Hoping for This Season | Summer Food Photography Inspiration

Summer food photography inspiration has been living in my head for weeks now. Summer in Texas is my favorite season, and yes, I know exactly what you’re thinking. I hear it every year. The heat, the scorching muthaeffing HEAT, the way the air hits you like a wall the second you walk outside. I know. I live here. And I still love it unreasonably.

I’m Letting Myself Want Things This Summer 

Summer in Texas is my favorite season, and yes, I know exactly what you’re thinking. I hear it every year. The heat, the scorching muthaeffing HEAT, the way the air hits you like a wall the second you walk outside. I know. I live here. And I still love it unreasonably. 

Yes, it’s hot. Yes, I am sweaty by 8am. Yes, my car is perpetually covered in bird poop because parking under a tree is the single greatest parking decision you can make in this state, and I will die on that hill. But give me a blinding blue sky and a sun that means business over a grey, drizzly afternoon any day of the week. 

So yes. Summer is my season. And this one, I’m walking into it with a list. 

The Kind of Work I’m Dreaming About Right Now 

I want to shoot a cookbook this summer. Not a light and airy, linen napkin, softbox through a sheer curtain kind of cookbook. I want to make something that feels like art. The kind of book you pick up and can’t put down because every single page is doing something unexpected with light and shadow and color and composition. That’s the cookbook I want my name on. 

I’ve also completely fallen for whiskey. The warm tones, the way light moves through it, that silk amber color that photographs like nothing else — I want more of it. A lot more of it. If you’re a spirits brand looking for someone who will treat your product like it belongs in a museum, I’m right here. 

And beyond that, I want bold. I want daring. I want projects that make me stop mid-edit and just stare. I’ve been thinking a lot about taking fast food — real, actual fast food — and photographing it like it belongs on a canvas in a gallery. Because why not? Why should fine dining get all the drama? 

The Images I Haven’t Made Yet But Can Already See 

A while back, I had this dream — an actual sleeping dream — where I was photographing a spread for a book cover. It was soft, but the lighting was doing something daring and gorgeous that I couldn’t fully explain when I woke up. I’ve been chasing that image ever since. 

Here’s the one that’s going to make you raise an eyebrow: I want to photograph an Arby’s Half Pound Beef ‘n Cheddar. On a dark, moody set. Rembrandt lighting. Rich golden tones. The whole thing is treated like we’re standing inside a Dutch Golden Age painting. I know exactly how that sounds. I also know exactly how beautiful it would be. 

And then on the complete other end of the spectrum, I keep coming back to lacinato kale. One leaf. Macro lens. All those crinkles and ridges and that deep blue-green that I cannot stop thinking about. Two very different images. Both living in my head rent free.

Bold, Daring, Artistic — That’s the Only Brief I’m Writing for Myself 

I’ve got test shoots lined up this summer, and they are not playing it safe. These are the kinds of shoots that make me a little nervous, which is exactly how I know they’re worth doing. I’m choosing subjects I would never normally reach for and asking myself what kind of transformation I can give them. What happens when I treat the ordinary like it’s extraordinary? What happens when I stop waiting for a client to hand me a bold concept and just go make one? 

That’s the experiment. That’s the whole summer. 

This Season Hasn’t Started Yet, and That’s the Best Part 

The best part about standing at the beginning of something is that nothing has gone wrong yet. The possibilities are still completely intact. Every shoot is still perfect in my head, every image still exactly what I imagined, every idea still full of potential. 

I’ve got one shoot coming up that has history and culture and texture woven all the way through it — all the things that make me lean in, all the things that remind me why I picked up a camera in the first place. I’m not ready to say more than that yet. But I’m ready for the summer.