means knowing when not to go there: some food aesthetics are built on paleness (a pale crumb, a lightly baked pastry, a delicate dessert), and forcing browning into those contexts produces the wrong result entirely.

There’s a full breakdown of the chemistry behind the Maillard reaction (what it is, what conditions trigger it, and why it produces such different results in different foods) in this post.

Enzymatic browning — the kind that works against you

There’s another kind of browning that has nothing to do with heat, and it’s one of the more persistent challenges in food styling: enzymatic browning. This is what happens to a cut apple, a sliced avocado, a halved mushroom, or a peeled potato left exposed to air. Within minutes, the surface starts turning grey-brown. The food is still perfectly edible. It just doesn’t look it.

The mechanism is specific: when the cells of certain fruits and vegetables are cut or damaged, an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO) comes into contact with phenolic compounds inside the cell. In the presence of oxygen, PPO converts those phenols into quinones, which then polymerise into the brown-coloured compounds visible on the surface. The browner and duller it gets, the further the reaction has progressed.

On a shoot, this window between cutting and visible browning is one of the things I think about constantly with fresh produce. The practical responses are well known: a citric acid solution (lemon juice or a diluted citric acid wash) lowers the pH below the range where PPO works efficiently; ascorbic acid (vitamin C) reduces the quinone compounds back to phenols, effectively pausing the reaction. Cold water slows the enzyme’s activity. Blanching helps with it entirely, though at the cost of texture and colour in the vegetable itself.

What this means on set: cut produce as late as possible before the shot. Have your solution ready (usually a light lemon water) to brush or dip surfaces immediately. Know which foods brown fastest (avocado, banana, apple, potato, artichoke) and build the shoot plan around them accordingly. And if something has started to turn, know whether a fresh cut will reveal an unbrowning layer underneath, or whether the discolouration has gone too deep to salvage quickly.

Emulsification: why some sauces look alive and others don’t

A stable emulsion and a broken one are immediately distinguishable on camera, even before you analyse what went wrong. A sauce that’s holding (glossy, smooth, cohesive) has a surface that catches light evenly and reflects it back with that characteristic sheen. A broken sauce looks dull, separated, and oily around the edges. The difference isn’t subtle, and it’s not something you can easily fix in post-production.

This is because a stable emulsion is doing something optically that a broken one isn’t. The fine, evenly distributed droplets in a proper emulsion scatter light uniformly across the surface. When those droplets coalesce and the phases begin to separate, the surface becomes uneven — oil pools create their own reflections while the water-based liquid goes flat beneath them. The whole thing reads as wrong on camera in a way that’s difficult to articulate, but it’s easy to notice.

The practical implication is that maintaining an emulsion during a shoot (which might run for hours under lights that raise the ambient temperature) requires active management. Cooler temperatures help stability and studio lighting might work against you. Knowing which emulsifiers are in a given sauce tells you roughly how long it will hold before intervention is needed, and what to do when it starts to go: a small amount of lecithin (available as lecithin granules) can often re-emulsify a sauce that’s beginning to separate without visibly changing its appearance or flavour.

The full science of how emulsions form, what makes them stable, and why they break, is covered in depth here.

Moisture and steam: the science of timing

Steam rising from food is one of those visual details that makes a photograph feel alive and adds an extra layer of interest — it signals heat, freshness, the moment just after cooking. It’s also gone within seconds if you’re not ready for it.

What we see as steam rising from food is actually water droplets condensing as water vapour hits the cooler surrounding air. The visible “steam” appears almost immediately once hot food meets the ambient temperature difference, and dissipates as that temperature gap closes. On set, this means the window for capturing it is short and predictable: the food comes out of the oven or off the heat, and you have perhaps ten to thirty seconds of visible steam depending on the temperature differential and the environment. Knowing this, you plan the shot before the food arrives, not after.

Moisture has a separate and equally important role in how food surfaces look and behave. Wet surfaces don’t brown — they can’t reach the temperatures needed for browning reactions while moisture is evaporating. But wet surfaces do catch light in a specific way that’s useful for other purposes: the sheen on fresh herbs, the gloss on a freshly dressed salad, the visible moisture on a piece of chilled fish. Knowing when to add or remove moisture from a surface is a consistent part of how I style on set, because these surfaces create a kind of luminosity that dry surfaces don’t.

Condensation works as a real styling tool for cold subjects — a glass of iced water, a chilled bottle, a bowl of ice cream. Condensation forms when warm, humid air meets a surface cold enough to bring that air below its dew point. In practice: chill the vessel thoroughly, bring it into a warm environment, and give it a few minutes before shooting. A light mist of water can also produce the visual effect quickly if the real condensation isn’t forming fast enough, though it tends to look slightly different on camera.

Temperature and texture — working in windows

Temperature might be the variable I manage most actively on a shoot. Not just because of browning or steam, but because temperature controls texture — what food looks like, how it holds, whether it stays in the state you need it to be in long enough to capture.

Different fats melt at different temperatures, and this matters enormously for how food holds on set or under studio lights. Cocoa butter, the fat in chocolate, melts in the range of approximately 34–38°C, which is almost exactly body temperature, and low enough that in a warm room or under lights, chocolate decorations, chocolate bars, or anything with a chocolate component can start softening faster than you’d expect. The same logic applies to butter (which starts softening noticeably around 20°C and is fully melted by around 32–35°C), to any whipped cream stabilised without gelatin, and to fat-based sauces and glazes that hold beautifully at room temperature but soften quickly once conditions warm up.

Ice cream sits at one end of this spectrum: too cold and it’s hard and opaque, too warm and it loses its shape entirely. The window where it looks right for photography (softened enough to scoop cleanly, holding its form, showing texture rather than ice crystals) is narrow and requires knowing roughly what temperature you’re working with. Scooping and re-freezing briefly before shooting is standard practice (so is chilling the bowl it will sit in). Depending on the scope of the shoot and what the ice cream needs to communicate, a stand-in is sometimes the more practical choice — a purpose-made fake ice cream that holds its shape indefinitely under any conditions. This isn’t something that works for every brief: if the ice cream itself is the product being sold, or if the shoot requires the food to be real for legal or client reasons, stand-ins aren’t an option. But for a lifestyle shot where ice cream appears as a supporting element, or where the priority is the setting rather than the scoop itself, a stand-in can truly make the difference.

Gelatin-set dishes (like panna cotta, certain mousses and jellies) behave in the opposite direction: they need to stay cold to hold their shape, which means working fast and returning them to refrigeration between setups if the shoot is long.

Understanding these windows means planning the sequence of a shoot around them rather than fighting them. The items most sensitive to temperature come out last, get shot first, and go back as soon as the frame is captured.

Light and surfaces: chemistry, physics, and what the camera actually sees

This one is at the intersection of food science and physics, but it follows directly from everything above. The reason food looks the way it does under light (glossy or matte, dimensional or flat, luminous or dull) comes back to the physical properties of its surface, which are a direct result of its chemical composition and state.

A smooth emulsified sauce creates specular reflection: light hits the surface at an angle and bounces back in a concentrated, predictable way, creating the bright highlights that make a sauce look glossy and fresh. A broken or matte surface creates diffuse reflection: light scatters in multiple directions, producing a softer, flatter appearance. Neither is better in absolute terms (a matte surface on a rustic bread or a rough-textured crumble is exactly right in context), but knowing which you’re working with, and why, means you can set your lighting to work with the surface rather than against it.

Browning changes a food’s surface chemistry and therefore its optical behaviour. The compounds produced during browning create a rougher, more complex surface than the pale, relatively smooth one beneath them. That complexity is part of why browned food catches light so interestingly — the texture creates micro-shadows and highlights at the surface level that add visual depth that no amount of post-processing can fully replicate on a pale, unbrownt surface.

Moisture also changes optical behaviour, which is why I think about whether a surface should be dry or slightly wet before a shot rather than leaving it to chance. A dry herb looks different from a lightly misted one: both can be right, but they look completely different in an image. A dry, roasted surface communicates crispness, while a moist one communicates freshness or heat.

Understanding that what you’re seeing through the lens is always the outcome of something happening at the food’s surface means you can intervene earlier in the process (before the camera is up, while the food is still being prepared) rather than trying to fix things visually at the styling stage.

Why this matters on set

Food styling is both a visual discipline and a scientific one, and the two aren’t separable in practice. Every decision made about how food is prepared, timed, handled, and presented before the camera arrives has a chemical or physical basis. Working with that (rather than around it or despite it) is what makes the difference between images that look nice and images that do their job.

Working with a food photographer who thinks this way

I’m Chiara, a food photographer and stylist, videographer, recipe developer, and social media specialist based in Dublin, with an MSc in chemistry, a certification in nutrition, and a diploma in digital marketing. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and internationally.

If you want your product or recipe shot by someone who understands it from the inside out (the science, the ingredients, the nutrition, and its story), get in touch using the button below.

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The Maillard reaction explained: the chemistry behind why browned food tastes so good

You know that moment in cooking when food stops being raw and starts being something else entirely? That’s the one we often end up taking for granted. Think about the surface of a piece of bread that goes from pale to golden, a steak placed into a hot pan that begins to char at the edges, or roasted vegetables that go from soft and steaming to fragrant and coloured at the corners. Even coffee beans, green and grassy when they go in, emerge dark, fragrant, and completely transformed.

What’s happening in all of those moments is the same reaction, even though the foods couldn’t be more different. It’s called the Maillard reaction, and it’s one of the most important chemical processes in cooking. It’s also one of the most misunderstood, and two things come up so consistently when people talk about it that I want to address them before anything else.

What the Maillard reaction is not

The first misunderstanding: that it’s just about sugar. It isn’t: the Maillard reaction does involve reducing sugars, but it requires something else too — amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Both have to be present for the reaction to occur. This is why vegetables brown during roasting (they contain both sugars and amino acids), why bread develops a crust (the flour contains proteins), and why a plain sugar syrup heated in a pan does something very different — that’s caramelisation, a separate reaction that only involves sugar breaking down under heat. The two are often confused, and while they can happen simultaneously in the same food, they are chemically distinct processes producing different compounds and different results.

The second misunderstanding: that it’s something only meat does. Meat is one of the most obvious examples because the transformation is so dramatic and the flavour change so significant that it’s impossible to miss, but the Maillard reaction happens in an enormous range of foods. Bread, biscuits, coffee, chocolate, beer, roasted nuts, soy sauce, and even some cheeses all owe part of their flavour and colour to some version of this reaction. If you’ve ever wondered why oven-roasted broccoli tastes completely different from steamed broccoli despite starting from the same ingredient, the Maillard reaction is a significant part of the answer.

