I wanted to photograph ice cream. But…it’s Quepos. I think I’ve mentioned how hot it is here.

So how do you photograph ice cream in 85℉+ weather without it melting into an unappetizing puddle all over the place?

I found the answer while I was watching one of Joanie Simon’s videos over at The Bite Shot on YouTube. She was interviewing her friend Kim who wowed everyone with her amazing non-melting ice cream photography skills!

Read on to find out how I created these lovely ice cream images!

Making Ice Cream That Won’t Melt

So the big challenge here is to create ice cream that won’t melt all over the place. Especially if it’s 95 degrees in your house. You’d be lucky to get off a shot or two before it became soup. 

I created all the images in this post over the course of a few hours. The first group I shot in the morning before lunch and my kids’ nap. Then I came back to it in the afternoon for another round.

WHAT IS THIS SORCERY!?

It isn’t sorcery at all, it’s a can of frosting mixed with powdered sugar until it becomes stiff enough to look like ice cream. Voila! Fake ice cream. You’re welcome. 

Here’s the recipe:

• 1 can of prepared frosting
• 2.5 cups of powdered sugar

It’s that easy. Just mix the can of prepared frosting with about 2.5 cups of powdered sugar. It’ll get pretty thick, but that’s what you want so it will do that barking and flaking like Joanie and Kim talk about in the video. 

Kim also used heavy cream to make the edges a touch runny so it would look like it was starting to melt. I didn’t have any heavy cream, so I thickened a bit of milk with flour and that seemed to work okay. 

Photographing Ice Cream

Once I had my fake “ice cream” mixed up, I set up my scene and started snapping away. 

There were the inevitable hiccups, of course — especially with the bunny. There’s a funny story about that, by the way.

Funny Story About a Bunny

Note: No bunnies were harmed during the making of these images

I was finishing up with the strawberries and my kids were playing with Oreo, the bunny. So the idea struck me, why not throw her in the scene too?

I set her up and she was being such a good bunny. I took a couple of test shots to get my focus and figure out where I wanted her. Then, I got her in the perfect spot and went to take the shot…and my camera battery died. 

I was using my new Canon RP that I only have one battery for. So after I screamed at the heavens in frustration, I quickly swapped the RP out with my old trusty 6D. But then…it didn’t work with the flash setup I had going on.

I was jerry-rigging the flash setup because I was using off-camera flash but I don’t have any of the fancy equipment to make the flash fire. Apparently, something is different about the settings between the two cameras, because it wouldn’t work with the 6D.

Anyway, this whole time the bunny is just sitting there where I placed her being such a good bunny (the only thing that went right). So I grabbed my ring light, which isn’t bright enough to shoot at a high shutter speed. I took this shot at 1/15 and the bunny was so still that it actually worked!

Thank God for good bunnies! Lol.

Photographing Your Own Ice Cream

I hope this tip is helpful to you if you are interested in creating some of your own ice cream images. Of course, if you’d prefer me to do all the work, you can check out my content creation services here!