Shooting The Italian Table in Italy

Overhead sunlit Italian table of antipasti, cheese, roasted peppers and wine, shot for Theo Randall's The Italian Table.

For Theo Randall's The Italian Table, most of the photography was made across Italy rather than in a studio, and that decision shaped everything. The book is a love letter to regional Italian cooking, a hundred recipes arranged like a proper meal from antipasti through to dolci. The dishes are so rooted in place and landscape.

Outdoor table of pasta and cheese at golden hour with the Tuscan hills behind, the cover set-up for The Italian Table.
Theo Randall sitting outside Osteria il Grattacielo in Tuscany during the cookbook shoot.

We followed the food from market to plate and let the country supply half the atmosphere for free. Some of my favourite frames from the trip are simply Theo out in the streets, browsing an osteria window, walking back through a Tuscan lane with the shopping. Theo's cooking suits that ease. His dishes never carry too many ingredients but always reach maximum flavour, so the images could stay simple and let the produce speak.

Theo Randall walking down a Tuscan street with market shopping, behind the scenes of The Italian Table.

The cover is the shot Theo still talks about, most recently on Saturday Kitchen. To place the horizon exactly where we wanted it, we raised the table a full ten foot into the air, and the table itself was a front door balanced across two ladders, with a late lunch laid on top and the Italian hills stretching out behind. What made it work was preparation. I ran my light test the evening before, so that when the light arrived the next day we were ready and waiting for the precise moment to capture it, rather than chasing it. The balancing act of the table on two ladders, with me on another ladder right on the edge of a swimming pool, was a funny sight for the other hotel guests.