What’s actually happening chemically

The reaction was first described in 1912 by a French chemist and physician named Louis-Camille Maillard, who noticed that amino acids and reducing sugars behaved in interesting ways when heated together. He wasn’t studying food science (he was working on understanding biological protein synthesis, trying to replicate how amino acids behave in living organisms), but his observations turned out to explain a lot of what happens in the kitchen.

Here’s the simplified version: when an amino acid and a reducing sugar are exposed to heat, they react with each other to form an unstable compound. That compound doesn’t stay as it is for long — it breaks down and rearranges itself into a cascade of new molecules, sometimes hundreds of them, depending on the specific amino acids and sugars involved, the temperature, the moisture content, and the time. It’s those new molecules that are responsible for the colour, the smell, and the flavours that make cooked food taste so different from raw.

The reason the Maillard reaction produces such a wide range of results across different foods is precisely because so many variables are involved. The specific amino acids and sugars present in meat are different from those in bread dough or coffee beans. In addition, temperature and moisture conditions are all different. Each combination produces its own unique set of compounds, which is why a seared steak and a toasted slice of bread are both the result of the Maillard reaction but taste and smell nothing alike.

Temperature, moisture, and timing: the conditions that matter

The Maillard reaction doesn’t happen at any temperature. It begins noticeably around 140–165°C and accelerates as temperature increases, which is why the surface of food needs to be hot enough (and dry enough) to brown properly.

Moisture is also where a lot of cooking frustration comes from, even when people don’t realise it. Water keeps food at or near 100°C as it evaporates, which is below the threshold the Maillard reaction needs to proceed significantly. This is why boiling or steaming doesn’t brown food — the temperature simply doesn’t get high enough at the surface while moisture is present. It’s also why patting meat or vegetables dry before cooking makes a meaningful difference: you’re removing surface moisture so that the temperature at the surface can rise quickly once it hits a hot pan or oven.

This is also why overcrowding a pan tends to produce disappointing results. Too much food in a pan at once drops the temperature and traps steam: the moisture released by the food can’t escape quickly enough, and instead of browning, everything ends up stewing in its own liquid. The temperature never climbs high enough for the reaction to happen properly, and you lose the crust, the colour, and the flavour development that comes with it.

pH also plays a role, which is something that comes up in professional baking and food production, even if it’s less intuitive at home. The Maillard reaction proceeds faster in alkaline conditions, which is why baked goods made with bicarbonate of soda (an alkali) often brown more deeply and quickly than those made with baking powder, which contains both an alkali and an acid and is formulated to largely neutralise itself when activated, producing a much milder effect on browning. The use of lye (a strongly alkaline solution) in traditional pretzel and bagel making is a deliberate application of exactly this principle: it accelerates the Maillard reaction at the surface and produces the characteristic deep, mahogany-coloured crust that’s almost impossible to achieve any other way. Bicarbonate of soda dissolved in water works on the same principle and is the more accessible alternative used by home bakers — it produces a less intense result than lye but still noticeably darker than untreated dough, for the same reason: it raises the pH at the surface and pushes the reaction along.

Why it matters for flavour and why it’s so complex

The Maillard reaction doesn’t just brown food. It creates flavour compounds that weren’t there before — many of which are found almost exclusively in cooked or heat-processed food and rarely or never in raw ingredients. Pyrazines, furans, thiophenes, and dozens of other compound classes are all produced during Maillard reactions in different foods, and each contributes differently to what we taste and smell.

This is why the flavour of a browned crust is so different from the inside of the same loaf. The inside has been heated too, but not to the same temperature — the crumb of a fully baked loaf typically reaches around 93–96°C and stays there while the structure sets, which is enough to cook the dough through but not enough to drive significant Maillard browning. The crust, exposed to higher temperatures, has undergone a completely different chemical transformation, which is why it tastes different, smells different, and has a different texture.

It’s also part of why slow-cooked or braised meat that hasn’t been seared first can taste rich and deeply flavoured from the collagen and fat, but still lacks the specific top notes that a browned surface produces. Many recipes call for browning meat before braising precisely to capture those flavour compounds before the liquid goes in. The braising liquid won’t reproduce them — it can’t, because the temperature never climbs high enough for the Maillard reaction to take place.

A simple thing to observe at home

If you want to see the difference the Maillard reaction makes in a way that’s truly hard to forget, try this: cook two batches of the same diced onion in the same pan with the same amount of oil. In the first, keep the heat low, add a splash of water, and cover the pan — the onions will soften and turn translucent but stay pale. In the second, use higher heat, keep the pan uncovered, and don’t stir too frequently — the onions will start to colour at the edges, deepen in flavour, and smell quite different. Both are cooked, but only the second one has undergone significant Maillard browning. The difference in flavour between them is the reaction made visible and edible.

What this looks like on camera

Browning is both a flavour story and a visual one. The compounds produced during the Maillard reaction absorb light differently from the pale surface of uncooked food, which is why browned food looks the way it does: deeper, more textured, more dimensional. It catches light in a way that a raw surface doesn’t, and that contrast is part of what makes certain food photographs so scroll-stopping and irresistible.

As someone who came to food photography from a chemistry background, I find this one of the more interesting overlaps between science and visual work. The golden crust on a loaf, the char on a grilled vegetable, and the deep colour on a properly seared piece of meat are the physical result of hundreds of new molecules forming at the surface of the food. Knowing what you’re actually looking at when you see that browning changes how you think about capturing it.

If you want to read more on how food science and food photography intersect, including why certain textures and reactions photograph better than others, I have the perfect post for you.

The bigger picture

The Maillard reaction is one of those things in food science that, once you understand it, you start seeing everywhere. In the base of a pan after searing. In the way a loaf smells different in the last ten minutes of baking. In the skin of a roast chicken, the surface of a cookie, or the crema in a cup of espresso.

Despite occasionally looking a bit like magic, it’s all just chemistry, happening fast in the time between raw and ready (or, if you prefer, raw and delicious). Understanding it doesn’t make cooking more mechanical and less creative. If anything, it makes the small decisions more intentional: why the heat matters, why surface moisture slows browning down, why the pan needs to be hot before the food goes in and so on.

Food science, photography, and the brands that take both seriously

I’m Chiara, a food photographer and stylist based in Dublin, with an MSc in chemistry, a certification in nutrition and a diploma in digital marketing. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and worldwide on photography, video, and social media strategy. The science of how food behaves (how it browns, how it changes under heat, how it looks on camera) is part of how I think about every shoot.

If you’re a food, drink, or wellness brand whose visuals don’t yet reflect the quality of what you’ve actually built, get in touch using the button below.

Fill out my enquiry form

How much does food photography cost? A straightforward guide for brands

If you’ve ever tried to research food photography costs online, you’ll know how quickly that search becomes frustrating. Most photographers don’t publish their rates. The articles that do appear tend to be US-focused, vague to the point of being useless, or written in a way that raises more questions than they answer. And if you’ve ever posted a brief on a platform or in a Facebook group and watched the quotes come in anywhere from “€5 per image” to several thousand euros for a single day, you’ll know that “how much does food photography cost” is a question with a genuinely wide range of answers — which doesn’t make it easier to budget.

This post won’t give you a single price because that number doesn’t exist. What it will do is explain what actually drives food photography costs, why the range is so wide, and what to factor in when you’re putting a budget together — so that when you do approach a photographer, you’re asking the right questions and comparing like with like.

Why food photography pricing is so hard to research

The short answer is that most photographers keep their rates private, and the industry has no standard structure for how work is priced. Some charge a day rate, some price per project, and some charge per image or scene. Some include styling and props in their fee. Some don’t. Some work with a separate food stylist and prop stylist whose fees come on top. Some have their own studio. Some hire one, and that cost gets passed on. Some have years of experience shooting for major brands. Others are just starting out and shooting for their portfolio.

All of those variables mean that two quotes for what sounds like the same job can look completely different — not because someone is being dishonest, but because they truly are different jobs with different people, different setups, and different levels of expertise behind them.

On top of that, food photography pricing varies by geography. Rates in Ireland and the UK reflect local market conditions, cost of living, and the size of the industry there — they are not the same as rates in New York or Los Angeles, even though a lot of the content you’ll find when you search tends to reflect those markets.

What actually determines the cost

Understanding the variables is the most useful thing you can do before you start approaching photographers. Here’s what’s actually affecting the final number.

1) Experience and specialisation

A photographer with ten years of experience shooting food for retail brands is not the same as someone who has been shooting for two years, regardless of how their portfolios look at a glance. Experience affects not just the quality of the images but the efficiency of the shoot, the ability to problem-solve on set, the understanding of what a brand actually needs from its content, and the confidence to push back when something isn’t working. Specialisation matters as well: a photographer who focuses specifically on packaged food brands brings a different skill set than one whose background is in hospitality and restaurant photography (and it’s the same for a photographer specialised in commercial/marketing assets and someone who does weddings, concerts and products), and the results tend to reflect that.

2) What’s included in the service

This is where most pricing confusion comes from, because what’s included varies enormously between photographers and isn’t always made explicit upfront.

Props and backgrounds are a good example. Some photographers have built up a collection over years (surfaces, backgrounds, props, linens, accessories) that they bring to shoots as part of their service. Others work with what the brand supplies, or hire props specifically for the project at an additional cost. A photographer with an extensive prop collection is offering something genuinely different from one who doesn’t, and that’s reflected in the rate.

Styling is another. Some photographers handle food styling themselves as part of their service. Others work exclusively as photographers and bring in a separate food stylist, whose fee is additional. Some projects need a dedicated stylist (particularly complex hero shots or multi-dish productions), and that’s a good sign when the photographer is the one pointing that out. Understanding what’s included in the quote (and what isn’t) is essential before you compare prices.

Studio space is a third variable. A photographer with their own studio (like a space dedicated to food and product photography, with the right equipment, surfaces, and available kitchen facilities) offers a different kind of shoot experience than one who hires a studio per project or shoots exclusively on location. Studio hire costs get passed on to the client one way or another, so it’s worth asking.

3) Usage rights, licensing, and copyright

This is consistently one of the most misunderstood areas of commercial photography, and the confusion cuts across all levels — small brands, established businesses, marketing managers who have commissioned shoots before. It doesn’t matter how much experience someone has: usage and licensing are areas where assumptions get made easily and surface as problems later.

The basics: the photographer holds the copyright to the images they create (unless the client opts for a full buyout). What the client receives is a licence to use those images — and the scope of that licence matters. Images licensed for organic social media use are priced differently from images licensed for paid advertising, packaging, PR campaigns, or long-term commercial use across multiple channels. Those are not the same thing, and the difference in cost reflects the difference in commercial value to the brand.

