Who doesn't love a good skillet cookie? Crunchy on the outside yet warm and chewy on the inside. Top it off with some vanilla ice cream, not only do you have the perfect dessert but a beautiful set for food photography and styling!
Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie | Food Styling
This delightful treat happened to be one made special for my birthday. My mom asks us every birthday what special treat she could make us. I am a cookie lover so naturally my mind wen to Chocolate Chip Cookies. Since her an I have been on this food photography journey together I got my gears spinning. Let's kick the cookie up a notch and add it into our food photography and styling calendar. So how to jazz up a cookie? Take a classic that everyone knows and loves and add another familiar element, ice cream! An ice cream cookie sundae was sounding good. Then I thought about a mini skillet - and we were off!
We have been striving to stay "on brand" so to speak with our food stylings. In the beginning we just wanted to make a pretty setting but it was harder to fight what we normally gravitate towards. So we decided instead of fighting our style we would try to find a way to incorporate elements to make a cohesive portfolio for us both. (It helps that our mother daughter duo has pretty similar design taste.) When we were brainstorming the chocolate chip cookie styling the skillet fell right into place. We had on our schedule to do a skillet cookie but didn't iron out any details. The timing was perfect because Doug had just bought me a Ninjia Creami for my birthday. Homemade ice cream on top of a chocolate chip skillet cookie is a vibe for sure.
The skillet was so fitting because of the feel a cast iron skillet gives off. When you think skillet you think warm, cozy, homemade, etc. Then add to the fact that they are mini's - add cute to the list of adjectives. (Everyone loves a mini.) Not to mention the color pallet is perfect. We both like to lean into darker, warmer color pallets. We didn't have to fight a single element on this styling!
What made it even better is that my mom, Lisa, had multiple mini skillets to use. When Considering food styling and composition I like to think in three's. My sister, Heather, taught me that with the way she styles things from accessories to interior design. Clusters of three. Two looks too match-y and one looks lonely. Don't argue the science, three is the magic number. So I incorporated three skillets together and moved around the different elements strategically. I knew I wanted to do some shots with ice cream but I put those at the end of the shoot because we like to work with real ingredients. Real ice cream means real melting. So I started with styling the cookies whole, focused on their details and added the elements to highlight them. Then I wanted shots of a cookie that was being eaten to show the texture and chocolate chips inside.
I got the idea to stack the skillets to show off different parts of the skillet cookie all in one shot. On the top of this stack you see the inside of the skillet cookie. The next skillet you see the crispy, golden brown edges. Finally the bottom skillet shows the chocolate chips peaking through and the flaky salt on top. The way the skillets are stacked also help bring you eye down the image but I'll go over more of that in the photography side of things, below!
Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie | Food Photography
In this food photography session I leaned into curves to tell the story. I used s-curves and regular curves in every picture. In case you missed it, I talk more about s-curves in my Double Dipped Fried Chicken Food photography and styling. Below are all examples of s-curve composition shot with different elements or angles.
Photography Composition Tips
Curve Composition, The Rule of thirds & Bokeh
What do curves matter for composition anyways? Great question!
Have you ever felt like you have perfect, creamy items to photograph but something is just off about the photo? It's not as captivating as you wanted? Odds are you should try shaking up your composition! There are a LOT of different ways to view and interpret composition - so don't get stuck in paralysis by analysis here! I like to use curves when I shoot because it keeps the viewers eyes moving. Remember when your shooting you're trying to tell a story. You might know everything about a chocolate chip cookie, but the viewer might not. I like to pick out details that help tell a story and use composition to lead you through it.
The other big tip for composition is the Rule of Thirds. My sister took photography classes in high school and I'll never forget that one little nugget of knowledge I retained from here telling me all about it - the Rule of Thirds. Basically you want to imagine a grid that splits your screen into thirds, three times. Yes, the number three is important here. You want to line up your subject matter to hit those imaginary lines. I find the lines to be very distracting when I'm actually shooting but use them heavily when editing and cropping. Here's an example of what I mean:
Above you can see the far right line going vertically runs through the middle of my images focus point. Now a days with posting to so many different socials picture sizes are all over the place. However, if you get the main focus composition right 9/10 times you can just proportionally adjust your image size and you'll be good to go! For this particular image my F stop or aperture was set pretty low. That means everything on the same plane as the focus point will also be in focus. The line on the far right goes through the middle of the focus point with the idea of the ice cream dripping down to bring your eye through the whole image. I didn't want the ice cream to be the start here just a supporting roll so I left it out of focus.
Another example of composition is using bokeh, or blurry background and foreground, which is in this picture below.
You can clearly see the cookie skillet in the middle is perfectly in focus. Then I have the other two cookie skillets in frame but not the focus point. That is to help drive all your attention to the main focus and give the photo some depth. I also used the handle of the skillet blurred out in the foreground as a way to point the eye as well.
If you're ever feeling stuck with composition I find it helpful to try to place everything with intention first. Start with picking a focal point and building from there. I used to just put everything pretty on the table and shoot. While that has a time and place as a composition strategy, it doesn't bring much variation to your portfolio. Let's be honest it's also not very exciting to shoot. Once you've picked a focal point ask yourself a few things that characterize that focal point so you can envision how you want the image to feel. Then I'll challenge you to play! Yes, play. Add things in, take them out, stack things up, take a bite, use details that fit the overall feel, use ingredients and be playful with the process. That practice is what will make the difference when you are at a paid session and ideas start flooding in!
My Gear List:
- My Sony A7IV , per usual
- My Sigma Macro 105mm
- Here is a link to mini cast iron skillets similar to the ones I used!
- Round wooden table is from Marshalls, sorry!
- Homemade ice cream courtesy of my Ninjia Creami. (I'll be posting some Ninja Creami Ice cream recipes soon!)
If you enjoyed this blog post be sure to check out some of the others! If you want instant updates of my latest and greatest food photography and stylings sign up for my newsletter!
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