Pie Season Prep: How We Shot 344 Photos for Crust Club in a Single Day
It was July. It was hot. And every frame was planned so it would still look right on a Thanksgiving post. A shoot diary about photographing pie in the wrong season on purpose.
Crust Club sells pies, casseroles, pastas, and soups, and we photographed all of it in one long July day: 344 finished photos across whole pies, hand pies, casseroles on colored backdrops, sides, boxes, the storefront, and the delivery van. The trick to shooting holiday food in summer is removing every clue about the season, so the same frames carry the feed from a July launch straight through Thanksgiving week.
- No seasonal props, no window light that reads as summer, no patio
- Shoot the sides (mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans) as seriously as the pies
- Group products by backdrop, not by menu category, so the day moves fast
Hi, Sarah here. Sarah Rasmussen Productions is my photo and video business in Logan, and food is probably half of what I photograph in a given year. Crust Club was one of the bigger single days I have done: a bakery-style product shoot where the product list was long, the packaging was part of the story, and the client needed photos that would work in July and still work in November. Here is how the day actually went.
Early: the building, before the light gets hard
Exterior first, always. Summer sun in Utah turns brutal by mid-morning, so the storefront and the van got shot while the light was still soft and the parking lot was empty. The building frame becomes the Google listing photo, the "we are open" post, and the header on a dozen other things. Fifteen minutes, done, and I never have to think about it again.
Mid-morning: casseroles on color
Then inside, and this is where the day was won or lost. Crust Club's casseroles come in dark square pans, and a dark pan on a white table is a very dull photograph. So we brought color. Blue, red, green, yellow paper backdrops, and every casserole got shot on the one that made its topping look best. The crumb-topped one went on blue because gold on blue is the oldest trick in food photography and it still works.
I shot the casseroles in a sequence like this on purpose: whole, spoon in, spoon out, bite lifted. Four frames per dish, same light, same backdrop. That sequence is what lets a client post the same casserole three different weeks and have it look like three different posts. It is also why 344 is not a crazy number. It is a long product list with a handful of angles each, plus packaging and place.
Midday: the pies, and the frame that had to be seasonless
Whole pies are where I slowed down. A pie is a Thanksgiving object whether you want it to be or not, so these frames needed to work in November more than anywhere else. That meant a white fluted dish, a plain surface, a knife, a hand. No fall leaves, no pumpkins, no plaid napkin, and just as importantly no lemonade, no picnic table, nothing that says July. The hero photo at the top of this post is from this block of the day.
Take the season out of the frame and the photo works in every season.
Afternoon: hands, the van, and the small pies
After lunch the energy on a shoot always drops, so I switch to frames that need people. A hand holding a small pot pie in front of the logo. Someone reaching up to take a green box from the van window. These are the "who we are" photos, and they are also the ones that a bakery can post on a slow Tuesday without needing new product.
Late: the sides, which matter more than you think
The last block of the day was mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, and green beans, shot on neutral plates with the same care as the pies. This is the part most bakeries skip, and it is exactly the part that makes a Thanksgiving ordering post work. Nobody scrolls past a whole pie in November. They do scroll past a pie with no sides, because the question in their head is "what else am I getting."
What happened to the 344
The photos went into a library the client could pull from for months. That is the point of a big single day versus a lot of small ones: you pay for setup once, and the backdrops, the light, and the props get reused across every product while they are already out. If you are thinking about the same approach for your own food business, I have written about building a content library you can post from for months, and about how to prepare your business for a shoot day so we do not spend the first hour looking for a clean spoon. For restaurants specifically, the argument for fresh photo and video every year still holds, even when the food itself does not change.
If you sell anything people buy for the holidays, book your photo day in summer and hand your photographer one rule: nothing in the frame that dates it. Then, this week, go through your existing photos and delete any you cannot post in November. What is left is your real library. What you are missing is your shot list.
Pie season does not start in November. It starts whenever the photos get taken, and for Crust Club that was a hot day in July with a knife, a white dish, and a plan.
I'm Sarah Rasmussen, and Sarah Rasmussen Productions is my Logan-based studio for commercial photo and video, working with bakeries, restaurants, and food brands across Cache Valley, Northern Utah, and Southern Idaho.
See more of my food photography in Logan.
Shoot the pie in July. Post it in November.
Tell me what you sell in November and I will build a summer shoot day that covers it, sides included.
Plan a summer shoot📞 Call or Text: 435-764-3606
✉️ sarahrasmussenproductions@gmail.com
📍 Serving Northern Utah & Southern Idaho