How you’re planning to use the images needs to be part of the conversation from the beginning — and not every photographer will ask, so it’s worth having that information ready before you approach anyone. It makes the quoting process smoother, the contract clearer, and avoids the awkward situation nobody wants: a photographer discovering their “organic social media only” images have ended up in a magazine feature or a national ad campaign without the appropriate licence in place. A licence that doesn’t cover your actual intended use isn’t just a legal issue; it means going back to renegotiate, which is an uncomfortable conversation and an avoidable cost.

Not every photographer takes the time to walk clients through this before a project starts. I do, as part of the planning process — because the brief can’t be built properly without knowing how the images are going to be used, and neither can the quote.

4) Scope and deliverables

How many final images do you need? How many setups? Is this a half-day project or a full production day? Is video included, or stills only? Each of these affects the time required, the preparation involved, and the cost. But this doesn’t mean you need to arrive with a fully itemised brief to get an accurate quote. “We need photos for our launch” is a perfectly reasonable starting point, and honestly, most of my clients have started exactly there. If you’re working with a photographer who also understands the marketing side of things (what a launch actually needs, how content gets used across different channels, what tends to perform), that initial conversation becomes part of the service. The brief gets built together, the scope becomes clear, and the quote reflects what’s actually needed rather than a guess made in both directions.

What cheap food photography actually costs you

There are photographers (and platforms) offering food photography at rates that sound immediately attractive. €5 per image, or flat fees that seem surprisingly low for what’s being promised. I’ve seen briefs go out at those prices. I’ve also seen what comes back.

The issue isn’t just image quality, though that’s part of it. It’s that very cheap food photography tends to come without the things that make photography useful for a brand: no proper brief or planning process, no understanding of how the images will be used, no styling, no usage rights structure, no post-production, and no strategic input on what the brand actually needs. You get images. Whether those images do the job they need to do for your marketing is a different question entirely.

There’s also a cost to the reshoot. Images that don’t work (because they weren’t briefed properly, or styled well, or shot with the end use in mind) eventually get replaced. The cost of replacing them, plus the cost of the time spent with content that wasn’t doing its job, almost always exceeds what it would have cost to do it properly the first time.

This isn’t about defending high prices for their own sake. It’s a much-needed conversation about understanding that photography is a business investment, and like most business investments, the quality of the outcome is connected to the quality of what went into it.

There’s another cost worth mentioning that doesn’t show up on any invoice: the time and energy spent micromanaging a shoot that was never set up to run without it. A photographer with the right experience, a good planning process, and a strong understanding of your brand doesn’t need to check every decision with you in real time — and the result of that trust tends to show in the images. The brands that get the most out of a shoot are almost always the ones that brief well upfront and then step back. The ones that try to direct every shot, every mint leaf, or go back and forth endlessly on decisions that should have been made in the planning stage, rarely leave with what they hoped for — regardless of how much they spend.

How to approach budgeting realistically

Rather than trying to find a single number, the more useful approach is to think about what you need and what you want the images to do — and then have an honest conversation with the photographer about what’s achievable within your budget.

A few things that help that conversation go well:

  • Know your end use before you enquire. Where are the images going? Social media, website, packaging, magazines, ads? The answer affects the scope, the licensing, and the cost. A photographer who knows this upfront can give you an accurate quote rather than a vague estimate.
  • Don’t worry too much about having every deliverable mapped out before you make contact. A good photographer with a strong process will help you get there. What helps at the enquiry stage is having a general sense of what the content is for (a launch, a campaign, a website refresh) and being open about your timeline and budget. The specifics get worked out in the planning conversations that follow, and that process is part of the service.
  • Ask what’s included. Props, styling, studio, post-production, usage rights — ask explicitly what’s in the fee and what isn’t. Two quotes that look similar may be covering very different things.
  • Think about the long term. A photographer you work with repeatedly, who understands your brand and builds on what’s been done before, will almost always produce better results over time than a series of one-off projects with different people. If the budget is tight for a first project, it’s worth having that conversation openly rather than going cheap and starting again in six months.

Transparent pricing in a market that mostly isn’t

Most food photographers don’t publish their rates online. I’ve made a different choice: starting prices for my services are available on my website, so you can get a sense of the baseline before you even get in touch. Every project is scoped individually because every brief is different, but at least you’re not going in blind.

If you’re putting together a brief for a food photography project and want to talk through what’s involved (whether that’s understanding the scope, building the brief, or figuring out what’s realistic for your budget), get in touch here.

And if you’re still at the planning stage and want to understand exactly what should go into a photography brief before you approach anyone, that’s covered in detail here.

What is click-through rate (CTR) — and why it matters more than most brands realise

Most conversations about social media performance circle around the same handful of numbers: followers, reach, likes, and views. These are the metrics that are easiest to see, easiest to compare, and easiest to use as a rough proxy for whether things are going well or not. They are also, for most food and wellness businesses, the wrong numbers to be optimising for — whether you offer a service, run an online shop, use social media to drive newsletter sign-ups, or sell in stores but rely on your website as part of the customer experience. In all of those cases, the goal of social media is ultimately to move someone from the platform to somewhere else (or, less commonly, into a direct conversation via DMs). Either way, the metric that tells you whether that’s actually happening is not your follower count.

The metric that tends to get far less attention (and that, in my experience, tells you considerably more about whether your social media is actually working) is CTR. It doesn’t show up on your profile, it doesn’t generate social proof in the way follower counts do, and it won’t impress anyone at a networking event. But it is one of the clearest signals available of whether your content is reaching people who are genuinely interested in what you do, and whether those people are motivated enough to take the next step.

This post explains what CTR is, how it works across different platforms and contexts, and why it deserves more attention than most brands give it.

What CTR actually means

CTR stands for click-through rate. At its most basic, it measures the percentage of people who saw something and then clicked on it. The formula is straightforward: clicks divided by impressions (or views, or profile visits, depending on the context), multiplied by 100 to give you a percentage.

A CTR of 5% means that for every 100 people who saw a piece of content or visited a page, five of them clicked on something. A CTR of 30% means thirty of them did. Whether those numbers are good or bad depends entirely on what’s being measured, on which platform, and against what benchmark — and this is where a lot of confusion enters the conversation, because CTR is not a single metric. It’s a category of metrics that measures different things in different contexts, and conflating them is one of the more common mistakes in social media reporting.

CTR across different platforms and contexts

Email marketing is where most people first encounter CTR as a concept, and in some ways, it’s the most straightforward version of it: you send something to people who chose to hear from you, and you measure how many of them cared enough to click. That opt-in context is part of why email CTR tends to be higher than most social media equivalents. The numbers themselves vary quite a bit depending on which platform you look at and how they calculate it: somewhere between 2–4% is the range that comes up most consistently across multiple sources, according to a 2026 analysis by Prospeo aggregating data from seven major email platforms, with individual platforms reporting anywhere from 1.69% to 3.7% depending on their methodology and dataset. While doing some research for this post, there was a detail I found really interesting: what you’re sending matters more than the sector you’re in. An automated welcome sequence or an abandoned cart email will almost always outperform a regular newsletter by a significant margin — not because the content is better, but because the timing and context are. Which means if your newsletter CTR feels low, the benchmark you’re comparing it against might be quietly inflated by automated emails that behave completely differently. Ensure you take this into account before assuming that your content isn’t working.

Paid advertising CTR (on Instagram, Facebook, Google, or anywhere else) measures how many people who were shown an ad clicked on it. This is a completely different signal from organic CTR, because the audience has not opted in and the context is interruptive rather than active. Ad CTR benchmarks are significantly lower as a result. On Instagram, figures vary by placement and industry: according to AdBacklog’s 2025 Instagram benchmarks, Feed ads average between 0.56% and 1.61% depending on sector, with Retail and Legal at the higher end and Finance at the lower end. Stories and Reels tend to come in lower still — typically between 0.3% and 0.7%. On Facebook, WordStream’s 2024–25 benchmark data puts the cross-industry average at around 0.9%. The key point here is that comparing your organic content CTR to paid ad benchmarks (or vice versa) produces meaningless comparisons, and it happens more often than it should.

Organic post CTR on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn refers to the percentage of people who saw a post and clicked a link within it — or, in Instagram’s case, tapped an external link you have in your bio. This is a useful data point that most brands overlook entirely. Across all platforms, it’s a measure of how compelling a post’s framing is, telling you whether the content is doing enough to make someone want to read more or take the next step. Tracking it over time tells you which types of posts are actually motivating people to take action.

Instagram bio link CTR is its own category, and the one I find most useful for service-based food and wellness brands. Because Instagram doesn’t allow clickable links in regular posts, the bio link is the primary pathway from the platform to your website — and the CTR here measures the percentage of people who visited your profile and then clicked that link. This is a warm, high-intent action. It requires someone to see your content, find it interesting enough to visit your profile, look at what you do, and decide they want to know more. That’s a meaningful sequence, and a high CTR on it is a meaningful signal.

Why the Instagram link in bio CTR is worth tracking closely

For any food or wellness brand using Instagram to drive traffic somewhere, a profile visit that turns into a website click is the moment Instagram stops being a content platform and starts being a business tool. It’s the point where someone moves from passive audience to active prospect.

The industry average for organic Instagram link in bio CTR is typically cited between 2–5%, though benchmarks vary by source and account type, so treat it as a reference range rather than a fixed number. Social media analytics platform Flick, which tracks data from thousands of Instagram accounts monthly, currently puts the average at around 4.6% (you can see their live benchmark tool here). It’s also important to highlight that most widely quoted CTR benchmarks refer to paid ad performance (which is a completely different metric), so if you’ve ever googled “average Instagram CTR” and found figures under 1%, that’s why. The benchmark is a very useful piece of information because it gives you a realistic reference point for what typical organic content performance looks like, and it makes the gap visible when a well-built strategy is operating significantly above it.

In my own client work, the accounts that consistently outperform this benchmark share a few things in common: the content is built to attract the right audience rather than the largest one, the profile itself is set up to earn the click rather than just describe the business, and the strategy is reviewed and adjusted regularly based on what the data is actually showing. None of that is complicated in principle. In practice, it requires consistent attention to the metrics that matter and a willingness to stop measuring the ones that don’t.

I’ve seen bio link CTRs across client accounts range from the low single digits (where the content is reaching a broad audience with limited interest in the specific service) to sustained figures well above 30%, sometimes significantly higher, on accounts where the strategy is working as it should. The accounts at the higher end are not always the largest. Often, they’re not the largest at all. What distinguishes them is intent alignment: the people finding the profile are the people the content was built for.

