Photographer Matt Fern treats Happy Valley’s restaurants to magazine-quality photography during Restaurant Week
Nothing can instantly turn heads (or stomachs!) quite like food photography. When it’s good, it’s drool-worthy and we’ll plan vacations around bucket-list bites! And when it’s bad? Well, Google “gross food pics” if you dare. The feeling is visceral.
Back in the day, before it was a regular thing to snap phone pics of our food for Instagram, I remember carrying my little 8 megapixel point-and-shoot Canon Powershot with me everywhere. I’d pull it out at restaurants and stage mini photoshoots for meals that I thought looked especially interesting. (Spoiler alert: My photography skills never did those meals justice and the photos have been collecting dust on a hard drive for almost 2 decades.)
Just a girl with 8 megapixels and a dream (circa 2007)
While my food photos of years past have gotten cozy in their neglected digital storage bins, I still remember the feeling of appreciation for the beauty, flavor, and feel of the culinary experience I was trying to memorialize. In some way, we’re all trying to capture those feelings when we pull out our phones to snap our brunch before we dig in. (Fun fact. There are more than 523 million posts under #food on Instagram.)
Good food photography captures the ingredients in a dish, yes. But it also seamlessly conveys the creativity, personality, and passion of the creator and the ambiance of the dining environment.
Luckily for Happy Valley Restaurant Week, commercial photographer Matt Fern spoils us every year with all of the above.
With 16 years of food photography experience under his belt, you’ve likely seen Matt’s work in State College Magazine, where his images brought the standout annual food issue to life.
That talent for highlighting our local food scene transitioned seamlessly into his work with Happy Valley Restaurant Week and in a casual evening conversation at Boal City Brewing with the Restaurant Week team recently, he shared what it’s like to be behind the scenes, translating our local chefs’ creations into photos.
“Most restaurants don’t have a professional photographer on staff, so I love being able to showcase all of the Restaurant Week creations in the best light possible,” he said.
We chatted about how many of our local restaurants are often making culinary magic happen in spite of limited capacity and resources and how they typically rely on photos snapped on staff phones for social media for the majority of their marketing.
What makes Matt’s Restaurant Week offering so special is that he’s able to professionally capture the creativity that each of our local chefs brings to the table and deliver a set of beautiful images that can be used in their marketing well after the event is over – at no cost to the restaurant.
“I always want the restaurants to feel that they’re getting more out of this than they’re putting in,” he said.
Co-organizer Maggie Anderson added, “Restaurants have so much going on already. So to come in as a professional photographer to showcase what they do, it’s a really neat opportunity to highlight whatever they want to show off. Whether that’s their chef or process or something new they have going on in their space, Matt can provide great images for their business as a whole, in addition to photographing their Restaurant Week dish.”
This year, Matt’s excited to capture video clips in addition to photos, adding even more value for participating restaurants.
“I believe in how valuable this event is and how it raises the cultural bar for our area. I think it’s just going to keep getting better as we continue to brainstorm ways to add more value for the restaurants, which will inherently make it an even better event for our community as a whole.”
And as for us, the phone photographers with gigabytes worth of food memories that don’t quite do the experience justice? We can appreciate even more deeply the photographers that are able to transport us back to those favorite bites – and get excited for all the Restaurant Week meal previews that will be coming soon!
