food and drink photography Archives - Sarah Deane Photography Studio Newcastle

Small Plates at Arlo Jesmond

7 October 2019/0 Comments/in Assorted, Commercial, food and drink photography /by Sarah Deane

Newcastle Bar Interiors and Food Photography

Small Plates and Big Drinks!

This summer Arlo of Jesmond launched it’s yummy new small plate menu served from 6pm along with a diverse range of delicious cocktails, artisan gins and local craft ales to accompany a brand new refurbishment.

Newcastle people who are Arlo regulars are likely to know the dynamic, warm and truly lovely owners, Lucus and Susan. I met the family around 7 or 8 years ago capturing family portraits of their children at a pop up studio of mine in Gosforth.

We have stayed in touch ever since and a short while after their family shoot they launched Arlo on Brentwood Avenue, West Jesmond. It’s been a fantastic success as a perfect stop off for school running parents in need of coffee, students after a brunch to cure the mother of hangovers and oldies like me loving all things easy and local, live music and great food.

I am always flattered when they bring me on board for their food and drink photography, asking me to capture new menus, staff portraits, themed evening events and interior design for their website and marketing as they expand and grow. I love feeling part of their dynamic team.

A highlight for me was scoffing cake and coffee one morning and spotting my interior photos on posters in their windows. This was illustration photography of Lucus’ story telling nicknacks that adorn Arlo’s walls and shelves. So this summer when they announced their refurb and the wonderful new bar installation I was thrilled to be there at the launch party.

The new look and feel is consistent with their well established brand being a cosy, friendly and inviting atmosphere. Materials throughout are natural and inviting much like the food. The rich conker coloured leather upholstery, textured solid wood bar and the soft glowing lights on the metalwork are the perfect Autumnal setting for a sophisticated tasty small plate.

The food is so fresh it’s absolutely the energy of the place with breakfast, daytime and then an evening menu of small plates designed to eat at the bar with a colourful tipple alongside. I photographed a selection which I sampled afterwards (obviously) so I can vouch they taste as great as they look.

The Japanese Salmon Gravlax is delicate and generous slices of sake wasabi cured salmon with wasabi mayo, torarashi spice and pickled cucumber to make your mouth zing and tingle.

JAPANESE SALMON GRAVLAX
sake wasabi cured salmon + wasabi mayo + torarashi spice + pickled cucumber

The Mini Poke Bowl, its roots in native Hawaiian cuisine boasts a beautifully seared piece of tuna sitting on an interesting and diverse eastern base of matcha rice, edamame, avocado, wakame, tofu and a pink grapefruit dressing to boot.

MINI POKE BOWL
seared tuna + matcha rice + edamame + avocado + pickled cucumber + wakame + tofu + pink grapefruit dressing

And for the veggies there is the most yumtastic Buratta. This is a fresh Italian cow or buffalo milk cheese made from mozzarella and cream. The outer shell is solid mozzarella, while the inside contains stracciatella and cream, giving it a gorgeous melt in the mouth, soft texture. I’d mistakenly thought it a poached egg, but it’s way more sophisticated than that.

BURATTA
Italian burrata + tomato salad + fennel seed + peach dressing + toasted sourdough

The full menu can be found on their website here

Of course the food is great but so are the drinks, equally as colourful as the food and well worth sampling. The cocktail menu is creative and interesting and the gins on offer include two North East made, poetic Licence Picnic Gin from Sunderland and Hepple Gin from Northumberland.

The bar staff are skilled and will whip you up cocktail with a smile, the three potions I photographed were Elderflower Spritz, Arlo Summer Breeze and Espresso Martini. There are also great ales with Camden Hells, Sierra Nevada and lovely local Tyneside Blonde.

How fantastic to see local food made with local ingredients served with locally brewed specialist drinks and all shot by a local photographer of course! Arlo is a wonderful place to eat in Newcastle bringing a buzzing food and drink community together making many of us feel so proud to live and work here. A big bravo to the North East and well done to Arlo!

Arlo Summer Breeze (Strawberry, Elderflower, Rhubarb & ginger gin)

Elderflower Spritz (Elderfower, Prosecco, Soda)

Espresso Martini (Vodka, Kahlua, Espresso)

Träkol at By The River Brew Co

1 October 2018/0 Comments/in Commercial /by Sarah Deane

Träkol Food Photography

for Event Magazine Mail on Sunday

September 2018

If you are lucky enough to live in or near Newcastle and Gateshead you’ll have seen how exciting places to eat and drink are popping up in lots of new spots. As a bar, restaurant and food & drink photographer there’s suddenly lots of fresh opportunity to take interesting shots at attractive local venues. This year has been particularly lively with the opening of Route on The Side, Brinkburn Brewery in the Ouseburn and By the River Brew Co on Gateshead Quay to name but a fab few. I have been buzzing this summer as I’m a big foodie nerd outside of shooting hours and having all this choice and exceptional quality is just brilliant!

It’s not just the food that is amazeballs (Hawkers market at By the River Brew Co offers international street food, Träkol, Route and Brinkburn Brewery sophisticated small plates) it’s the venue locations that make them really exhilarating. Most are set within historic and very photogenic industrial Newcastle including terraced spaces within the Tudor architecture of the Side, a bar with an entrance to the underground Victoria Tunnel and river side under the 7000 tonnes of sturdy Tyne Bridge steel. So when the Mail on Sunday got in touch to ask me to take photos of Träkol restaurant I was pretty enthusiastic!