What a good CTR tells you — and what it doesn’t

A high CTR is a signal of relevance and intent. It means your content is reaching people who are actually interested in what you do, and your profile is compelling enough to make them want to learn more. For any business where trust is a significant factor in a buying or booking decision, that kind of qualified interest is worth considerably more than a large number of passive followers.

What the CTR doesn’t tell you is what happens after the click. Someone who arrives on your website and immediately leaves has still counted as a click. A high CTR with a poorly built website or a landing page that doesn’t match what your Instagram promised will not produce bookings, regardless of how strong the social media performance is. CTR is one part of a larger picture, and looking at it on its own won’t be helpful. The metric that completes the story is conversion (whether those clicks are turning into enquiries, bookings, or sales), and tracking that requires connecting your social media data to your website analytics, which is a step many brands skip.

That said, a low CTR with high conversion is also worth paying attention to — it often indicates a very small but highly qualified audience, which can be entirely appropriate depending on the business model. The goal is not to maximise CTR in isolation. It’s to understand what the number is telling you about the relationship between your content, your audience, and the action you’re asking them to take.

The metrics CTR is most useful alongside

No single metric tells the full story, and CTR is most useful when it’s read in context alongside a small number of other figures. The specifics vary slightly by platform, but the underlying logic applies across all of them.

  • Profile or page visits tell you how many people are arriving on your profile or page in the first place. A high CTR on a small number of visits still represents a small amount of actual traffic. Growing visits while maintaining a high CTR is where the compounding effect happens, and it’s the combination you need to keep an eye on.
  • Reach and impressions tell you how many people your content is being shown to. If reach is high but profile visits or link clicks are low, the content is being seen but isn’t motivating people to take the next step, which is often a relevance or targeting issue. If reach is modest but CTR is proportionally high, the content is doing something right for a smaller, more engaged audience.
  • Engagement signals (saves on Instagram, reactions and shares on Facebook, reposts on LinkedIn) don’t directly drive CTR, but they tend to correlate with the kind of audience that does click through. A high save rate on educational content in particular usually indicates people who find what you share genuinely useful, which is the same audience that’s likely to visit your profile and click your link when they’re ready to act.
  • Website sessions from social (tracked in Google Analytics or your website platform) close the loop regardless of which platform you’re tracking. This is the number that confirms whether the clicks your social analytics are counting are actually reaching your website, and what those visitors do when they arrive.

Reading these figures together gives a much cleaner picture of how social media is performing as part of the business than any single metric can on its own.

Why most brands aren’t tracking their click-through rate

The honest answer is that follower count and reach are visible by default. They’re on the profile, they’re in the top line of most analytics dashboards, and they’re the easiest shorthand for “how is this going.” CTR requires you to go looking for it: open your insights, navigate to the profile activity data, and track it over time rather than checking it once and moving on.

There’s also a cultural dimension to it. The social media conversation online, in most marketing communities, and among brand owners comparing notes, is almost entirely structured around other metrics: follower counts, viral posts, and reach milestones are obviously the most popular ones, whether they truly matter for the business or not. CTR doesn’t fit neatly into that narrative because it’s not a prestige number. You can’t post a screenshot of your bio link CTR the way you’d announce hitting 10k followers. But the click-through rate is, for a business trying to use social media (or their newsletter) as a real business tool rather than a vanity project, considerably more useful.

A final note before you take benchmark numbers too literally

Any average is built from a wide range — accounts that are performing poorly, accounts that are performing exceptionally, and everything in between. A 2–5% average for link in bio CTR means some accounts are at 1% and others are at 20%, and the average lands somewhere in the middle. Knowing where you stand relative to that range is useful context, but it’s not the most important number to track.
What tends to be more useful is watching your own trend over time. If your CTR has been consistently at 8% for six months and suddenly drops to 3%, something has happened — in your content, your audience, your bio, or the alignment between them. If it climbs from 8% to 20%, something is working better than it was. Those changes and patterns have the real information you need to make decisions on your strategy and content. The industry benchmark just tells you whether you’re in the same territory as everyone else, or doing something noticeably different.

Want to understand how your social media metrics are actually performing?

Knowing what to measure is the first step. Understanding what the numbers are telling you about your specific business (and what to do differently as a result) is where the real work starts.

I work with food, drink, and wellness brands on social media strategy and management, building around the metrics that reflect real business outcomes rather than the ones that just look good in a dashboard. If you want to understand what’s actually driving performance on your account (or what isn’t), get in touch using the button below.

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How to brief a food photographer: what to prepare before your shoot

The planning that happens before a food photography shoot is where most of the important decisions get made — not what berries to add in a granola bowl, or whether to add a garnish, but what the images are actually for, what the brand needs to communicate, and what success looks like when the day is done. That clarity doesn’t always arrive fully formed. It gets built through the right conversations, before anyone picks up a camera.

What clients bring to that process varies enormously. Some arrive with a clear brief, a defined brand direction, and a strong sense of what they want: in this case, the planning stage is about refining and confirming the details. Some come with parts of a brief and a direction that needs completing. Others arrive with a general idea and a handful of references they like, and almost everything gets built from there. Some have detailed brand guidelines and an existing content library to work from; others are creating professional content for the first time and aren’t entirely sure yet what they want their brand to look like visually.

None of those is a problem. It’s the actual range of where brands find themselves, and part of working with an experienced photographer is that the planning process meets you wherever you are.

What changes, depending on the starting point, is how much of the preparation work is handled by the client versus the photographer, and how much gets shaped through conversation rather than arriving as a finished document. The mood board, for instance, is something I almost always create myself as part of my shoot preparation: a visual translation of everything we’ve discussed, from style direction and lighting to props, colour palette, and the overall feel of the shoot. It’s built from whatever the client can bring: references they like, brand guidelines if they have them, an instinct for what does and doesn’t feel right. What they provide is the raw material. The mood board is what I make from it.

This post covers what goes into a solid brief, what tends to get left out, and why the planning stage (however it looks for a given client) is where a shoot either sets itself up properly or slowly builds in problems it will hit later.

A brief and a mood board are not the same thing

These two are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t the same. This is something worth clarifying before we go any further because confusing them leads to gaps on both sides.

A brief is the document (or conversation, or series of questions and answers) that establishes what you actually need. At its most basic, that means: what the images are for, how many, what’s essential versus nice-to-have, who is responsible for what, and what needs to be in place before the shoot. But a thorough brief goes further than that — into usage rights and licensing, campaign timelines, brand guidelines and any constraints they carry, how the content fits into the wider marketing strategy, what’s been done before and what didn’t work, and what the images ultimately need to achieve for the business.

That last layer is where things get interesting, and where the information genuinely has to come from the brand, because only the brand knows what it’s trying to do. But knowing what you need to achieve and knowing how to translate that into a brief are two different things. Many brand owners and marketing managers, including experienced ones who have commissioned photography before, have never had to think about usage rights, don’t yet know exactly how they’ll use the content beyond a general “we need something for social and the website,” and wouldn’t necessarily point out that the campaign they have in mind involves paid advertising until someone thinks to ask. That’s not a gap in their expertise; it’s the natural result of commissioning a service whose technical and strategic requirements you haven’t had to navigate from the inside.

This is where working with a photographer who also has a marketing background makes a real difference. I’m not just asking what you want the images to look like: I’m asking questions that come from understanding both how a shoot needs to be structured and how content actually gets used in a marketing context. That combination means the brief ends up covering things the brand didn’t know they needed to address, and the shoot is built on a strong foundation.

A mood board is the visual counterpart. It’s something I put together as part of the preparation, once the brief is clear enough to work from. The mood board is my interpretation of that direction, made concrete and visual, so there are no surprises on set. Once the client is happy with the mood board, we can move on with the shoot.

Basically, the brief is where you’ll find all the technical information, and the mood board is where the idea becomes a visual plan. Both need to be ready before the shoot, and both shape the result.

Start with where the images will be used, not with how they should look

The most important question in any photography brief is also the one most brands leave until the end, if they address it at all: how are these images actually going to be used?

The answer to that question affects almost every practical decision that goes into a shoot. Images for Instagram tend to be composed vertically, website hero images need to be horizontal and usually need to leave space for text overlay without obscuring the food. Packaging shots are often cropped tightly within specific dimensions, which means the food styling and composition need to account for that from the start. Images destined for paid ads will be resized and placed next to the copy, so the framing needs to accommodate that. If the images are going on a page that uses specific brand colours, those colours should influence decisions about props and photography backgrounds.

“For social media and the website” is not a sufficient answer here. Social media is multiple formats across multiple platforms, each with different orientations, dimensions, and viewing contexts. A website can mean anything from a full-screen background image to a small product thumbnail. The more specific you are about end use, the better positioned your photographer is to make decisions that actually serve those outputs — and the fewer resizes, recropping conversations, and awkward follow-up emails there will be after delivery.

This is one of the first things I work through with clients during the planning stage, and the answers almost always change something about how the shoot is structured. That’s precisely why it belongs at the top of a brief rather than the bottom.

The shot list: being specific doesn’t mean micromanaging

Once the end use is clear, you need a shot list: an explicit record of what you want photographed and, where relevant, any specific requirements for each. This doesn’t need to be an elaborate document. A numbered list that covers every product, scene, or scenario you want captured (with a few notes if needed) is enough.

What a shot list does is convert a vague ambition (“we want beautiful images of the range”) into a workable plan (“we need six hero shots of the full product range on a neutral background, three lifestyle shots of the product being used, and two wider scenes for the website”). Those are entirely different in scope. They require different amounts of time, different props, different styling, and different preparation. Without a shot list, the person doing the planning (whether that’s you or the photographer) is basically just guessing the scope of the project.

A shot list also gives you a way to prioritise, which matters more than people expect. Shoots rarely run exactly to schedule, especially when fresh food is involved — sauces split, greens wilt, a background that looked right during planning looks wrong on set. If you know which images are non-negotiable and which are nice-to-have, you can make better decisions under time pressure instead of trying to get everything and ending up with nothing done well.

Communicating style and mood (without relying entirely on words)

This is where briefs tend to go vague in ways that can cause problems. Words like “luxurious”, “natural”, “fresh”, “modern”, and “minimal” mean genuinely different things to different people. What one person considers warm and earthy, another reads as dark and heavy. Visual language is notoriously difficult to communicate in text alone, which is why references (actual images you respond to) are almost always more useful than descriptions of a feeling.

