With her formal chef’s training, artist’s eye, and illusionist’s bag of tricks, Orlando-based food photographer Susan Bourgoin makes pictures worth a thousand bites.

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Think about the images of food we encounter every day—in magazines and cookbooks; on menus and signage in restaurants; on the internet, food packaging, and billboards as we speed past. They are everywhere, and, even at 70 miles per hour, have the power to reroute our thinking. Nothing gets your mouth watering like the picture of a thick juicy steak, grilled to medium-rare perfection, topped with a knob of compound butter. Nothing gets a home cook’s heart pounding like the images in the November issue of every major food magazine—that perfect lattice-top pie and gorgeous holiday bird, ready for its starring role.

Susan Bourgoin, owner of Visual Cuisines, a food photography studio based in Orlando, has photographed all of these subjects at various times in her career and can attest to the challenges of capturing these deceptively simple images. “Preparing the food is just the first of many steps to creating a successful, appetizing and compelling image,” says Bourgoin, who has worked for a wide range of clients, both local and national, including restaurant chains, food boards, food producers, supermarkets, magazines, and Orlando’s major theme parks, to name a few.

Modern day food photography requires a tremendous amount of collective skill. Oftentimes, a photo shoot requires the input of a small entourage—a chef and/or food stylist, art director, client and/or representative, the photographer, and various assistants. And Susan, a veteran of the foodservice industry, can step into every role, if need be.

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As a high schooler, she debated which passion to pursue—food or photography (“While my friends were paging through copies of Glamour,” says Bourgoin, “I had my nose in a copy of Bon Appetit!” Food won out, and this Lancaster, PA native applied to attend the nation’s top culinary school—the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY.

Though, at the time, young male applicants with the same credentials were readily accepted, Bourgoin, as a young woman, was required to work in restaurant for a full year before her application would even be considered. She did, and it finally was. “When you think about it, it’s rather shocking and wasn’t all that long ago,” says Bourgoin, “but if you wanted to survive, we [the small number of female attendees at the time] had to be tough and prove that we weren’t delicate.”

Upon graduation, Bourgoin applied for work as a food stylist—the person behind the scenes who not only prepares the food but then primps it, making it presentable for the camera—but people wouldn’t return her calls. “The industry, which evolved in the 1950s and 60s, was dominated by home economists,” says Bourgoin. “They were the forerunners of modern food styling, and photographers weren’t interested in working with chefs.”

Dejected, Bourgoin slogged it out working in the corporate culinary world for nearly 10 years. Her next career move, however, was more strategic. She negotiated a flexible schedule with a catering company in Orlando that allowed her to attend one of the country’s best photography schools in Daytona Beach, FL two nights a week.

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In 1994, Bourgoin decided to launch Visual Cuisines, the culmination of her dual passions and hard-earned skills. Almost immediately, she landed her first job with Orlando-based Darden Restaurants and its popular Red Lobster restaurant chain. In the early years of Visual Cuisines, Bourgoin would often fill many roles—that of art director, food stylist, and photographer, particularly if a client was on a tight budget. Her studio includes a full working kitchen for food preparation and an entire wall of shelving stacked with “props”—odds and ends of tableware used in past shoots or purchased because “they might come in handy.”

Bourgoin quickly earned a loyal following of clients because of her multiple skills and easy manner. “In the end, it worked out well for me that I took that long route,” she says. “I know how to make critical decisions that someone without that training wouldn’t know how to do.” Over the years, she also learned numerous food styling tricks of the trade and developed a few of her own (see sidebar). Techniques such as undercooking poultry for whole bird shots—“you really are only cooking the skin; the flesh has to stay plump underneath or the skin will begin to shrivel,” explains Bourgoin—are absolutely necessary to achieve the desired end product.

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“Food does not photograph as it looks to the eye,” Bourgoin explains. “First of all, you’re taking it from a three-dimensional world and putting it on a flat plane. Cameras these days are amazing, but they will never be able to duplicate what we see with our eyes.” She says the trend currently is for photographs to look more natural, particularly for in-store recipe cards and consumer cookbooks. “But even that look,” she explains, “has to be carefully composed.” Details such as a stray bit of parsley, an errant crumb, or irregularly cut vegetables all have to be done purposefully and artfully.

