An inside scoop on ice cream photography

Ice cream photography isn’t as chilled as it looks, so it’s a good thing our photographers know a thing or two on how to capture the coolest shots. Over at our Manchester studio, Chloe shares her tips on how to photograph ice cream.

Spoiler alert: There’s a lot more preparation than you might think!

Image to the left captured for Disotto’s Gelato.

Keep the room cool

It may be obvious but it’s important to keep the environment as cool as possible. That means no heating in the heights of winter and turning up the AC in summer. Whilst rocking up to the studio in 6 layers and constantly nursing a cup of hot tea may not be so fun, it beats having ice cream melting the second it hits the set.

Shooting scoops…

There’s a few important steps to consider when capturing scoops of ice cream.

Be prepared: Pre-scooping ice cream the day before the shoot and storing them in the freezer helps the ice cream last longer on set. The scoops get really cold and will take a lot longer to start melting. It also saves time as we’re not having to create the perfect scoops on the day of the shoot.

As well as prepping the scoops in advance, we like to make sure that we have a lot of them. No two ice cream scoops are the same, by making back-ups we can guarantee that there’ll be the plenty of picture-perfect ones. Making sure they’re high quality, up to the job and comfortable to hold is important.

Styling and storing: Dry ice is essential on an ice cream set. The food stylist can work on top of dry ice whilst styling the ice cream to keep it frozen. Dry ice is also great for storing those pre-made scoops of ice cream. Storing ice cream on dry ice means that it can get really cold and you’ll start to see ice crystals on the ice cream. These can easily be removed by blowing on them through a straw. This technique is also a great way to get a bit of controlled melt and sheen on the ice cream.

Use a stand in: The final (and most important) tip for shooting ice cream is using a stand in. It can take a while to get the lighting and set just right and you don’t want ice cream standing on set whilst you’re doing that. A wad of wet kitchen paper can make a good stand in for a scoop of ice cream, as it can be shaped into a rough dome. This means we can make all the final tweaks to the shot before the stylist swaps in the real ice cream for the final shot and puts the cherry on top!

We’ve got the scoops, the tools, the studio and (more importantly) the experts, all in one place. If you’d like to book in a shoot – we’d love to hear from you. Contact the team.