Early in my career, I worked with a client whose brief was built almost entirely on words like that — minimal, clean, modern. I was starting out, I didn’t yet have the process I have now, and I moved forward without pushing deeper. The moodboard was approved, the shoot went ahead, and the delivered images were (by any reasonable reading of the brief) exactly what had been asked for. The client’s response was that they felt too clinical, too cold, not quite right. More feelings, still no concrete direction. We ended up reshooting, and the second round ended up being closer to what they’d had in mind all along. With the right planning conversation at the start, none of that would have been necessary. That experience is a significant part of why I now build a structured reference and analysis stage into every project from the beginning.

References might come from your own previous content, brands whose aesthetic you admire, food accounts you follow, or images from completely different industries that have the right mood. They don’t need to be from the food world, and they don’t need to be perfect. What they need to do is give the photographer something concrete to respond to — and, importantly, something to push back on or ask questions about, which is where the real creative alignment happens.

A skilled photographer will ask you for references early in the process, and will guide you on what to provide and how to share it. That might be a shared Pinterest board, a folder of screenshots, a handful of accounts you’ve bookmarked — the format matters less than the conversation that happens around it. What are you drawn to in these images? Is it the light, the colour palette, the props, the way the food is styled? And equally: what’s not right about them, what would you change, what feels off for your brand? That guided analysis is what turns a loose collection of inspiration into a clear creative direction.

This is something I build into my onboarding process with every client, and it’s worth paying attention to when you’re choosing a photographer. Not everyone asks for references in a structured way, and not everyone takes the time to work through them with you, but it’s one of the most useful things that can happen in the planning stage, because it highlights assumptions and preferences that wouldn’t otherwise come up until they caused a problem on set. By the time we get to the shoot, we’ve already had the conversation about what you like and why, which means the mood board I put together reflects an actual shared understanding rather than an interpretation made in a vacuum.

Also worth stating explicitly in any brief: what’s off-limits. If there are colours your brand actively avoids, props that clash with your identity, or styling directions that have never felt right for your audience, those belong in the brief, too. It’s considerably easier to rule things out before a shoot than to explain after the fact why you can’t use a third of the images.

The practical details brands most often leave out

A brief should also cover the operational information that determines whether a shoot runs smoothly on the day. These tend to get omitted because they feel administrative rather than creative, but they’re often what creates the most friction.

Who is responsible for the food? This sounds like it should be obvious. Often it isn’t. Are you delivering finished products to the photographer? Bringing raw ingredients that will be prepped on set? Are there hero ingredients that need to be sourced specifically for the shoot — and if so, who is sourcing them and what’s the budget? Ambiguity on this point leads to underprepared sets and a lot of improvisation at exactly the moment you want to be focusing on the images.

Food styling — whose responsibility is it? For most commercial shoots, styling is either handled by a dedicated food stylist, by the photographer, or by the brand itself. These are three very different setups and each requires different preparation. If you’re expecting the photographer to style the food as part of their service, you should hire a photographer who also offers food styling services (not everyone does) and this is a detail that obviously needs to be confirmed in advance. If you’re planning to handle styling yourself, the photographer needs to know that too, so they can plan the session and pace accordingly.

What are the actual deadlines? Not just the shoot date. When do you need the edited images delivered? If you have a product launch, a campaign go-live, or any external deadline tied to this content, it needs to be in the brief from the beginning. Turnaround times vary significantly between photographers and depend on the volume of images and the level of editing required. Revealing a tight deadline after the shoot has already been booked is a guaranteed way to create avoidable pressure on both sides. Most photographers also have a rush fee for tight deadlines, so you should provide all information up front.

What about usage rights? This is one of the most consistently overlooked parts of any photography brief, and it’s also one of the most consequential. If you plan to use the images in paid advertising, on packaging, across multiple platforms, or for an extended period of time, the licensing implications are different from a simple social media use. A professional photographer will walk you through usage rights as part of the contract, but highlighting your intended use in the brief from the start ensures there are no surprises later, either in the scope of the work or the cost.

Can a brief be too detailed?

The concern I hear occasionally: can a brief be so detailed that it removes creative latitude and makes the shoot feel overly rigid?

In practice, not really — at least not in the way people tend to worry about. A thorough brief is not a set of instructions that replaces the photographer’s judgment. It’s a shared framework that answers the foundational questions (what is this for, what does success look like, what does the brand need to communicate) so that the photographer can apply their expertise to the questions that actually require it: how to light the scene, how to compose the frame, how to make the food look exactly as good as it should.

Vagueness definitely creates more issues than specificity. When the brief doesn’t answer the basic questions, those conversations happen on set — at the point when you’re running out of time, food is wilting, and nobody is in a position to make considered creative decisions.

Over the years, I’ve developed a planning process that makes sure all of that happens well before the shoot day. I work remotely the vast majority of the time, without client sign-off happening in real time on set, and things run smoothly, which tells me the process is doing what it’s supposed to. It’s not that nothing unexpected ever happens, because it does, but the foundations are solid enough that the unexpected is manageable rather than chaotic.

Not every photographer works this way, though, and this is worth knowing when you’re deciding who to hire. A photographer who asks detailed questions during the planning stage, who guides you through the brief rather than leaving you to figure it out alone, and who comes to the shoot with everything already confirmed — that’s a green flag. One who does little to no planning with you and lets you carry the full weight of the preparation is a red flag, regardless of how good their portfolio looks. After nearly a decade working in this industry, I can confidently say that the quality of the planning process is often a better indicator of how a shoot will go than anything you’ll see in a portfolio.

What a brief is actually doing

A food photography brief is not a formality. It’s the document that aligns everyone involved (photographer, stylist, brand, anyone else in the room) around the same definition of what a good outcome looks like, before anyone arrives on set.

Getting it right doesn’t require expertise or a particular format. It requires taking time before the shoot to think clearly about what you need, where it’s going, and what the person on the other side of the brief needs to know in order to prepare. Those few hours of thinking almost always pay for themselves. The alternative? Arriving on set and making it up as you go… and that’s a more expensive way to arrive at the same conclusions — and the results tend to show it.

Ready to plan your food photography shoot? What to expect when you work with me

I’m a food photographer and stylist based in Dublin, and I work remotely with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and worldwide on photography, video, and social media strategy. My background is a little unusual for this industry — I have two degrees in chemistry, a diploma in digital marketing, certifications in nutrition and social media, and years of experience both on set and on the strategy side of marketing, which means I approach a brief from both angles at once. I care about how the images look, and I care about what they need to do.

I don’t work with everyone. I work best with established brands that have a product or service worth showing properly, and with founders, owners, or marketing managers who are ready to hand over the creative process rather than micromanage every detail. If that’s you, the planning process I’ve described in this post is exactly what you’d get — structured, thorough, and built around making sure the shoot produces photography and video that actually works for your brand, not just images that look nice in isolation.

If you have a project coming up (whether you have a clear brief ready or just a sense that your current visuals aren’t doing your brand justice), get in touch using the button below, and we can talk through what’s involved.

Fill out my enquiry form

Does trending audio actually boost your Instagram reach? Here’s what the data and experience really say

Every few months, a new version of the same conversation starts making the rounds in marketing circles. Someone shares a tip about trending audio. Someone else posts their results from testing a specific sound. A guru announces that voiceovers are back, or gone forever, or back again. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, brand owners and marketing teams are spending a disproportionate amount of time and energy on a single element of their content — while the actual fundamentals of what makes a video worth watching go largely unaddressed.

So let’s have an honest conversation about audio on social media. Not a definitive ranking of which sounds are trending this week, but a realistic look at what role audio actually plays, what the data really says, and where most brands are getting it wrong.

First, the data — and why it’s confusing on purpose

You’ve probably seen the statistic before: 85% of social media videos are watched without sound. It gets quoted everywhere, and it’s been doing the rounds for years.

And I agree, most people watch with the sound off. But I also recognise that once you start diving into the reports, the numbers aren’t consistent, and it’s worth knowing before we go any further.

A 2019 study by Verizon Media and Publicis Media found that 92% of mobile viewers and 83% of desktop viewers watch video with the sound off. Facebook’s own data puts the figure at around 85% for its platform. LinkedIn sits at 80%.

Instagram, interestingly, tells a different story depending on who’s speaking. Internal data shared by the platform claims 80% of Reels are watched with sound on — essentially the inverse of every other figure out there. And yet the head of Instagram has publicly stated that approximately 50% of people watch Reels and Stories without sound.

Those two positions cannot both be right. And the fact that Instagram’s own figures contradict each other depending on the context should tell you something about how much certainty anyone should have here.

What we can say with confidence: across social media broadly, a very significant proportion of people (somewhere between half and the vast majority, depending on the platform and format) are watching without audio. On Instagram Stories specifically, one data point puts the figure at 40% watching without sound, which is the most conservative estimate for the platform. Even at that number, you’re still talking about nearly half your audience.

The takeaway isn’t a precise percentage. It’s that designing video content with the assumption that everyone will hear it is a mistake that affects a large portion of your reach, every single time you post.

What this actually means in practice

If a significant chunk of your audience is watching on mute, then a video that relies on audio to make sense (to convey its message, land its hook, or tell its story) is a video that’s already failing a large part of the people who see it.

This shows up in a few specific ways that are worth naming.

The voiceover problem. Voiceovers can be genuinely powerful. A well-crafted voiceover that tells a real story (not just narrating what’s on screen, but adding something personal, unexpected, or emotionally resonant) creates a layer of connection that’s hard to achieve any other way. I’ve seen it work beautifully: someone making something by hand, whether it’s decorating a cake or throwing a pot, telling a story in their own voice while you watch them work. That combination of doing and telling is compelling in a way that text alone can’t replicate.

The problem is when the voiceover becomes the only vehicle for the message. I’ve worked with clients who spent hours going back and forth approving audio for a video, agonising over the tone and pacing of a voiceover — content that could have communicated the same thing just as effectively with text on screen and a good caption. The voiceover added nothing that a well-written text overlay wouldn’t have done, and half the people who watched it never heard a word.

If you’re going to do voiceovers, make them earn their place. Make them personal, make them a genuine part of your content style — not a one-off experiment sandwiched between two months of silent Reels. Your regular audience will learn to turn the sound on for you. New viewers need to be hooked visually first.

The music problem. More on this in a moment, but the short version: music should support what’s already working visually. It cannot rescue a video that doesn’t work without it.

The trending audio conversation, honestly

Trending audio on Instagram has a real function. When a sound is being used widely on the platform, Instagram’s algorithm tends to push content using that sound to a broader audience — including people who don’t follow you. For a period, this was genuinely one of the more effective reach tactics available, and it was worth paying attention to.

That period is not entirely over, but it’s significantly less reliable than it used to be.

