Is there anything more delicious than a perfect pizza? And is there anything prettier in food photography than the perfect cheese pull? It is quite possibly one of the toughest, most unpredictable shots in food photography. Have a look at a little behind the scenes and learn a few tricks we’ve discovered over the years.
For this shot, we had to make sure that we got it right on the first take. Unlike other forms of food photography, cheese pulls don’t last on set for very long. When the hot pizza arrives, your lights and your camera have to be ready to go. So, we use a stand-in to light and get the shot framed up.
Overcooked stand in, working on lighting and cropping.
When looking at the stand-in we noted a few things in particular to our stylist. We pointed out that the crust was too dark, so we adjusted our baking time to get the right color with our exposure. We wanted to make sure that the cheese pull was lit properly. We used a point light source from the back right to skim along the pulled cheese in the foreground. We also used a point light source from the back left to highlight the toppings and the cheese on the back end of the pizza.
To achieve the final shot above, we cooked and pulled about 10 different pizzas. Each pizza gave us a few pulls. We would lift and shoot. Then we would see problems and need some quick fixes. Sometimes the cheese would be too thick and we would need to poke holes in it. Other times we could see that there wasn’t enough cheese and we had to add more–when we did this–our stylist used a steamer on set to melt it down.
Melting additional cheese on set with a steamer
With every pull comes a very different shot. Despite that our final shot came from the 3rd pizza, we used all 10 just to see what we could get–quite addicting!
Final shot with hand model
If you want to make a brick oven pizza without the brick oven, try this little trick:
Ingredients
1 12-inch round of pizza dough (store bought or hand made)
4 teaspoons heavy cream
2 ounces fresh mozzarella
1 ½ ounces fresh Taleggio
Ground black pepper
1 ounce Parmesan, finely grated
Red sauce to taste
Preparation
Place a pizza stone or tiles on the middle rack of your oven and turn heat to its highest setting, 500-550 degrees. Let it heat for at least an hour.
Drizzle the cream over the stretched dough. Add sauce and then your toppings. Shred the mozzarella evenly over the toppings. Break the Taleggio into pieces and scatter across pizza. Grind an exceptional amount of black pepper onto the surface of the pie, approximately 8 to 10 grinds.
Using a pizza peel, slide the pizza onto the hot stone or tiles in the oven. Bake until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is bubbling, approximately 4 to 6 minutes, watching closely.
Sprinkle Parmesan over the pizza, serve immediately.