Food

Restaurant & Editorial Food Photography

Tom McGovern has spent over a decade shooting food for restaurants, hotel dining programs, national brands, and cookbook publishers. He lights for texture, steam, and gloss, so a dish looks like something you could reach out and taste. Clients include Barcelona Wine Bar, bartaco, Marcus Samuelsson Group, Del Frisco's Restaurant Group, Terranea Resort, and Skywalker Grill at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

His food photography has run in Eater, The Washington Post, Forbes, Vanity Fair, SFGATE, and on Good Morning America. The full list is on the press page.

Cookbook & Brand Food Photography

Tom shot Parm to Table, Christian Petroni's New York Times bestseller, and he's at home on sets where every frame gets picked over by editors, food stylists, and art directors: cookbooks, magazine covers, and national brand campaigns. His cookbook work includes titles published by St. Martin's Press, HarperCollins, and Page Street Publishing. For food brands, the same work covers packaging, e-commerce, editorial, and social.

Menu Launches & Seasonal Photography

Restaurants that change their menu each season need photography that keeps pace with what's actually on the plate. Tom shoots new dishes as they roll out, whether that's a launch, a press push, or a set seasonal schedule, so a restaurant's photography never falls out of date with its menu. This work often overlaps with planning and budgeting a menu photo shoot and feeds directly into turning a single shoot into content across the menu, website, and social feed.

PR & Asset Libraries for Restaurant Groups

Restaurant groups running several concepts or locations need a photo library they can pitch press from. Tom builds libraries that PR and marketing teams can pull from on deadline: high-res, on-brand, and already cleared for use, so a placement request doesn't stall waiting on new photography. Read more on what belongs in a restaurant PR asset library and what happens when a placement opportunity has no photos ready.

Common Questions

How often should a restaurant update its food photography?

A good rule of thumb is to reshoot whenever the menu changes in a meaningful way, which for seasonal menus is two to four times a year. Tom works with clients on a standing schedule so new dishes get photographed as they launch instead of waiting months after the fact.

What's included in a restaurant PR asset library?

A PR asset library typically includes plated dishes, drinks, interior and atmosphere shots, and portraits of the chef or team, all shot to a consistent standard and organized so a publicist or marketing team can pull the right image on short notice. Tom builds these libraries for restaurant groups so press requests don't wait on a new shoot.

Can one shoot cover both the menu and social content?

Yes. Tom plans food shoots to cover multiple uses in a single production: menu photography, website imagery, and a set of images sized and cropped for social, so a restaurant isn't paying for separate shoots to cover each channel.