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Ashley McLaughlin is a professional food photographer who specializes in capturing recipes, products, and ingredient shots for cookbook creators and corporate partners alike.

Ashley’s background in architecture and design combined with her personal passion for food and sustainability influence her photography style, which can be described as clean and approachable. Ashley believes in serving as an extension of your team so that you can focus on other important tasks, whether it’s fully immersing yourself in the recipe development and testing for a cookbook or the overall marketing strategy for your food product.  She loves the creative challenge of photo shoots and is always staying on top of trends so she can position her clients in the best light. Ashley’s clients value her expertise and regularly describe her as easy to work with, reliable and innovative.

"Working with Ashley was a career highlight for me. She is the consummate professional: communicative, dynamic, and timely with delivery. Ashley brought a strong creative vision to our work on Power Plates, but she was mindful of my own aesthetic preferences. Together, we were able to create visuals that were rich, evocative, and in keeping with the ethos of my work. Throughout the creative process, I was impressed by Ashley's capacity to manage deadlines and workflow, and I was grateful for her sustained energy and enthusiasm over the course of an extended project timeline. 

Beyond this, Ashley is kind, empathic, and sensitive to the ups and downs of creative work. To say that it was a pleasure to work with her would be an understatement; any author would be lucky to have her as a partner and creative ally."

-Gena Hamshaw, author of Power Plates

Ashley’s journey to become a food photographer is unique. She has always had a design eye, and pursued two degrees in architecture before entering the food and photography world. She conducted her Master’s thesis on one of the many intersections of food and architecture, which was how the industrialization of both industries resulted in a disregard for quality and focus on quantity (how many, how cheap, how fast). This was a detriment to both industries. While Ashley went to work full-time for an architectural firm, she couldn’t shake her growing interest in helping to reverse the effects of industrialization in food. She began experimenting in her kitchen, and it wasn’t long before she got her first business license and sold her own clean label granola bars in farmers markets in North Carolina.

After a family move to Colorado, Ashley’s food-related endeavors shifted to her personal blog, Edible Perspective, where she began sharing her adventures in the kitchen. While she recognized that some of the early blogs she loved featured gorgeous photography, she wasn’t initially interested in learning how to do it herself. She even declined her husband’s offer to use his dSLR camera until one day she finally decided to pick it up and see what happened. These early years honing her food photography skills helped her land her first cookbook deal, dedicated to baked donuts, which she completely wrote and photographed herself. Soon after, she realized how much she loved using photography to tell not only the story of food she created but to help others bring their unique food visions to life in an appealing way.

Ashley McLaughlin is now widely recognized as a skilled food photographer and stylist with a knack for visually communicating a brand’s story. She excels at working behind-the-scenes to create a unified look and feel with a modern consumer appeal that results in shareable (and craveable) content. She has worked for more than twenty national food brands and has photographed four cookbooks, one of which was a New York Times Best Seller. Ashley is based in Denver, CO but is available to travel for clients projects upon request.

Want to work with Ashley?

Check out her portfolio for examples of her photography style and learn more about her services here.