The studio
Three steps from the flame to the frame.
One room in south Tel Aviv: a full commercial line, a stylist's bench, and a camera rig on rails — wired so a chef can replate in under two minutes.
Kitchen
The line.
- Gas range 6-burner commercial, dual oven
- Induction Two-zone portable + flat-top
- Plancha Cast-iron, 60×40cm
- Salamander Wall-mounted broiler
- Cold prep Reach-in fridge, undercounter freezer
- Pass Single 3.6m stainless pass, three steps from camera
- Stylist's bench Tweezers, torches, brushes, glycerin, plate spread
- Dry storage Linens, props, ~120 plates and vessels
Lighting & camera
The rig.
- Continuous Two Aputure 600d Pro, one 300d Mark II
- Strobes Profoto B10 Plus pair, B1X for high-speed
- Modifiers 1.2m + 90cm octa softboxes, strip box, snoot, gridded reflectors
- Diffusion 8×8 silk overhead frame, 4×4 floppies
- Bounce / flag V-flats (white/black), gridded mirror tiles
- Camera Fujifilm GFX 100 II, 90mm + 63mm tilt-shift, top-down rig with rail
- Tether Capture One, dual SSD live backup
- Color X-Rite ColorChecker on every dish, calibrated 27-inch reference
Signature shot — the build
How the labneh hero gets lit.
One 1.2m softbox at the upper-left, feathered across the bowl so the labneh swirl catches a soft gradient and the olive oil pool reads in the well. A white V-flat on the right brings the shadow side back up just enough that the za'atar reads — never so much that the dish goes flat.
A small black flag at the bottom-left keeps the front edge of the bowl honest. The camera is overhead on a rail, 90mm at f/4 for that magazine-flat top-down geometry. We shoot tethered into Capture One with a color checker laid down on the first frame, then again whenever the chef plates a fresh one.
The trick We shoot three plates back-to-back. The first reads the light. The second sets the styling. The third is the one that runs.