AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- The photographs in more than 100 cookbooks, including all but one of Jamie Oliver’s international best-sellers
- Works in
- Color, almost always in daylight and without flash
- Camera
- Nikon D4 in a behind-the-scenes video with Jamie Oliver; his first camera was an Olympus Trip
- Also
- Directed TV commercials, including a famous one for Sainsbury’s; created the “Loftus Lens” for the Hipstamatic app
- Start with
- Around the World in 80 Dishes (Atlantic Books, 2012)
- Links
David Loftus (born 1963) is a London-based food photographer. He has photographed more than 100 books, including all but one of Jamie Oliver’s international best-sellers, which have sold more than 30 million copies. He works fast, in natural light, and has never learned to use flash.
The story
The job looked simple. The Saturday Times magazine sent David Loftus to photograph a young chef from the River Cafe in London. The chef had just signed a TV and book deal. His name was Jamie Oliver. The plan was a rooftop in East London at dusk.
Oliver arrived two hours late. He built a barbecue out of old tyres and planks and started to cook. By then the light was going. The portraits came out blurry and very blue. Still, the Times used one as its midsummer cover. The two men have been friends ever since.
Food was not where he started. His father gave him an Olympus Trip camera when he was eight. Later he trained as an illustrator at Chelsea, making collages that often used his own photographs. When illustration work dried up in the recession of the early 1990s, he turned to photography full time. One of his first clients was the magazine Gardens Illustrated.
In the late 1990s, Joan Tinney, picture editor at Cosmopolitan, asked if he had ever shot food. He had not. “Just shoot it like you do your flowers,” she told him. “So I did, and have been doing ever since,” he says.
There was one thing he had never learned. At Chelsea he was kept out of the studio where flash was taught. So he worked like the photographers he admired, Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï, with the light that was there. Asked about his training, he answered: “Daylight. A lack of formal training can be a wonderful thing!”
Today he works fast, often handheld, while the food is still fresh. He has photographed more than 100 books. In 2010 the magazine Professional Photographer named him the 65th most influential photographer of all time.
That first rooftop shoot ended in fading blue light, and it still made the cover. The dark never really scared him. “Low light never worries me,” he says. “I still don’t know how to use a flash gun.”
The work
- 1963Born
- 1987Loses his identical twin, John
- 2001Photographs Happy Days with the Naked Chef for Jamie Oliver
- 2010Named the 65th most influential photographer of all time by Professional Photographer
- 2012Publishes his first book, Around the World in 80 Dishes
- 2019Publishes his memoir, Diary of a Lone Twin
- 2024Photographs Jamie Oliver’s Simply Jamie
Lessons
Use the light you have. He has never used flash. He works with daylight, even when there is not much of it.
Be quick. Food changes fast. He shoots while it is fresh, often handheld.
Borrow from what you know. His first food pictures were made the way he photographed flowers.
Try this: cook something simple and put it by a window. Turn off the flash. Make your pictures within one minute of plating, then ask yourself if you want to eat it.
Gear
Loftus talks more about light than about cameras. These are the few things we could confirm.
Olympus Trip: his first camera, a gift from his father when he was eight.
Nikon D4: the camera he uses in a behind-the-scenes video shot in Jamie Oliver’s kitchen.
Hipstamatic app: he works with the app and created the “Loftus Lens” camera pack for it.
No flash. He shoots in daylight and says he still does not know how to use a flash gun.
Books
Around the World in 80 Dishes (Atlantic Books, 2012). His first book under his own name, with an introduction by Jamie Oliver. It follows the route of Phileas Fogg’s journey across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and America, with 80 recipes from chefs and cookery writers he has worked with, among them Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Gennaro Contaldo, Heston Blumenthal and Atul Kochhar. Each dish comes with the story behind it. A good choice for cooks who love travel, and for anyone who wants to see his food pictures with his own words.
Happy Days with the Naked Chef (Michael Joseph, 2001; Penguin paperback 2003). A 317-page Jamie Oliver cookbook with color photographs by Loftus, from the early years of the Naked Chef. A good way to see his relaxed, daylight style on everyday home cooking.
Diary of a Lone Twin (Bluebird, 2019). A memoir, not a photography book. His identical twin, John, died in 1987. For a year Loftus spent one hour every day remembering John and writing about him by hand, and this book grew from those pages. It moves from shared childhood memories to the loneliness after John’s death. For readers who want to know the person behind the pictures, and for anyone who has lost someone close.
In his words
“If the food doesn’t cry out to be eaten, then as a food photographer, you have failed.”
“I started photography when I was 8, shooting on an Olympus Trip my Father bought me.”
“I’ve worked with Jamie since the start of his career and we have become very close friends.”
