Franck Hamel is a food and lifestyle photographer based in Rennes (France)
He always had a concealed passion for photography but shooting a film and developing his first photographs in the laboratory made his passion grow.
He went on to study Arts at Rennes University and kept on learning the art of photography on his own.
Driven by his passion, he moved to Romania where he began his career as a photojournalist at the Romanian press agency, Mediafax, and “Regard”, a French magazine. The new challenges he faced were: to meet deadlines, adapt his work to the light, find the right angle and have a new life in post-communist Bucharest.
After his experience in Romania, he moved to Vietnam. Living in Asia was a very emotional experience with unparalleled lights, a new culture, a colorful cuisine, delicious and full of amazing flavors. Here he took his first culinary photograph, it was a picture of kumquats for East&West, lifestyle magazine.
In 2009, he moved to Rabat, Morocco and worked as a photographer for Vue sur Mer, sea and boating magazine. He explored a different photographic world with new requirements and lights.
With the wealth of all this experience, in 2010, he made the decision to return to France. In Rennes, he specialized in culinary photography.
From his previous experience as a photojournalist, he gained the knowledge of how to use and adapt his work to natural light. For this reason, he simply decided to use daylight for food photography without any camera tricks: the product is the only master and the photographer should adapt to the light and the product.
From 2013 to 2016 he was an expert associated with the Contemporary Culinary Centre.
In 2017, he collaborated with the Notchup agency for the creation of the "Origin of Taste" packaging for Leclerc. This project will be rewarded in 2018 with a Golden Pentaward in New York.
In 2019, he is the official photographer of the International Festival of Culinary Photography.
Now he is respresented by his agent Valérie Paumelle.
Crédit photo portrait : ©tOine