Restaurant · Interiors Photography
Skywalker Grill at the Lucas Museum
Skywalker Grill is the rooftop restaurant at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Exposition Park, looking out over USC and the downtown Los Angeles skyline. It opened with the museum in September 2026.
I shot the dining room, bar, food and cocktails a few weeks before opening, for the museum's press launch. Photography from this project was featured in Vanity Fair and SFGATE.
About the Project
A dining room with no right angles
Rockwell Group designed the room to match the museum's curving architecture. Cherry wood columns branch like trees into a sculpted ceiling, green velvet banquettes wrap a central island, and a white bar snakes toward a big oval window that opens onto the terrace. There isn't a single 90-degree angle in the place.
That's great to look at and tricky to shoot. Straight lines are how a camera tells you where you are. Without them, the job was finding angles where the curves read as intentional, where the columns frame the view, and where the skyline outside balances the warm wood inside. I worked the room from morning into late afternoon so the interiors would carry the light moving across the glass.
Food & Drink
Food and cocktails that belong to the room
The menu is California American, run by Rhubarb Hospitality. I shot the plates on the restaurant's own dark marble tables so every dish still looks like it's sitting in that dining room, with the reflections, the banquettes and the wood paneling doing some of the storytelling. The cocktails got the hard afternoon sun coming through the west glass.
Openings like this one need everything at once: wide architectural frames for press, food photography for menus and social, and beverage shots for the bar program. If you've got a restaurant or hotel opening in Los Angeles or Las Vegas, I'd love to hear about it.