Behind the Scenes: A Day in the Life of a Food Stylist

From sourcing the perfect strawberry to making rajma look just right, food styling is more than just making food look good— at its best, it is storytelling. Our favourite stylist, Sanskriti Bist, gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse into a day her life. Step into the chaos and creativity that brings food to life on camera.

When I started my food styling journey in 2019, the term ‘food styling’ raised many eyebrows. The dilemma of seeing this as a legitimate career was real — for me and everyone around me. Then came the shift: everything became virtually important. Social media wasn’t just for building friendships anymore; it influenced markets, made brands, and sold products. And what’s the first rule of selling? Make it look pretty. Make it so real that people live the experience. Food styling was able to do just that — create products that extend into your reality, and add a human touch behind that almost perfectly plated dish.

The author on set. Photo by Atul Pinhero

The Chaos of Shoot Day

Every day is different. One day, I might be styling a bhindi sabzi, and the next, I’m holding lobsters. The job actually begins a couple of days before the shoot itself. Typically, a few days before, I make a short list that details out every image the client wants. A lot of it is just prepping and planning, or what is also known as pre-production. IT'S A LOT OF LISTS! I usually divide them into ingredients, props, backgrounds, and equipment needed for my styling kit. Everything is planned in extreme detail, so that the day of shoot runs smoothly.

Sourcing ingredients is always fun. With e-commerce apps like Swiggy and Blinkit, it’s become a lot easier to get produce on the shoot day, but finding the perfect strawberry for a cheesecake still requires scouting the markets. It needs to be the most perfectly-shaped, bright red strawberry anyone has ever seen.

Christmas props for a shoot that happened in September 2024, sourced from 4burner Studio, people’s aunts and Ikea. Images credit: Sanskriti Bist

The author went to Shivajinagar at 6 am to visit the fish market for a shoot that required fresh fish with a conical head.

Next on the list is sourcing props. Maybe a blue bowl would look nice for a yellow dal, paired with a nice spoon and perhaps a mat below. Usually, Christmas and Diwali shoots begin three months before the actual festival. Getting candy canes or diyas ahead of time also means having the right contacts to help you. (Remember, brands decide what their customers are gifting during the festive season before the customers themselves have even thought about it).

Sometimes a lot of the food needs to be prepped before the shoot. For example, styling rajma involves half-cooking it to maintain the shape of the beans. If we cooked it all the way, it would be mushy and wouldn’t look appealing. Soaking and pressure-cooking it halfway through before the shoot saves so much time.

On a typical shoot day, there is usually a call time, so we know when to arrive on set. We unpack and unload all groceries and props, then start tackling the first shot. Keeping ingredients fresh involves putting ice and cold water on coriander and mint, and organizing props according to the shots. Juggling with heating food and timing is crucial so that the food doesn’t deteriorate the longer it sits. A usual food shoot involves around 10-12 shots per day, and making food look its prettiest takes time — an average shot takes 40 minutes to an hour.

Post-shoot, I often end up with so many extra ingredients that I don’t know what to do with, especially since I live alone. A lot of it is given to friends, and some of it goes into fermenting. Leftover serrano chilies become hot sauce, and onions become pickles. Whatever is left becomes my party menu. If you get invited to my house after I've had a long shoot, I have other motives (mostly to use up leftover ingredients).

My fridge is easily one of the most exciting places in my house. Once, I was left with at least 50 cans of beer after a shoot, leaving no space for anything else. Raw meat shoots mean an exotic freezer — once I had three ducks and a turkey after a Christmas shoot in November. Safe to say, many parties followed. Often, I'm left with a lot of herbs. I remember once making a parsley cake because I had so much parsley and didn’t know what to do with it. It was definitely one of the worse things I made. Despite having many fancy ingredients, I always crave the simplest of foods — dal and dahi are my go-to. After touching and playing with food all day, sometimes it just gets hard to eat.

The Rise of Food Styling for Social Media

The rise of food styling is closely connected to the idea of a ‘real photograph.’ Who makes the photograph real? The story being told in a photograph is curated by the stylist, giving it a voice. When I tell people I am a food stylist, I get all sorts of questions, mostly stemming from that BuzzFeed video that went viral a couple of years ago. Do you use shoe polish to make the chicken brown? Did you add glue to the pizza? It’s good to know these tricks, but I prefer keeping my food as close to the real thing as possible. Spills are natural, and burns are part of what makes food look personal.

There is already so much food waste in this business that adding glue to pizza is not the solution. But, of course, it's handy to have these tricks in your back pocket. My mentor (trust me, the only way to learn this job is to get one) , Aalok Das, taught me everything, including all the hacks needed to make food look delicious in photos. Coffee is mostly soy sauce, and getting fake is added to all drinking shots sprayed with water+glycerin. Tissue paper to clean up oil spills and water sprays to condense drinks are my best friends. And no, I do not eat any of the food I shoot—I would end up with a bad stomach the very next day.

Many clients ask, "Do we really need a stylist?" My simple answer is: what looks good on the plate doesn’t necessarily look good on camera! You can take the best photos, but there is no point if the chicken tikka you are trying to sell isn’t oozing with moistness, making you want to grab it by the skewer and devour it. What colour background would look good in this scenario? What plate should I pick to make the food pop? Do we want to add a newspaper next to a plate of steaming samosas to show that it is evening, or add a bowl of red chilies to show the spiciness of the fish curry? Styling is storytelling at its best — providing context, oozing with deliciousness, and making everything so compelling you want to lick it off the screen.

Below is a photo I had taken when I had started styling five years ago. I was trying to understand what styling meant to me and what I wanted to tell. This is a picture of my mom’s carrot cake. A staple that my mom has been making ever since I can remember. I wanted to add elements of my childhood in this picture. A photograph of my brother and I and the plastic flowers that my mom had had in the house that are probably older than me.

Sanskriti Bist is a food photographer, stylist and recipe developer based out of Bangalore. See her work, here.

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