Adelaide Brand and Food Photographer - Shiki Winter Menu Launch
Photographing 'Seijaku' for InterContinental Adelaide's teppanyaki restaurant
There's a particular kind of pressure that comes with photographing a menu launch built around a philosophical concept rather than just a list of dishes. Shiki's new Winter menu at InterContinental Adelaide is framed around 'Seijaku' - a classical Japanese idea of stillness and quietude, the presence found within silence - paired with 'Shun', the philosophy of ingredients reaching their precise seasonal peak. Translating that into photography meant the brief wasn't simply "make the food look good." It was "make the food look like winter feels."
Project Facts
Client: InterContinental Adelaide - Shiki Restaurant
Industry: Hospitality / Food & Beverage
Location: Shiki, InterContinental Adelaide
Shoot Type: Food, beverage and teppanyaki action photography for seasonal menu launch
Duration: Half-day production
Crew: 2 (Lewis Whittenbury — lead photographer, Frankie Whittenbury — behind-the-scenes and lighting support), with Shohail, Marketing Manager at InterContinental Adelaide, on set
Objective: Capture Shiki's new Winter menu — plated dishes, teppanyaki action, beverages and styled seafood presentation — for Monday morning press release
Approach: Combined plated still-life and live-action teppanyaki photography, built around a chef-supplied shot list
Lighting: Nanlite 600D as key light, Nanlite 60C as backlight — turned blue to illuminate the bamboo paper sliding door behind plated shots
Deliverables: Curated gallery for press release, menu launch marketing and Shiki's ongoing brand content library
Usage: Press release, hotel marketing, social media, menu collateral, tv screens
This is part of our ongoing monthly arrangement with InterContinental Adelaide, and by now the rhythm of a Shiki menu launch is familiar - though every season brings its own specific technical puzzle.
The shot list, dish by dish
Chef Kenny's brief was detailed and exact, which makes for a far smoother shoot than a vague one. Oysters appeared three ways - fresh à la carte, a pre-plated tempura version, and live teppanyaki action shots straight off the grill. NT barramundi got the same dual treatment, both on the teppan mid-cook and plated for the final still. Crocodile with garlic and lemongrass, assorted sashimi, a chicken yaki udon shot both in action and plated, and a dessert course of Earl Grey tea mousse with yuzu cream rounded out the food list. We also rebuilt the raw seafood ice basket presentation that worked so well during the Summer menu shoot - the visual impact of seafood nestled into ice and winter florals translates particularly well to camera, so repeating that setup was a deliberate choice rather than a fallback.
Lighting for winter, not summer
The technical core of this shoot was lighting it correctly. We ran a Nanlite 600D as the key light and a Nanlite 60C as backlight - but the 60C did double duty, rigged blue to wash the restaurant's bamboo paper sliding door in cool light behind the plated dishes. That blue wash against the warm tones of the food is what gives these images their distinctly winter feel without resorting to anything heavy-handed or obviously staged. It's a subtle effect, but it's the difference between a plate that looks merely well-lit and one that looks like it belongs to the season the menu is built around.
The beverage shots carried their own small technical challenges. The Fuyu Winter Sake Cocktail had previously been shot against black for the launch campaign, so this time the brief called for the same drink reimagined against the lighter, more seasonally appropriate background we'd built for the rest of the shoot. The warmed sake - Hakushika Extra Dry Junmai - came with its own brief: capture steam rising from the bottle if possible, though everyone on set acknowledged steam photography is entirely weather and humidity dependent, and a digitally added steam effect in post is the realistic backup plan more often than not.
Two photographers, one shoot, different jobs
Frankie spent most of the session on behind-the-scenes documentation and lighting support while I led the photography - a split that works well on these monthly Shiki shoots because food and action photography genuinely benefits from a second set of hands managing light positioning between setups, especially when teppanyaki action shots mean working fast around live flame and a moving chef.
Turnaround
With the gallery needed for a Monday morning press release, this was a fast-turnaround edit on top of an already technical shoot - exactly the kind of brief our ongoing relationship with InterContinental Adelaide has built around. Eighteen months in, we're not figuring out Shiki's visual language from scratch each time. We know the room, we know the light, and we know what 'Seijaku' is going to ask of a camera before we've even unpacked the gear.
Frankie The Creative has photographed InterContinental Adelaide's Shiki restaurant across multiple seasonal menu launches as part of an ongoing 18-month brand partnership. If your hospitality brand needs photography that understands both food styling and live-action kitchen work, get in touch.
