High Production

The project

Photolicious produced seasonal food campaign photography for talabat. The work covered different occasions, including Ramadan and a World Cup campaign, with a separate visual direction for each.

The project brings together food photography and campaign thinking. Rather than treating every occasion as the same set of product images, the direction changes with the cultural setting while keeping the food at the centre of the frame.

Visual direction

The existing project describes a different cultural register for each season. The selected work below shows how those ideas were expressed through the food, colour and composition, across still photography and film.

Selected campaign work

The gallery brings together examples from the existing talabat portfolio. Use it to explore the visual approach and the relationship between individual food frames and the wider campaign direction.

The first time Emirati home cooking has been documented at this scale for a government entity: 75 traditional recipes for the Abu Dhabi Agriculture & Food Safety Authority, shot through publisher Austin Macauley with five rotating chefs across 20 days. Two images per recipe, every plate built from scratch and held to one standard from the first day to the last.

Bake Notes wanted a limited-edition launch that felt like memory rather than marketing: cake as it was served in an old Emirati home, without tipping into costume. We built a three-film series and a full photo campaign around that idea, cast with Emirati talent speaking in Emirati accent so the nostalgia held.

Brylo House came to us wanting a film and nothing else defined, so we built the idea, the 1960s English world it lives in, the cast, the wardrobe and the execution. Exterior scenes meant a 6am call and a twelve-hour day to hold the light — the film lifted engagement on their profile by over 50%.

Tweeq wanted their opening film to carry Saudi culture rather than simply show a café. We took the brief from ideation through cast, wardrobe, strategy, shoot and post — and the film came back exactly as they had pictured it, then travelled on social.

Al Safi briefed their agency in Saudi, and the agency brought it to us because they trusted our efficiency and flawless delivery under the pressure of a strict timeline. The product shipped from Saudi to the UAE, and we shot 18 recipes across a two-day production.

Almair arrived with coffee and nothing else: no idea, no location, no cast. We built the campaign end to end, and the hardest part was finding a location traditional enough to mean something without tipping into pastiche.