Chicago & Phoenix Director of Photography, Cinematographer, Drone Pilot, and Video Production
Chicago Food Photographer
Commercial food photography is a technical discipline as much as a visual one. The difference between imagery that drives purchase decisions and imagery that sits unused in a brand's asset library almost always comes down to production quality: how the food was styled, how the light was built, and whether the photographer understood what the image needed to accomplish before the shoot day started.
Jamie Link Photography produces commercial food photography for food brands, CPG companies, packaged goods manufacturers, and restaurants across Chicago and nationwide. Productions range from single-day menu refreshes to multi-day campaign shoots covering product lines, packaging photography, and branded content for digital, print, and retail channels.
Clients include Pactiv Evergreen, Jel Cert, Novolex, Amway, Gibsons Restaurant Group, and other brands across packaged goods, food manufacturing, specialty food, and fine dining. Every production is led directly by Jamie Link with 15 years of commercial production experience across studio and on-location environments.
Commercial Food Photography Services
The commercial food photography work at Jamie Link Photography covers three primary production formats, each requiring a different approach to planning, styling, and execution.
Restaurant and Menu Photography
Restaurant photography is time-sensitive production work. The kitchen is running, the food has a window before it needs to be reset, and the images need to hold up across menus, digital ordering platforms, social channels, and print materials simultaneously. Production planning for restaurant shoots involves coordinating with the kitchen on prep timing, configuring lighting setups that can move efficiently between dishes, and capturing the range of the menu in a condensed shoot window.
Menu photography for fine dining and upscale casual restaurants requires a different level of attention to plating, composition, and light than standard food service photography. The imagery has to reflect the caliber of the dining experience, not just document what is on the plate.
Food Brand and CPG Photography
Food brand photography for CPG companies and packaged goods manufacturers serves a specific commercial function: the images need to perform in retail environments, on e-commerce product pages, in advertising placements, and in brand marketing campaigns, often at the same time. That means the photography has to be versatile enough to work across channels while maintaining the brand standards
the marketing team has established.
Productions for food brands typically involve multiple SKUs, multiple colorways, and shot lists that need to cover both hero campaign imagery and utility product shots in the same production day. Efficient studio setup and a clear pre-production plan are what separate productions that deliver everything the brief requires from ones that run out of time before the shot list is complete.
Food Packaging Photography
Packaging photography is a precision format. The camera angle, the lighting on the label, the reflection management on glossy surfaces, and the consistency across a product line all require deliberate technical decisions that affect how the final images perform in print and digital applications.
Packaging shots used for retail shelf displays, point-of-sale materials, trade show graphics, and e-commerce listings each have specific technical requirements that differ from general product photography. Pre-production planning for packaging shoots identifies those requirements ahead of the shoot day so the production delivers images that are technically compliant for every intended application.
How a Commercial Food Photography Production Works
Most commercial food photography productions follow a consistent pre-production process regardless of whether the project is a restaurant shoot, a CPG brand campaign, or a packaging assignment.
Pre-production covers the shot list, the styling approach, prop and surface sourcing if needed, and the production schedule mapped to the kitchen or studio setup. For restaurant productions, pre-production coordination with the culinary team determines which dishes are being photographed, in what sequence, and what plating specifications apply to each shot. For brand and packaged goods productions, pre-production aligns the shot list with the marketing brief and confirms the deliverable specifications for each intended use.
On the shoot day, the lighting setup is built and locked before food arrives on set. Efficient transitions between shots keep the production moving and reduce the number of times food needs to be reset. Every frame is reviewed on a calibrated monitor during the shoot so there are no surprises in the delivered gallery.
Post-production delivers retouched images in the formats and color profiles specified by the client or agency. Turnaround timelines are confirmed in pre-production. Rush delivery is available for productions with tight campaign deadlines.
Chicago Food Photography Clients
Commercial food photography clients include brands and businesses across packaged goods, food manufacturing, specialty food products, beverages, and restaurant hospitality.
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Pactiv Evergreen (now Novolex) — food packaging and CPG product photography
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Jel Cert — specialty food product photography
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Amway — consumer food and nutrition product photography
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Gibsons Restaurant Group — restaurant and fine dining photography
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Additional restaurant, food brand, and packaged goods clients across Chicago and nationwide
Productions are available in Chicago and the surrounding metro area, with additional availability in Phoenix and on location nationwide. Studio productions can be accommodated at a designated studio facility or on-site at the client's location depending on the project requirements.
Recent Productions
The Great Escape | 9-Year Video Production Partnership
Nine-year production partnership including Product tutorials, store tours, brand messaging, how-to content, and cyclorama studio design producing 400 product shots per day, and a YouTube channel grown from 400 views to nearly 2 million, filmed and edited entirely by Jamie Link Photography.
