Yandex Eats photo style

Background

Amid the COVID lockdown, Yandex Eats, a leading Russian food delivery service, faced challenges like reduced budgets and limited professional photography access. The company aimed to create a unique, cost-effective photo style for the app and SMM.

My goal was to develop a consistent and recognizable photo style for Yandex Eats that depicted real delivery food, working with limited resources and lockdown constraints, and reducing the cost of photo shoots.

Process

I consulted with managers and designers to understand their challenges with food photo shoots. Based on their input, I researched potential solutions and proposed easily replicable techniques, possible even using a smartphone at home:

• Create a sense of naturalness
• Present real, unstaged images of food instead of traditional commercial still life
• Incorporate bright, open colors (red, blue, yellow, green) as accents
• Use natural light
• Capture people in candid, unposed moments as they eat

After discussing the ideas with the team, we conducted test shoots to validate our hypotheses. I organized a photo shoot using only delivered food and no special equipment or commercial food styling tricks. After our tests and discussions, I created a guide that included detailed explanations of the do's and don'ts.

Results

The project met its goals: we reduced the cost of photo shoots by 8 times, and this successful approach established a unique photographic style for Yandex Eats, which is still in use today.