Amy Roth’s photography brought our recipes to life. From capturing a luscious mac and cheese, to pictures of Courtney in the kitchen with a real ham, namely yours truly. These images literally jump off the page..... and Amy’s fun to work with!!! Thanks, Amy!
— Al Roker

Al Roker’s Recipes to Live By

STUDIO & LIFESTYLE PHOTOGRAPHY

“Hi, I’m Courtney, and I’d love to talk to you about photography for a cookbook I’m writing with my father. You might’ve heard of him — his name’s Al Roker.”

And with that introduction, the visuals for Al Roker’s Recipes to Live By started to take shape. We talked about Courtney’s love for her family and their history, and how she would show it through recipes in the pages of this book.

She shared her creative vision, and I shared my experiences shooting cookbooks over the years — what she could expect from this whole process, and how I approach these large-scale projects.

A woman and a man baking together in a kitchen, smiling and laughing, with baking ingredients and tools, including a peeled onion, on the counter.

Behind-the-Scenes

One thing I love about photographing cookbooks is getting to know the authors. Courtney and I spent 10 days on set shooting 100 plated recipes, then one long day at Al & Deborah’s house for lifestyle photos, during which I did so many squats, I’ll be eternally grateful to my personal trainer for the preparation. But we had lots of laughs and delicious food while we worked!

A decadent spoonful of french onion soup showcases an abundance of melted cheese in this photo from Al Roker's Recipes to Live By cookbook. Photo by Amy Roth.

My process in a nutshell: Plan, but stay flexible… and be prepared to MacGyver.

Photographing 100 recipes is challenging, no matter how you slice it! The images needed to have enough variety to keep the reader interested and the pacing lively while still hanging together as a cohesive whole. With so many images, it can be easy to miss the forest for the trees.

Overall, Courtney wanted an approachable and warm style reminiscent of family get-togethers. We chose props, backgrounds and surfaces to reflect that family-style approach, like a weathered cutting board that might’ve come straight from grandma’s cabinet vs. a brand-new one without a scratch on it.

My approach to the photos themselves grew from the idea and structure of the book: Family recipes organized into categories that make sense for the home cook: breakfast, lunch, dinner, cocktail hour, etc.

This led me to adjust lighting and retouching with time of day in mind. Breakfast and dinner dishes had long shadows with light coming in from a low angle. Lunches had harder light and shorter shadows. I tweaked color grading in post-production to drive home that message by warming or cooling highlights or shadows.

I also recommended a variety of shooting angles, depth of field and crops to help with the pacing.

We collaborated on 10 Milanote boards — one for each shoot day — and the 10 cards within each board had detailed notes for that dish. Everything from backgrounds, props and their placement, to shooting angles, and light direction and modifiers was in there, making our shooting days flow as smoothly as possible.

With that degree of preparation, most of our images came together relatively easily, like the French Onion soup you see here. Our plan for the image worked — we styled and shot a few minor variations and moved on to the next image without a fuss — but other dishes just didn’t play nicely and we had to switch things up in the moment. Our original plan for the fruit cocktail — a loose crop — just never really worked; the small pieces of fruit and variety in color meant there was no real focal point. Ultimately, I suggested a tight crop to highlight the texture, glistening highlights and juiciness of the fruit. And the wedge salad shows exactly why you need your camera angle worked out in advance — the stylist has to make sure that everything the camera sees is mouthwatering, even the underside of a wedge of lettuce!

Now here’s where it all came to life! I take great care with retouching images to ensure the food is pristine, but then I go a step further with subtle color grading to give images that extra bit of pop!