Creative Intelligence

Lighting Patterns for Luxury Hospitality Photography

How a working photographer lights hotels, resorts, restaurants, and bars: motivated practicals, honest warm and cool balance, and the dusk crossover that makes a space sell.

Building a Global Production Workflow With AI Extension

How to coordinate cross-continental shoots without losing sleep or brand consistency.

Unified Brand Identity: Mastering Visuals & Voice

Most brands have a source problem, not a consistency problem. A practical three-layer system for visual identity, brand voice, and governance that makes consistency the default across every touchpoint.

New York's AI Ad Disclosure Law: What Brands Need to Know

New York now requires ads to disclose AI-generated synthetic performers, with penalties up to $5,000 per violation. What the law covers, the exceptions, and how hybrid production avoids the trigger entirely.

Usage Rights for Commercial Food Photography, Explained

Who owns commercial food photography, what a buyout really means, and how licensing scope, media channels, and term affect price. A working photographer explains.

The Real Cost of a Commercial Food Shoot

What a commercial food shoot actually costs, from creative fee and food styling to retouching and usage rights. A working photographer breaks down the full budget stack.

How to Brief a Food Photographer

How to brief a food photographer for better images and fewer surprises: deliverables, usage, references, timeline, and an honest budget. A working photographer explains.

The Ethics of AI in Food Photography

AI food images can look more appealing than real ones. A working photographer explains the ethics of GenAI modification, invention, and disclosure in practice.

The 10 Most Instagrammed Foods of All Time

Analyzing why certain dishes and beverages dominate the social spotlight and how to harness that visual energy.

Knowing Your Audience: A Culinary Perspective

A framework for aligning every sensory element in your restaurant, from music and lighting to photography and plating, to the specific guest you designed the space for.

Belvedere x Chandon Garden Spritz

High-precision commercial photography for Belvedere x Chandon Garden Spritz. Captured in an outdoor rooftop setting, the suite focuses on fresh ingredients and sun-drenched luxury. We produced a complex matrix of deliverables including key visuals with multiple bottle variations, cinemagraphs, and a recipe stop motion video for global unlimited media usage.

Shake Shack At Home

We shot 15 deliverables during this project: 15 stills, 12 video loops or macros, and 5 cinemagraphs, with 4 parallaxes. This single-day shoot in a New York corporate test kitchen had a one-week post-production turnaround following two weeks of preparation. The main objective was to replicate the Shake Shack experience as if customers ordered from the app and enjoyed the meal at home, showcasing all burger variations in 360-degree video. Assets were used on social media and as hero images for out-of-home (OOH) banners in stores.

The Whole30 Cookbook

150 recipes photographed across 7 production days (1 prelight, 6 shoot days) for Melissa Hartwig Urban's bestselling Whole30 Cookbook, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Publisher's Weekly named Brent Herrig a 'veteran food and cocktail photographer' in its review.