The brief from the Mail picture desk was to capture Träkol’s shipping container exterior sat between the beautiful bridges together with the interior design and restaurant’s open fire cooking. I was given a list of dishes Tom Parker Bowles had sampled the previous week to be reviewed in the Sunday supplement Event magazine on Sunday 23rd September. Träkol’s dishes of Surf Clams, Octopus Ceviche, Osado Cooked Lamb, Pig Tails and the Half Pig Head feast were prepared expertly and presented beautifully by the chef for me to photograph. The dishes were such a beautiful mixture of textures, colours and garnish that a week after I booked to go experience it for myself. I was blown away by the flavours, atmosphere, service and the high quality of the food. I really recommend a visit starting with an ale by the Tyne, then after a night cap in Hawkers Market. The location and views are exhilarating! Hurrah for these canny new businesses in the North East, giving us amazing new experiences and something to feel proud, show off and shout loudly about!

The Ultimate Big Cheese Kit Recipes

16 April 2015/0 Comments/in Commercial /by Sarah Deane

The Big Cheese Making Kit has had such success with it’s easy to follow kits for making a variety of cheeses at home that soon it is to launch the Ultimate Cheese Making Kit! This kit will be the king of cheese making kits and comes with an accompanied recipe book for delicious suggestions as to how to use the home made cheese in savoury and sweet dishes.

I was up in Edinburgh on location last week shooting food photography images for the home made cheese recipe illustrations in owner Ailsa Proverb’s now famous kitchen and these are samples you see below. The kits are sent worldwide and Ailsa recently received an MBE from the Queen for services to the Food Industry after only a short time in business. Bravo! Say cheese Queenie!

Here are a selection of images from the two days we spent in Ailsa’s fabulous kitchen. Photography tips are below for anyone wanting help and hints on food photography on location.

Macro Lens & Food Photography on Location Photography Tips – The Basics

So my blogs are taking a new angle now as we all know the internet is rather old fashionably known as the ‘information super highway’ so I thought it important to start offering more informative photographic help and tips.

So to set the scene for well lit light and attractive food photography on location I needed elements of studio photography to be taken to the location. I used one flash 400 head with a 1m x .5m soft box bounced onto the ceiling to avoid harsh light bleaching out the white texture of the homemade cheese as much as possible. In terms of kit, I shot with my Nikon D700 (full frame) and I used my 24-85mm Nikon lens with built in macro to get detailed mouthwatering close ups of the ingredients. I shot on macro setting throughout and used the zoom on full 85 for some close up compositions.

Food photography really benefits from a shallow depth of field, so an f-stop of around 2.8 to 3.5 will give you the sharp focus and extreme blur in one shot. My shutter speed was 125 and ISO was 250 fairly statically as the flash head kept light constant despite the nearby window. Try not to rely on natural light as you will be struggling with setting changes if the sun goes behind a cloud. But do try to mimic the way that natural light can cast gentle shadows from a natural source like a window. NB when using shallow depth of field, you must be careful to highlight the correct part of the food in the photo and for this we had the mantra that ‘cheese is king’!

Ailsa’s colleague Alison had prepped most of the food the day before as most would be typically served cold or cool. This takes the pressure off as hot food wilts and hardens as it cools and becomes unattractive so the window to shoot is much smaller. We also had carefully chosen props with subtle shades with small splashes of colour on the crockery for the styling. So the prep had been paramount to the success of this shoot.

If you are doing lots of close ups then it’s a lot easier to work in a location environment as little of the backdrop will be included, so a little mess can be allowed! If you want some backdrop blur of the natural environment then remove any strong coloured items that may distract from the food, particularly red. You can also have relevant props blurred as I did with the Gnocchi shot leaving the parmesan grater in the backdrop. The macro lens was used throughout this two day shoot as it will enhance the recipe book by helping the reader identify the ingredients easily and imagine how it might feel and taste in the mouth as they eat it. You can get in really close and select the most attractive part of the dish. There is a lot of experimentation with this type of photography so it is a lot more time consuming that most. Although as you image extremely rewarding too!

The Big Cheese Making Kit

4 September 2014/0 Comments/in Commercial /by Sarah Deane

Big Cheese Making Kit has been created by Ailsa Proverbs and her team offering an amazing product for those who fancy the idea of making cheese at home. It has exploded so fast that originally the kits had instruction manuals with quick phone snaps. With the demand increasing for Christmas from stockists such as Debenhams and Harrods, Ailsa wanted to replace the temporary shots with professional ones. I was commissioned to capture well executed illustrative photos of the key stages in the cheese making process for Halloumi, Goats and Mozzarella. As food and drink photography is one of my specialities I was delighted to get on board!

The day was lots of fun learning about cheese making as I worked and Ailsa’s beautiful new kitchen was a fantastic backdrop for the imagery. For anyone interested in these kits, have a look at thier website as they make a perfect pressie for any cheese lovers! http://www.bigcheesemakingkit.com

The All Seeing Eye, Fluid Group Newcastle

15 May 2014/0 Comments/in Commercial /by Sarah Deane

The All Seeing Eye opened two weeks ago by owner Oliver Vaulkhard of Fluid group in Newcastle. Heineken’s Star Pubs and Bars have invested in the refurbishment of what was The Blackie Boy’s rarely used function room upstairs. The historic features have been exposed with the roofs rafter’s, rustic red brickwork and 30’s satined glass windows creating a cool New York feel together with ornate Moroccan tables and velvet furnishings adding a laid back vibe.

The brief was to capture PR portraits of Manager Dave Walker and his staff along with photography of the bar interior design showcasing the large atrium, the light features and the relaxed low ceiling snug area. The lighting and colours created dramatic compositions perfect for PR & marketing photography for todays Journal to promote this fantastic new late night bar in Newcastle city centre.

The article is in today’s Journal on this link http://www.thejournal.co.uk/business/business-news/popular-pubs-receive-240000-makeover-7120118

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