Skip to content

Case study · Gusto Kitchen

Gusto Kitchen. Pasta, close enough to taste.

Wide pasta in a glossy yellow sauce, topped with crisp pieces of cured pork, in a grey speckled bowl.
Pasta with crisp cured pork
Spaghetti in a pale sauce under shaved black truffle, on a white plate, with green leaves out of focus behind.
Spaghetti with truffle
Short pasta in tomato sauce with pieces of chicken, cream, spoonfuls of pesto and a basil sprig, in a speckled bowl.
Pasta with tomato, cream and pesto
A bottle of red wine and its cork on a wooden table, a small cactus and a plant beside it.
A bottle of red

Food photography for an Italian kitchen: three pasta dishes and a bottle of red, shot close on the plate, with the room left dark and soft behind it so the food is the only thing that is sharp.

Client
Gusto Kitchen
Work
Food photography
Delivered
4 photographs · 3 aspect ratios
Photographs in this selection
4
Pasta dishes
3
Aspect ratios, as delivered
3
Mean brightness, darkest to lightest frame
23–41 %

Everything on this page is the delivered material, shown as delivered. Tones are computed from the files.

The work

Plates first.

Pasta is texture: the gloss of a sauce, the crisp edge of cured pork, a shaving of truffle. The photographs get close enough to show it, and let everything behind the bowl fall away.

  • Close on the bowl

    The bowl fills the frame and the camera looks into it, so the sauce and what is on it read before anything else.

  • The room as a blur

    Plants, the table edge and the window go soft and dark. There is a restaurant behind the plate, and it stays behind it.

  • Three shapes

    Landscape 5:4, portrait 4:5 and a tall 9:16 — the proportions a web page, a feed and a story use, delivered in each.

The light

Dark ground, bright food.

Every frame here is low-key: most of each picture sits in the shadows, and the food is the rise at the lighter end of the chart. The charts are each photograph’s tones from black to white, read from the files.

Four frames, one light

Mean brightness 23 to 41 %. The darker the room, the less there is to look at but the plate.

Wide pasta in a glossy yellow sauce, topped with crisp pieces of cured pork, in a grey speckled bowl.
Pasta with crisp cured pork mean 28 %
Spaghetti in a pale sauce under shaved black truffle, on a white plate, with green leaves out of focus behind.
Spaghetti with truffle mean 37 %
Short pasta in tomato sauce with pieces of chicken, cream, spoonfuls of pesto and a basil sprig, in a speckled bowl.
Pasta with tomato, cream and pesto mean 41 %
A bottle of red wine and its cork on a wooden table, a small cactus and a plant beside it.
A bottle of red mean 23 %

One frame

Cut four ways.

A landscape frame with the bowl near its centre crops into every shape a restaurant uses — a square for a menu grid, 4:5 for a post, 9:16 behind a story, 16:9 across a website — and the narrower the shape, the closer it gets to the food. Drawn here on the delivered file.

Wide pasta in a glossy yellow sauce, topped with crisp pieces of cured pork, in a grey speckled bowl.
1:1 Menu grid
1920 × 1920 px80 % of the frame
4:5 Feed post
1536 × 1920 px64 % of the frame
9:16 Story
1080 × 1920 px45 % of the frame
16:9 Website
2400 × 1350 px70 % of the frame

The selection

Four frames.

Every photograph in this selection, at its delivered proportions.

  1. Wide pasta in a glossy yellow sauce, topped with crisp pieces of cured pork, in a grey speckled bowl.
    Pasta with crisp cured pork2400 × 1920
  2. Spaghetti in a pale sauce under shaved black truffle, on a white plate, with green leaves out of focus behind.
    Spaghetti with truffle1920 × 2400
  3. Short pasta in tomato sauce with pieces of chicken, cream, spoonfuls of pesto and a basil sprig, in a speckled bowl.
    Pasta with tomato, cream and pesto2400 × 1920
  4. A bottle of red wine and its cork on a wooden table, a small cactus and a plant beside it.
    A bottle of red1350 × 2400

Have a similar challenge?

Tell us what you want to change. We’ll discuss the work that would support it.

Discuss your project

Balkaris®Technology meets human potentialOther capabilities

Recommended for you

Since you’re exploring Studio, you might also need this.

Combine creative execution with technology and growth to build a stronger brand and bigger opportunities.

Studio / Explore / What’s nextDifferent expertise. A stronger tomorrow.