I remember when the trending audio section wasn’t even visible in European markets. At the time, I had access to accounts on both sides of the Atlantic (some in the US, some in Europe), and the information gap was real. I could see what was trending for US accounts directly in the platform, test it, watch it work, and then bring that knowledge back to European clients who were otherwise relying on newsletters, weekly recaps from US-based accounts, or just scrolling and noticing what sounds kept appearing in other people’s content. Having direct access made a meaningful difference.

Now that trending audio is widely available everywhere, it’s also widely used by everyone. The competitive advantage has largely flattened. It’s still worth knowing about, still occasionally worth using, but it’s not the shortcut it once was. Reaching for it out of habit (without considering whether it actually suits the content) is a habit that’s running on outdated logic.

There are also a lot of variables that most brands aren’t accounting for. Original audio, remixed audio, AI-generated music (that’s unfortunately not labelled as such), and licensed tracks all behave differently within the algorithm. What counts as “trending” is specific to a region, an audience, and a moment in time — it doesn’t translate globally or last beyond a short window. And trending right now on Instagram is a very different thing from a song being genuinely popular or culturally relevant.

The bakery that ignored all of it

A few years ago, I came across a bakery on Instagram that was doing something I’d never quite seen before. Their videos used only rock and metal music: not ironically, or as a one-off, just because that’s apparently what the people behind the account liked. No trending sounds, no house music or pop hooks. Just bread, cakes and very loud guitars (I immediately decided to hit the follow button).

Their reach was fantastic. And people kept tagging them, sharing their content, mentioning them as an example of a brand doing something different. The music wasn’t the reason their content worked — the content worked because it was good, real, entertaining, and genuinely theirs. But the music was part of the personality: it was coherent, and it made sense for the brand they’d built.

I still mention this example because it illustrates something that gets lost in the audio conversation: consistency and authenticity tend to outperform tactical optimisation over time. A brand that knows who it is and shows up that way will build a more loyal, engaged audience than one that’s constantly adjusting its soundtrack based on what’s trending this week.

The “pop, fun, exciting” default

One of the most common patterns I see across food and wellness brands (really across all categories) is a default to upbeat, fast-paced, “young” sounding music, regardless of what the brand actually is or who it’s talking to. The logic seems to be that exciting music makes people feel excited about the product or service on screen (spoiler: it doesn’t).

It rarely works that way. What it usually signals (to the viewer, even if they can’t articulate it) is a disconnect between the brand’s actual identity and how it’s trying to present itself online. A premium, considered food brand soundtracked with the kind of music that usually accompanies a gym montage doesn’t feel “elevated”. It feels like nobody sat down and thought about what this brand actually sounds like.

This tends to happen when too many people are involved in the process without a clear strategy in place, or when the people making the decisions aren’t willing to trust the people with the expertise. Audio is one of those areas where everyone has an opinion and feels qualified to weigh in, which is exactly why it eats so much time and produces such inconsistent results.

Captions are non-negotiable

If there’s one concrete recommendation that comes out of everything above, it’s this: add captions to your videos. Every time.

Not because it’s best practice or because someone told you to. Because a meaningful proportion of your audience is watching without sound and deserves to understand what you’re saying. Because captions increase watch time. Because they make your content accessible to people with hearing impairments, non-native speakers, and anyone watching in a situation where they can’t use audio. Because they work.

On Instagram, auto-captions are built in and take about thirty seconds to apply and review (please, review them), and there is genuinely no good reason not to use them. The brands that don’t are choosing to communicate with a fraction of the people they could be reaching.

The same logic applies to text overlays on Reels more broadly. If your video relies on audio to make sense (meaning someone watching on mute would have no idea what it’s about), that’s the problem to solve before you think about anything else.

A framework worth keeping

Here’s the way I think about audio for any video content: does this video work on mute? Can someone watching silently understand what they’re looking at, why it’s interesting, and what they’re supposed to do with that information?

If yes — great. The audio is a layer on top of something that already works. Choose something that suits the brand, the mood, and the content. Trending or not trending is a secondary consideration.

If no — fix that first. No amount of the right song is going to carry a video that doesn’t have a clear visual hook, a legible message, or a reason to keep watching.

That’s really the whole framework. The trending audio section, the voiceover debate, the argument about whether classical music is too old-fashioned for a food brand — all of it comes after this.

A note on my own content

For my own page, I mostly pick audio based on what I like or what I want to test out, and treat the results as an experiment. Sometimes a non-trending choice seems to help — though whether that’s the audio or simply the algorithm having a good day for that piece of content, it’s genuinely hard to say. Sometimes it makes no difference. Occasionally, I’m fairly sure it cost me reach, but I can live with that. The alternative (spending significant time finding the optimal trending sound for every piece of content I make for myself) is not a trade-off I’m willing to make every single time.

For client work, the conversation is more considered. Audio supports the brand identity, builds atmosphere, and yes, discoverability is part of the brief. But it comes after everything else is already working.

The bottom line

Audio matters on social media, but not as much as most brands are treating it. The time and energy going into finding the perfect sound, approving every voiceover, and chasing trending audio would almost always be better spent on the visual hook, the caption, the message, the strategy, and the consistency of showing up.

Design your content to work in silence. Let the audio be a pleasant surprise for the people who do listen.

Ready to think more strategically about your brand’s content?

I work with food, drink, and wellness brands to create photography, video, and social media strategy that’s built around what actually works — not what’s trending this week. If you’re looking for a more considered approach to your content, I’d love to hear about what you’re working on.

Get in touch here

How to know if your food brand is ready to outsource content creation

Outsourcing content creation can be one of the smartest decisions a food or drink brand makes. It can also be an expensive, time-consuming lesson if the timing or the foundation isn’t right.

After working with food, beverage, and wellness brands for nearly a decade (from family-run Irish businesses to internationally recognised names), I’ve seen both play out. Some collaborations hit their stride quickly and deliver results that genuinely move the needle. Others stall almost immediately, not because the work is bad, but because the brand wasn’t in the right place to make it work.

The difference usually has very little to do with budget or business size. It comes down to a handful of factors that are easy to overlook when you’re in the middle of running a business. This post covers all of them — the signs that you’re genuinely ready, the signs that suggest you need to lay some groundwork first, and what to do in either case.

What “outsourcing content creation” actually means for a food or drink brand

Before getting into the readiness question, it’s worth being clear about what this actually involves, because “content creation” means different things in different contexts.

For food, beverage, and wellness brands, professional content creation typically means commissioning photography, short-form video, and recipe development from someone with the expertise to produce work that’s both visually strong and strategic. It’s not the same as hiring an influencer for a brand collaboration, and it’s not the same as asking someone to post on your behalf three times a week.

When a food or drink brand outsources content creation properly, they’re working with a professional who understands the industry, brings a strategic point of view, and can handle multiple elements (photography, video, copy, recipe development) in a way that’s cohesive and purposeful. The goal is always to create content that reflects the real quality of the brand and speaks directly to the right audience.

With that context in place, here’s how to know whether you’re ready for it.

The signs your food or drink brand is ready to outsource

1) Your brand has grown, but your content hasn’t kept up with it

This is probably the most common situation I see. A food or drink brand has been growing steadily (loyal customers, a strong product, real momentum in the business), but the online presence doesn’t reflect any of that. The photography is inconsistent, the social media page looks like it was put together in a hurry, and the overall impression doesn’t match the quality of what’s actually being sold.

That gap between where the brand is and how it shows up online is frustrating, and it has a real cost. People make decisions quickly online, and if the first impression doesn’t match the reality, potential customers move on. If you recognise this situation in your own brand, and you’ve reached the point where you genuinely don’t have the time or the skills to close that gap, you’re ready to bring in outside support.

2) You want to evolve your content — and you need someone who can handle it

Some of the most productive collaborations I’ve had started with a brand that already had a solid presence but wanted to do something different. They had people managing their social media, they were posting consistently, but they wanted to elevate the visual quality, develop recipes that showcase their products in context, or create a library of content they could use across multiple platforms — social media, their website, press features, newsletters, and marketing campaigns.

What they needed wasn’t more content. They needed better content, made by someone with the right combination of skills and experience to deliver it without requiring constant direction. If you’re at a similar point (you know what you want to do differently, you just need someone who can actually do it), that’s a good sign you’re ready.

3) Marketing is consistently taking up time you don’t have

Food and drink businesses are demanding in a way that’s hard to overstate. When content creation keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the list, or when it gets done in a rush because there’s no other option, the work suffers, and consistency disappears. Inconsistent content is one of the things that quietly undermines a brand’s credibility online, even when everything else about the business is strong.

If this sounds familiar, the cost of not outsourcing is probably already higher than the cost of doing it. You don’t necessarily need a full monthly retainer to start (a defined project, a shoot, a strategy session), but getting some external support in place sooner rather than later tends to pay off.

4) You understand that strategy matters as much as the content itself

Brands that genuinely get results from outsourcing are the ones who understand that content without strategy is just noise. They’re not looking for someone to produce as much material as possible at the lowest possible cost. They want a partner who thinks about what the content is actually for — who it’s talking to, what it’s trying to communicate, and how it connects to the broader goals of the business.

This doesn’t mean you need to have everything figured out before you reach out. A good professional will help you think through the strategy as part of the process. But it does mean coming in with an openness to that conversation, rather than arriving with a brief that’s purely about output and volume.

5) You’re approaching a launch, a rebrand, or a significant moment for the business

A product launch, a move into new markets, a packaging refresh, a push into retail — these moments create a specific and time-sensitive need for strong visual content. They also tend to be the moments when the stakes are highest and the margin for “good enough” is smallest.

If something significant is on the horizon for your brand and you want the content to do justice to it, that’s one of the clearest signals that it’s time to bring in professional support. The key is doing it early enough — photography and video production take time, and rushing it to meet a launch deadline is one of the most common mistakes food brands make.

The signs you’re not quite ready yet — and what to do instead

1) You’re at a turning point, but the strategy isn’t in place yet

This one comes up more often than most brands would expect — and it applies at every stage of growth, not just to small or early-stage businesses. A brand is preparing to export, moving from direct sales into supermarket distribution, or expanding the product range, and the instinct is to invest in content to support the growth.

The problem is that visibility alone doesn’t drive the results that a transition like this requires. If you don’t yet have a clear picture of who the new audience is, what the messaging needs to say, or what success actually looks like for this next chapter of the business, even beautifully produced content will struggle to help. Getting the strategy right first isn’t a delay — it’s what makes everything that comes after it actually work. Investing in photography and video before that groundwork is done often means producing content that needs to be redone six months later anyway.

