Laurianne's Vegan Kitchen

Food Photography Story

One part I love about my work is that I meet the most interesting people, who trust me with their ideas, hoping that my images take them one step closer to making their dreams come true. It's a very special process.

Laurianne (@lauriannesvegankitchen) lives in a cottage, in the Scottish countryside just outside Glasgow. I'd seen her raw vegan cakes on Instagram, so when she wrote to me to ask about photography, I just knew that I had to meet her to get a feel for her whole business. I found a warm, vibrant woman who is creative and has a real passion to create flavour-filled vegan food.

Her plan was to grow her cake business to vegan catering and she needed photos that would show a variety of dishes, that look fresh and tasty. She shared her fond memories of her grandmothers French kitchen with me - the love of good homemade food and the bright light of France. Her images needed to be bright and colourful to match her personal flair.

Off I went to collect images to find the right style of photography for her, while she planned her menu for the photo session. Then we collected props and had another meeting to plan all the details of the photography which would run over 2 days. We had to plan which dishes would need to be photographed first - to retain the freshness - while keeping in mind that changing lighting set-ups, backdrops and angles all take time. She also knew that part of her business success was the face behind her business and she needed portraits for her website and Instagram. Knowing we only had 2 days to cram in a lot of work we had to be really organised.

Then the day of the shoot came and it didn't rain, it snowed! There was no way that I would make it out to her cottage for the first day of photography. We phoned and vented and schemed, while staring hopefully out of the window and praying for the roads to clear. We thought of rescheduling, but we both had so much on at that time.

Eventually by the afternoon, the road was clear enough for Laurianne to come to me, with her bigger, heavier car, so we got to photograph the fresh food on that day and we extended the second day to allow us to squeeze in everything that was left. The second day was still snowy outside, but Laurianne bravely wore her summer dress for the photo session!

I tasted everything I photographed - in fact Laurianne kept me and my children well-fed during our shooting days - and it was all delicious! She’s taken all that foodie instinct that she gathered over the years to create vegan food that’s really exciting and full of flavour. You can follow Laurianne on Instagram (@lauriannesvegankitchen ) where you'll find all her latest news and my images amongst her own and you can order her vegan catering here: https://www.lauriannesvegankitchen.co.uk