Frequently asked questions

Ghent, Belgium. Dok Noord 4E 005. Everything happens from our own studio here, with four fully equipped kitchens, and we work for clients all over Europe.

Mostly FMCG brands, food producers, marketing teams and creative agencies across Europe. Some are global names you’d recognise straight away. Others are start-ups shooting their first product. We’re happy with both.

It’s our AI imagery service. The difference with the generic tools is that we train the models on your brand, your product and your visual identity. Nothing goes out before our own team has reviewed it, and you get it through our client platform.

Food photography is the full production of still images. Packshots, e-commerce, recipe shots, full campaigns. Food styling is the craft of getting the food itself ready for the camera. You can book styling on its own as consultancy, or as part of a shoot with us.

Mail info@foodphoto.be or seppe@foodphoto.be, or call +32 9 372 96 95. Tell us what you need and we’ll put a price on it.

Both. Most of it happens in our four studios and kitchens in Ghent, but we go on location when the brief asks for it. Restaurants, retail, outdoors, wherever the story needs to be.

That depends on the scope. How many images, how complex the styling, whether video is involved, how many days we need. Tell us what you’re planning and we’ll give you a real number instead of a range that tells you nothing.

Both. We shoot for major global brands, and we also work with start-ups who need proper images from day one. Foodbag started small with us and grew from there. Those are the nicest relationships to have.

Yes. Photo and video run side by side here, often on the same shoot day. That way your stills and your video share the same styling, the same light and the same mood.

Yes. Have a look at our case studies for full client projects, or the gallery for a wider look across photography, video and styling.

Generic AI tools generate everything, including the food. That rarely looks convincing. We never fake the food. Your product is always shot, styled and lit by our team. AI only builds the world around it, the backgrounds, the moods, the settings, and it’s trained on your brand instead of some generic model. Every output passes our team before it reaches you.

We’ll walk you through it during the briefing. Usually it comes down to final or near final product samples, your brand guidelines or reference images, and a clear idea of the deliverables you need. Formats, aspect ratios, channels. Our project managers handle the rest.

Both. We work straight with marketing teams at food brands, and we work alongside creative agencies as their production partner. Often for years. Our work on Quick with Happiness Brussels has been running a long time.

For some things, yes. For others, no. AI is good at fast variations, concept testing and content at scale for channels where nobody really stops to look. An ad A/B test. Ten colour variants of a pack design. It gets weak the moment the image has to show the real product. The exact texture of a sauce, the way a specific cheese melts, the true colour of a marinade. One brand asked us to rework a new sauce range into AI images. They came back after one round, because their own customers didn’t recognise the product anymore. If product truth matters, shoot it properly.

An AI image costs a fraction of a shoot if you only look at the price per image. But that’s the wrong comparison. With a shoot you’re not paying for a photo. You’re paying for styling, for concept, for the real product lit correctly, and for a set of images you can use across every channel for months without anything looking slightly off. With AI, most of the cost hides in the iteration. One brand generated their own AI images for a launch and burned more team hours than planned, because every image needed three to five rounds before it matched the brand. Count that time. It’s the part people forget.

When speed and volume matter more than perfect product accuracy. Snackable social content. Seasonal variations on an image you already have. Testing a few concept directions before you commit to a shoot. That’s how we use it ourselves, as exploration before the shoot instead of a replacement for it. You can test ten directions cheaply and then spend the shoot budget on the one that actually convinces.

More and more, yes. And the problem isn’t that the image looks bad. It’s that it looks too perfect. Food needs a bit of imperfection to feel real. A dollop of sauce that isn’t quite symmetrical. Steam that rises the way steam actually rises. Crumbs that fall where crumbs fall. One restaurant chain had AI images made for their menu and customers told them the food looked fake, even though the dish itself was good. That kind of damage to trust costs more than the image ever saved.

No. And that’s exactly why styling isn’t an extra for us, it’s the core of every shoot. Styling is knowing how a dish behaves under light, how to keep steam in frame, how to let a sauce pool without it going cold and dull. AI can imitate what it has seen before, but it doesn’t know your product. Every shoot here still starts with a styling briefing, even when we scale the output with AI afterwards.

Short term, yes. Long term, not really. A shoot needs preparation, but it gives you a full set of usable images in one session that carries you for months. AI content usually needs a fresh round for every campaign, every season, every channel, because each image has to be generated and checked on its own. One brand that needed new social content every quarter ended up doing both. One studio shoot as the foundation, AI variations on top for the fast seasonal updates.

Three things. Credibility, because customers do notice when something looks too perfect. The legal side, which is still moving, around training data and rights. And consistency over time. AI tools change their models and their style constantly, so images you generate today can look noticeably different from the ones you generated six months ago, and you don’t control that drift. With a shoot, the style is locked into your brief and stays there as long as you want.

Yes, and we do that more often now than a strict either or. A real shoot as the foundation, then AI for colour variants, backgrounds or seasonal versions based on that original accurate image. Product truth stays intact and you still get the speed. One brand needed to show one base recipe in five flavour variants. One shoot, AI variations afterwards, instead of five full shoots.

Three questions. Does the image need to show the exact product? Then shoot it. Do you need a lot of fast variants of something you’ve already shot properly? AI can help. And how much risk can your brand take on customers thinking something looks slightly off? The higher that risk, the more a real shoot pays for itself. We do both, so we’d rather think it through with you than sell you one answer up front. A good conversation before the project saves a rework round after it.