2) The brief is about volume rather than purpose

There’s a pattern I’ve seen play out a few times over the years: a brand comes in wanting as much content as possible (five videos of this product, five of that one, the maximum number of posts per month) without a clear sense of what that content is meant to do or who it’s really for. The thinking is usually that more content means more visibility, and more visibility means more sales.

In practice, it doesn’t tend to work that way. The brands that see the strongest returns from outsourcing are the ones willing to prioritise purposeful, well-considered content over sheer output. If the primary goal right now is volume, it might be worth pausing to ask what each piece of content is actually trying to achieve before briefing anyone to produce it.

3) You’re not yet in a position to hand things over

Outsourcing works well when there’s a genuine willingness to collaborate and delegate. That doesn’t mean stepping back entirely — a professional partner will want your input, your feedback, and your approval throughout the process. But it does mean trusting the person you’ve brought in to bring their expertise to the work, rather than directing every decision.

When a brand isn’t ready to do that (whether because they’re unclear on what they want, or because there are a lot of internal opinions that haven’t been aligned yet), the process slows down, and the results suffer on both sides. This isn’t a criticism, it’s the honest point of view of someone who’s been in this industry for nearly a decade and wants you to ensure the timing is right before you hire someone. Sometimes a brand needs to get clearer internally before a collaboration can really work.

4) You don’t yet have a clear picture of your audience

This is more common than most brands would like to admit, and it shows up across businesses of all sizes — including ones with a marketing manager or a full internal team. If you’re not sure exactly who your ideal customer is, what they care about, and what kind of content actually speaks to them, any content you commission is going to be built on a shaky foundation.

Before bringing in outside support for content creation, it’s worth investing time in getting specific about your audience. Who are they? What do they need to see or hear to trust your brand? What does their life look like, and where does your product fit into it? A professional can help you think through these questions, but having a starting point (even a rough one) makes the collaboration far more productive from the beginning.

A few questions worth thinking about

If you’re genuinely trying to work out where you stand, these tend to cut through the uncertainty:

  • Do you know exactly who your content is speaking to? Not in general terms — specifically. If the answer is vague, the content will be too.
  • Is your online presence an accurate reflection of the quality of your product or business right now? If there’s a gap, how long has it been there, and what’s it costing you?
  • Are you looking for more content or better content? The answer to that question shapes everything about how an outsourcing relationship should be structured.
  • If a professional came back to you with a strategic recommendation that differed from what you’d originally briefed, would you be open to that conversation? The brands that benefit most from working with an experienced partner are the ones that come in willing to think, not just to receive.

What working with a professional looks like in practice

For food, beverage, and wellness brands, professional content support usually takes one of a few forms: a project-based collaboration tied to a specific launch or campaign, an ongoing monthly arrangement that covers photography, video, and social media on a retainer basis, or a strategic consultation to help the brand get clarity before committing to ongoing production.

The right structure depends on where the brand is, what they need, and how much they want to hand over. What stays consistent is the approach: everything is built around the brand’s identity, its audience, and what the content is actually meant to do. The photography, the video, the recipes, the copy — all of it needs to work together and pull in the same direction.

Where does your brand sit right now?

If the first half of this post felt more familiar than the second, you’re probably in a good position to start a conversation. If something in the second half landed a bit closer to home, that’s genuinely useful to know — it means there’s some groundwork worth doing first, and doing it properly now will make everything that follows more effective.

Either way, having a clear and honest picture of where you are is always the right starting point.

Common questions about outsourcing content creation

What’s the difference between a one-off project and a retainer — and how do I know which one I need?

A one-off project makes sense when you have a specific, defined need — a product launch shoot, a batch of recipe videos for a campaign, a strategy session to get clear on your direction. It has a clear start and end point, and the scope is agreed upfront. A retainer is a better fit when your content needs are ongoing: you want consistent photography or video across the year, you need someone managing your social media month to month, or you want a creative partner who stays close to the brand rather than coming in and out. In practice, a lot of long-term collaborations start as a one-off project. It’s a good way to work together, see how the process feels, and build from there if it makes sense for both sides.

How do I know if my content creation budget is enough?

This is one of the most common questions I get, and the honest answer is that it depends entirely on what you need and how you want to structure the work. Professional food photography, video production, and strategic content work sit at a different price point to stock images or quick smartphone content — and that difference shows in the results. Rather than starting with a fixed number and working backwards, it’s usually more useful to start with the goal: what do you actually need the content to do, and what’s the cost of not having it? From there, it’s easier to figure out what kind of scope makes sense and what a realistic investment looks like. If you’re not sure, the best thing to do is get in touch and have an honest conversation about it.

How far in advance should I start looking for a content partner before a product launch?

Earlier than you think. For photography and video, you need to factor in briefing, sourcing props and products, scheduling the shoot, editing, revisions, and final delivery — and that’s before the content even starts going out. Six to eight weeks before your launch date is a realistic minimum, and more is always better, especially if the launch is significant or the content needs are complex. Reaching out when you’re already two weeks from launch almost always means compromising on quality, scope, or both. If a launch is on the horizon, it’s worth starting the conversation now, even if the details aren’t fully confirmed yet.

Can I outsource just one service (like photography), or does it have to be a full package?

Absolutely. There’s no requirement to hand over everything at once, and for a lot of brands, starting with one service is the right move. You might need a strong bank of product photography before anything else, or a set of recipe videos for a specific campaign, without being ready to outsource your social media as well. The work doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. That said, there are real advantages to working with someone who can handle multiple elements together — the content tends to be more cohesive, the process is more efficient, and you’re not briefing three different people who may or may not be communicating with each other. But the starting point can absolutely be one service, with more added over time if it makes sense.

Thinking about outsourcing content for your food or drink brand?

I work with food, beverage, and wellness brands (based in Ireland and internationally) to create photography, short-form video, recipe development, and social media strategy that’s built around the brand’s goals and audience. Whether you’re planning a product launch, looking for a long-term creative partner, or trying to get clarity on your content strategy, I’d love to hear what you’re working on.
Use the button below to get in touch via the enquiry form and tell me about your brand and what you’re looking for.

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Social media marketing trends for 2026: what brands need to know now

Every year around this time, social media fills up with trend predictions for the new year. New features, new formats, new “must-do” strategies that promise growth, reach, or visibility if you act fast enough.

But if 2026 has a theme, it’s this: less chasing, more building.

After years of rapid change, constant updates, and pressure to do everything at once, social media marketing is settling into a more intentional phase. Not slower in terms of innovation, but clearer in terms of what actually works.

This post isn’t about hacks or shortcuts. It’s about patterns I’m seeing across client work, brand accounts, content performance, and conversations with business owners who are tired of spinning their wheels.

Here’s what’s shaping social media marketing in 2026.

1) A shift from noise to clarity

Social media in 2026 is rewarding clarity more than volume. Accounts that are doing well aren’t necessarily posting more. They’re easier to understand. You land on their profile and immediately know:

  • who they are
  • what they offer
  • who it’s for
  • why you should care

This sounds basic, but it’s surprisingly rare.

After years of trend-chasing and overproduced content, audiences are quicker to scroll past anything that feels confusing, forced, or performative. Clear messaging, consistent visuals, and a recognisable tone are becoming far more valuable than novelty.

For brands, this means:

  • fewer “random” posts
  • stronger positioning
  • more intention behind each piece of content

2) The continued rise of personal brands (and brands acting like people)

Personal brands aren’t slowing down — they’re growing. And at the same time, traditional brands are borrowing from the same playbook.

People connect with people. Even when they’re buying from a business.

In 2026, we’ll keep seeing:

  • founders and team members stepping forward
  • brands sharing opinions and perspectives
  • less corporate language, more conversational tone
  • visibility around decision-making, process, and values

This doesn’t mean every brand needs to overshare or turn into a personality account. It means removing unnecessary distance.

Brands that still sound like press releases will feel harder to trust. Brands that sound human will feel easier to follow, easier to remember, and easier to buy from.

3) Video stays — but the “one right format” is gone

Video content is not going anywhere in 2026. But the idea that there’s one correct way to do it is fading fast.

Audiences are now used to seeing:

  • polished brand videos
  • simple phone clips
  • talking-to-camera content
  • B-roll with text overlays
  • quiet, slow videos alongside fast edits

What matters more than format is ease of consumption.

In 2026, video performs best when it’s:

  • easy to follow
  • visually calm enough to watch
  • paced with intention
  • not overloaded with effects or transitions

This is good news. It means brands can experiment more, simplify more, and stop trying to copy a single style that worked for someone else.

4) The return of variety (and why Instagram carousels are performing again)

One of the most noticeable shifts over the past year has been the return of variety. For a while, it felt like everything had to be video. Now, that pressure is easing.

Instagram carousels are performing well again because they match how people actually use social media:

  • to pause
  • to save
  • to revisit
  • to understand something properly

Reels can be great for reach and visibility.
Carousels often perform better for depth, education, and long-term value.

In 2026, strong accounts aren’t choosing one format. They’re mixing:

  • video
  • carousels
  • static posts
  • stories

Variety isn’t a lack of strategy — it is the strategy.

5) Outdated practices will hold you back more than ever

It’s unrealistic to expect anyone to stay on top of every new feature or update. Platforms move fast, and not everything is worth adopting immediately.

What is becoming harder to justify is relying on practices that have been outdated for years.

Things that are increasingly working against brands in 2026:

  • posting low-quality boomerang-style clips as Reels
  • overloading short videos with constant transitions
  • captions that are mostly hashtags with little context
  • content that’s visually overwhelming or hard to follow

If your content is tiring to watch or read, people won’t stay. Attention is limited, and patience is even more so. Clean, intentional content is outperforming “busy” content.

6) Diversifying your marketing is no longer optional

One of the biggest risks for brands in 2026 is relying on a single platform. Algorithms change. Reach fluctuates. Accounts get quieter overnight.

This doesn’t mean you need to be everywhere. It means building a simple, supportive ecosystem.

One of the most effective combinations I see:

  • one main social platform, done well
  • email marketing that complements it

Social media brings discovery and connection. Email builds familiarity, trust, and consistency.

When these two work together, marketing feels less fragile and far more sustainable (and if you want a stronger marketing package, choose to focus on one main social platform, your blog and email marketing).

7) Community over scale

Growth in 2026 doesn’t always look impressive on paper.

More brands are realising that:

  • a smaller, engaged audience converts better
  • familiarity builds trust faster than reach
  • consistency matters more than spikes

This shift isn’t about shrinking ambitions. It’s about focusing energy where it actually pays off. Accounts that feel familiar (not just visible) are the ones people come back to.

What I’m ready to see less of in 2026

Some trends I hope continue to fade:

  • outdated posting tactics dressed up as “strategy”
  • overproduced content with no clear message
  • chasing every trend without considering fit
  • marketing that prioritises speed over clarity

Not everything needs to be loud. Not everything needs to go viral. Not everything needs to be new.

