Chef Ashton Keefe shares a mouthwatering look at the technical side of food styling.
For Ashton Keefe, styling food is her job — but it came about by accident. In 2016, The NYC-based chef was working at a popular event space in the city, and with the rise of Instagram and other digital marketing, many brands were on site for photo shoots. Keefe was there to gladly assist.
“I have a good eye,” she says. “I love to design things. I love to make tablescapes and play with things just across all aesthetic verticals. It became very natural to me to make food look very beautiful for cameras.”
From there, Keefe became a food stylist, working with bigshots at the Today Show and the Food Network. Now, she has her own business and a roster of clients.
While there are similarities to working with food on film and in real life, Keefe says there’s one major difference in styling for the camera vs. the way restaurants and chefs plate food for their patrons.
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“Everything just has to be extra because you’re not tangentially seeing it,” she says. “When you have something in front of you, you eat with your eyes. When there’s something in between you and the consumer — whether it’s a camera or you’re having it in a magazine in a picture — it just needs to be extra, because you really need to make sure that your message translates whatever emotion you’re trying to evoke from the imagery that is packing its punch.”
Keefe’s personal preferences include lots of texture, layers, height, color, and dimension within a dish. And of course, elements that create a mouthwatering feel with “gooeyness, runniness, or cheesiness,” she says. (Cue the over-easy eggs and mozzarella sticks.)
“If you put cheese on something, your mouth is going to start to water because it feels that salty sensation,” Keefe says. “There are these weird subliminal things that happen when you look at something that you also feel when you have a dish in front of you.”
Speaking of feelings, Keefe has a specific mantra. “Food is an act of love and an opportunity for beauty,” she says. “I fully believe that. I think it’s the greatest connector we have as humans.”
Keefe’s motto is steeped in knowing that food takes time, consideration, and energy to assemble for yourself or others. “Whenever you ask anybody what their favorite meal is, like 90 percent of people say their mom’s meatballs or their grandma’s chicken, or what they had when they were five,” she says. “So much of that is about how you felt and the intentionality that went into creating that dish. I think that energy translates.”
On the other side of the spectrum, sometimes working with food — although beautiful and tasty — is a labor that goes beyond love. “Anything that’s frozen is kind of a pain because you’re working against time,” Keefe says.
One thing that isn’t stressing her is the amount of Instagram foodies, chefs-turned-food stylists, and other individuals among her who are working in similar capacities. “I’ve always been of the philosophy that if there are more people in it and there are more opportunities, it increases the pie rather than taking your silver away,” Keefe says. “I think there’s a voice for each audience.”
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Like photographers and artists, every food stylist has a different, well, style. Some focus on installations or Instagram while others work on magazine images. Many build food masterpieces and use materials like hairspray and spray paint.
Keefe keeps her projects edible. “I don’t manipulate anything,” she says.
With that: Bon appétit! … or shall we say, “cheese!”?