Ahoueke Hilaire

A shoot is largely won the day before. You need to have seen the room at the exact hour of the shoot to know what the light does, agreed a running order for the dishes with the chef, found the one spot in the venue where a work surface can go without blocking anyone, and settled the output ratios before the first frame instead of cropping your way out afterwards.

On set, the work is as much about protecting other people’s tempo as it is about photographing. A brigade in the middle of service has no slack, and a production crew on a campaign day has even less. The constraint is never an obstacle to route around: it is what gives the picture its shape.

Drinks hold a particular place in my work. A bottle packshot is an optics problem: the label wants flat light, the glass wants incident, and the two contradict each other inside the same frame. A cocktail adds a clock, because ice clouds within minutes and condensation cannot be re-run.

It is also a territory where southern light carries direct commercial value. A gin, a pastis or a rosé photographed in Mediterranean light says something a London studio does not, and that is often precisely why a brand brings its production down here.

I shape natural light where the room allows it, and move to continuous or strobe when the space is too dark or when the production requires strict repeatability. Retouching stays in service of the material: I would rather fix a plating before the frame than rescue a dish on a layer.

Files are delivered graded, with IPTC metadata filled in (creator, credit line, copyright notice, web statement of rights), in the aspect ratios the distribution channels actually need, rather than in a single ratio the client has to crop themselves.