Key takeaways for brands

If you’re planning your social media marketing for 2026, here’s what I’d focus on:

  • Build clarity before chasing growth
  • Show people, not just products
  • Use video intentionally, not obsessively
  • Mix formats instead of relying on one
  • Drop practices that no longer serve you
  • Diversify your marketing so one platform doesn’t carry everything
  • Prioritise trust and familiarity over big numbers

Looking ahead

Social media marketing in 2026 feels less frantic than previous years — and that’s a good thing.

The brands that will do well aren’t the ones doing the most. They’re the ones making it easy for people to understand them, trust them, and come back.

If your content feels clear, consistent, and human, you’re already ahead.

Want support with your 2026 strategy?

If you’re planning ahead and want help refining your social media strategy, content direction, or long-term approach, I offer consultations, project-based work, and monthly retainers.

I’ve been working in digital marketing, photography and professional content creation for nine years, supporting brands with strategies, content, and ongoing social media management. My approach combines hands-on experience with a solid marketing foundation, including a Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing from UCD and regular training to stay aligned with current best practices — not just trends.

I work remotely with brands in Ireland and worldwide, and every project begins with understanding your business, your audience, and what will actually drive results for you.

You can get in touch using the button below and book a discovery call to talk through what you need for 2026.

Contact me

Food trends for 2026: what’s staying, what’s shifting, and where we’re slowing down

Last year, I shared a blog post about the food trends I saw shaping 2025. Not as predictions pulled out of thin air, but as patterns I was already noticing in my work, in client conversations, in recipe testing, and in the way people were talking about food online and offline.

Looking back now, what stands out most isn’t how fast things changed, but how much they settled. Home cooking didn’t fade away, bread didn’t disappear, and curiosity didn’t turn into exhaustion. If anything, people became more selective, more intentional, and a bit more honest about what actually fits into their lives.

So this year’s food trends for 2026 don’t feel like a sharp turn. They feel like a continuation — with clearer edges and fewer extremes.

Less chasing. Less performance. More flavour, better use of ingredients, and a growing desire to enjoy food without turning it into a moral test or a productivity task.

These are the shifts I see shaping how we’ll cook, eat, and talk about food in 2026 — based on real work, real kitchens, and real constraints, not hype.

1) Food trend 2026: tea beyond matcha (and matcha finding its place again)

Matcha didn’t disappear in 2025. If anything, it became even more visible. But alongside that rise came a noticeable change in how people wanted to use it.

In client work, the requests shifted. Less interest in complicated, overloaded drinks. More focus on flavour, balance, and quality. Questions about sourcing, sustainability, and whether every new drink really needed to exist.

At the same time, other teas started stepping forward — not as replacements, but as ingredients with their own identity.

Hojicha appeared more often, served on its own, blended with cacao, paired with adaptogenic mushrooms, and baked into desserts. Chai moved beyond the classic latte into cocktails, ice creams, and sweets. Rooibos quietly gained ground, especially where caffeine-free options mattered.

In 2026, matcha isn’t going anywhere, but it’s being stripped back. Less matcha in food, fewer visual gimmicks, more respect for the ingredient itself. Higher-quality matcha, prepared more traditionally, along with simple lattes and a few well-loved combinations from the past years, like mango or strawberry matcha drinks.

Alongside that, tea as a category continues to grow, with people exploring flavour first rather than chasing the loudest trend.

2) Food trend 2026: sour notes, fermentation, and cherry tones

Throughout 2025, sour flavours kept showing up — not aggressively sharp, but layered, fermented, and balanced.

Sourdough stayed central, but it started pairing with bolder ingredients: chocolate and cherry loaves, fruit-forward breads, and fermentation used with intention rather than as a badge of honour.

And then there were cherries (and all those beautiful cherry tones).

From early autumn onwards, deep cherry and red tones were everywhere — not just in food, but across fashion, interiors, objects, and branding. Shoes, dresses, reusable bottles, notebooks, and gym wear with earthy tones dominated both feeds and shops.

Food doesn’t move in isolation anymore: colour, mood, and flavour travel together.

For 2026, sour flavours continue to grow, especially when paired with richness or sweetness: think cherries, berries, vinegars, and fermented elements used thoughtfully, adding depth rather than shock value.

3) Food trend 2026: beans, pulses, and a wider plant-based vocabulary

Beans and pulses have been on the rise for a while, but 2026 feels like the year they truly expand beyond their usual roles.

Not just hummus or beans in salads. But a wider exploration of pulses — different varieties, textures, and cooking methods. What’s driving this isn’t just plant-based eating, but practicality: ingredients like beans, lentils and chickpeas are affordable, widely available (dry, canned, jarred), packed with nutrients, rich in fibre, and incredibly versatile. They take on flavour beautifully and fit into the way people are cooking now — adaptable, comforting, and efficient.

In client work, I’ve seen more interest in recipes that work with what people already have, rather than demanding incredibly long shopping lists or rigid instructions.

In 2026, pulses will become what I like to call a “foundation ingredient”.

4) Food trend 2026: bread, sourdough, and making the process work for you

Bread isn’t going anywhere — and neither is sourdough. What’s changing is the relationship people have with it.

There’s less pressure to get everything perfect. More acceptance that starters don’t need to be eternal, loaves don’t need to look identical, and baking should fit around life, not the other way around.

People are getting more creative with sourdough discard, using it to reduce waste and make the process more sustainable. Crackers, pancakes, quick breads, desserts. At the same time, books, blogs and small gadgets are helping people enjoy the process more — temperature control, more approachable recipes, in-depth explanations, proofing boxes, simple tools that remove stress.

In 2026, sourdough stays — but with more flexibility, curiosity, and kindness.

5) Food trend 2026: retro dishes and big personality on the plate

As design, branding, and interiors lean increasingly minimal and neutral, food is pushing back. Not by returning to childhood comfort dishes exactly, but by revisiting retro energy — especially from the 80s and 90s.

Jelly cakes. Terrines. Panna cotta. Layered desserts. Dishes with shine, colour, and structure.

These aren’t ironic throwbacks: they’re intentional, expressive, and often adapted to be plant-based or lighter, without losing their personality.

For 2026, food becomes one of the few places where colour and playfulness feel welcome again.

6) Food trend 2026: cauliflower holds its ground, cabbage steps into the spotlight

Cauliflower has been on the main stage for a long time now, and in 2026 it’s not disappearing — but it’s no longer carrying the whole vegetable conversation on its own.

What I’ve noticed over the past year is cabbage quietly moving from the sidelines to the centre as something people are genuinely rediscovering.

Red cabbage, white cabbage, Savoy — cooked simply and thoughtfully. Fermented, grilled, roasted, braised, or sliced and used in salads and sandwiches. Paired well, seasoned properly, and allowed to show just how much flavour it actually carries.

This shift makes sense on several levels. Cabbage is affordable, widely available, and incredibly versatile. It holds texture beautifully, takes on flavour without disappearing, and works across cuisines and cooking styles. In a moment where people are watching food costs more closely and trying to reduce waste, it’s an ingredient that earns its place.

In both home cooking and client work, I’ve seen more interest in vegetables that don’t need much intervention to be satisfying. Less disguising. Less overworking. More confidence in simple techniques.

For 2026, cauliflower remains part of the picture, but cabbage joins it as an equal. Less trend-driven, more grounded, and very much aligned with the wider move towards practical, flavour-forward cooking.

7) Food trend 2026: practical cooking, done well

People are cooking more at home, inviting others over more, and being far more selective about eating out.

Quick treats stay. Special meals stay. Everything in between gets questioned.

At home, this translates to food that’s practical but still satisfying: fewer ingredients and steps, less washing up, but still full of flavour.

Recipes that respect time, energy, and budgets without sacrificing pleasure will define how people cook in 2026.

Things I’m ready to see less of in 2026

1) Less protein obsession, more balance (and hello fibre)

Protein matters, but turning every single recipe or store-bought food into a “high-protein version” often adds very little beyond marketing.

I’ve seen people give up foods they genuinely love for versions they don’t even enjoy, simply because they seem “better for you” or more on trend.

What often gets overlooked are flavour, texture, nutrients (apart from protein), fibre, and the overall eating experience.

In 2026, I’d love to see less fixation on protein as the centre of everything, and more attention to balance — including fibre, variety, and long-term nourishment.

2) Less demonisation of processed food, more nuance

Processed and ultra-processed foods are a complex topic — far too complex to fit into plain black or white statements.

Time, energy, money, access, health, and family responsibilities all shape how people eat. The ability to cook everything from scratch isn’t universal, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone.

I hope to see less fear-based content and fewer sweeping claims, and more empathy, context, and understanding of real-life constraints.

Key takeaways for brands (food, beverage and wellness)

If you’re planning content or launches for 2026, these trends point to a few clear opportunities:

  • Simplicity will outperform spectacle: clear flavours and thoughtful combinations resonate more than excess.
  • Flexibility builds trust: content that shows adaptability (not perfection) feels more relatable.
  • Colour and personality are assets: expressive, warm visuals stand out in an increasingly neutral world.
  • Tea, beans, fermentation, and fibre have staying power: these aren’t micro-trends, but long-term shifts.
  • Nuance matters: audiences respond to brands that acknowledge complexity rather than pushing rigid rules.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing these food trends for 2026 make clear, it’s this: people are tired of extremes.

They want flavour without chaos, nourishment without guilt, and food that fits into real lives — not idealised ones. They’re cooking more, but with less pressure. Spending more intentionally. Choosing ingredients that work harder without demanding perfection.

Tea finds balance. Pulses step into everyday cooking. Bread stays, but on kinder terms. Fibre quietly returns to the conversation. And food becomes, once again, a place where colour, care, and connection are allowed to exist.

For me, this feels like a grounding year ahead. One where curiosity beats performance, and where cooking is less about proving something and more about enjoying it.

Planning for 2026?

If you’re thinking about how food trends, consumer behaviour, and content direction will impact your brand next year, I offer strategy consultations, project-based work, and long-term retainers.

I’ve spent 9 years working across food photography, recipe development, content creation, and digital marketing — helping food and wellness brands translate trends into content that feels relevant, realistic, and commercially useful. My approach blends hands-on experience with a strong marketing foundation, including a Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing from UCD and ongoing training to stay aligned with best practices.

I work remotely with brands in Ireland and worldwide, and every project starts with understanding your audience, your goals, and what will actually support growth — not just what’s trending.

You can book a discovery call using the button below to talk through your plans for 2026.

Contact me