How to Prepare Your Restaurant for a Photo Shoot: A Miami Checklist

Most restaurant shoots that go badly do not go badly because of the photographer. They go badly because nobody decided which dishes were being shot until the crew was already standing in the dining room, or because the shoot was booked for one in the afternoon in July.

This is the checklist we send clients before a session in Miami. It costs nothing and it is worth more than a bigger budget.

The week before

Pick your dishes, and rank them. Six to ten is the right number for a day. Write the list down and put the three that matter most at the top — the ones that sell, or the ones you want to sell more of. If the day runs long, those three are already done.

Decide what each photo is for. A photo for a delivery app is cropped square, shot from directly above, and needs to read at the size of a thumbnail. A photo for the wall of your restaurant is a different picture entirely. Same dish, different shot. Tell the photographer where each image is going before the shoot, not after.

Check your glassware and plates. Chips and scratches that are invisible across the room are enormous in a photograph. Set aside the clean ones now.

Confirm who is plating. Your chef, a cook, or a food stylist. All three work. What does not work is discovering on the morning of the shoot that the person who plates best has the day off.

The Miami light problem

This is the local part, and it is the one that surprises people.

Between roughly noon and three in the afternoon, Miami light is hard, direct and high. It puts a bright hotspot on one side of a plate and a black shadow on the other. On a terrace it is worse. It is the least flattering light of the day for food and it is exactly when most restaurants are free to host a shoot, because they are between services.

Two ways around it. Shoot in the morning, before eleven, when the light coming through a window is soft and directional — the best free light you will get. Or shoot indoors away from the window and let the crew bring their own light. Both are fine. What is not fine is a midday terrace with no plan.

Also: if you are shooting outdoors between June and October, build in a rain window. An afternoon storm in Miami is not a possibility, it is a schedule.

The night before

• Deep clean the surfaces that will be in frame. Tables, bar top, the shelf behind the bar.
• Set aside a clean apron and a clean shirt if any staff will appear in the photos.
• Check that you actually have every ingredient for the shot list. A missing garnish stops a shot cold.
• Charge nothing, prepare nothing else. Sleep.

The morning of

Block two to four hours where the kitchen is not in service. Trying to shoot during lunch is the most common mistake and it produces the worst photos. The kitchen is stressed, the plating is rushed, and the crew is in the way.

Have someone empowered to decide. One person, present, who can say yes to a plate. Shoots stall when the crew asks "is this how it should look?" and nobody in the room can answer.

Plate for the camera, not for the table. Slightly less sauce. Herbs added at the last second. The photographer will ask for things that seem strange — a dish that will never be eaten, three versions of the same plate. That is the job.

Keep the food coming warm and late. Food that has been sitting for twenty minutes photographs like food that has been sitting for twenty minutes.

What to ask for at the end

Before the crew leaves, confirm three things: how many finished images you are getting, when, and what you are allowed to do with them. If you plan to run any of these as paid ads, say so now — usage rights for advertising are often priced separately, and it is a far easier conversation before the shoot than after. We wrote about what a Miami food shoot actually costs, including the line items that tend to go missing from quotes.

One thing that is not on any checklist

Shoot more than you think you need, in one day, rather than booking a small session every month. The setup — clearing the space, getting the light right, warming up — takes the same time whether you shoot six dishes or sixteen. A restaurant that shoots twice a year properly ends up with better content and a lower annual bill than one that books a rushed hour every few weeks.

If you want to see how we run a session, the Miami food photography page has the full outline of a shoot day.