Speaking of art, another of Bourgoin’s ventures is a series of art images featuring collages she has developed using components from her huge archive of food photography. “For instance, one features a glass of Chardonnay, and the images inside the glass and surrounding it illustrate the flavor components of the wine,” says Bourgoin. A series she created using images of coffee and beverages was selected by the U.S. Army’s recreation division for use in a coffee shop restaurant concept developed for bases all over the country. With a wide range of images and subjects ready to roll, Bourgoin is looking forward to increased national exposure and continuing expansion of this creative line.

Clients, subjects and settings over the past 15 years have been many—photos for books, magazines, menus, and signs; portraits of chefs and restaurant owners both onsite and off; signature dishes and single ingredient beauty shots; and location shoots as far flung as India. But a few shoots will always stand out in Bourgoin’s memory—one of the best and one of the worst.

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In 2001, Bourgoin was hired by an Orlando magazine to shoot a portrait of Emeril Lagasse and assembled dishes at his newly opened restaurant at Universal Studios CityWalk. “We were waiting upstairs and when he appeared at the top of the stairwell, by himself—no publicist, no personal assistant, no other staff—I was shocked.” “Emeril! It’s you!” She blurted out. “He was genuinely nice,” says Bourgoin of Lagasse. “He gave us all the time we needed to get everything just right.” He even sent her a thank you note after the shoot. That note, needless to say, hangs framed on her studio wall.

In contrast, one of her worst shoots was of an Orlando restaurant owner, another magazine assignment. “From the moment I walked through the door, he hated me,” says Bourgoin. “He hovered over my every move, berating and ridiculing everything I did. I remember styling a steak and lobster tail for the shoot and my hands were shaking I was so unnerved.”

Interestingly, after the photo was published, the owner liked the shot so much, he called Visual Cuisines and purchased it for use in his own promotions. Just desserts, you could say, for this skillful artist who is a pro at shooting difficult subjects and making them appear better than they sometimes are.

Food Styling 101: Tricks of the Trade

“The biggest challenge you’re dealing with in food styling and photography is temperature,” says Susan Bourgoin, owner of Visual Cuisines, an Orlando-based food photography studio with clients throughout the country. “Within moments, cooked food begins to change and fall,” she explains. “Blood begins to coagulate, sauces separate, vegetables dry out, and meat begins to form a skin.” You can’t light all of the elements in the shot quickly enough; the food won’t wait!

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The solution includes some judicious sleight of hand. Ironically, rendering food inedible is often required to make it look appetizing for the camera. To shoot a pie, for example, crust will always take longer to cook than the filling. “If you cook it all at once, the filling turns black before the crust is right,” says Bourgoin. So, you fill the pie crust with mashed potatoes, bake it off, and then top it with filling, which might or might not be cooked any further.

Bourgoin’s technique for sliced cooked red meats (beef, lamb, or venison) is brushing the center with a bit of cherry juice before the shot is taken. “You want the texture of cooked meat but often need to retouch it before shooting,” she says. For whole bird poultry shots, she mixes a bit of browning with soap solution (so the browning will adhere to the fatty skin) and mists it on with a sprayer bottle—a little spray on tan for the turkey!

Creating transitory effects such as smoke, fire, steam, ice, water droplets, and bubbles involve similar trickery and sometimes products developed for theatrical special effects. Little packets of White A&B Flash Powder placed under a glowing grill produces a stream of smoke which the camera lens can capture, while a product known as “ice powder” mixed with liquids creates the illusion of a icy blended drink.

How about a frosty mug of beer? That effect is created by coating the glass with a matte finish spray and applying glycerin “water” droplets. Likewise, Bourgoin explains, bubbles in coffee are probably either soap bubbles or little miniature glass bubbles made for the purpose. It’s all in a day’s work for Bourgoin and crew. Just be sure to go offset, at the end of the shoot, to enjoy happy hour!

About the writer

Wendy is the owner of Publishing Partners, Inc., publisher of The Restaurant Times and Galleria—local guides to restaurants and galleries in St. Augustine, Florida. Her background includes serving as editor-in-chief of a national monthly magazine for professional chefs. In her roles working for the American Culinary Federation and Jacksonville’s Cultural Council, her background includes expertise in public relations, marketing, event planning, and publication development. This Jacksonville, Florida native enjoys traveling, boating, and dining out with her husband Chris and young son Andrew.