Wonderful Machine Best of 2025

Excited to be featured as one of the best photographers of the year from Wonderful Machine!

Favorite Photographers of the Year

To celebrate the new year, we asked some of our favorite photo editors, art producers, and creative directors to share with us their favorite photographers of 2025. We compiled that list, and in no particular order, we’re sharing them with you here!

See the list here: https://wonderfulmachine.com/article/personal-best-2025/

IPA Photography Awards - Official Selection 2025

Very proud to wake up to the news of being a official selection for the IPA awards 2025! It’s always fun and challenging to decide which images I should enter. I really loved the concept we came up for these diner images. They have been recognized across the board for various things! Food Styling Janine Kalesis and Prop Styling Penelope Bouklas

B.T.S. Spring Awakening Series Shoot

This personal series has been brewing for awhile. I wanted to create these sculptural images that incorporated raw ingredients and flowers. I wanted to shoot this when fresh fruit, vegetables, and flowers were peeking in season. This allowed us to have the flexibility to source some stunning options! My stylist did not let me down. I got to work with food stylist Judi Orlick and Florist (and ceramic artist studio owner!) Zofi Lipton on this shoot. I was so excited when they were on board to help bring this vision to life. We narrowed down the ideas and left room in the day to just explore and play around. I wanted the lighting and propping to be dramatic. Once the food and flowers touched the surface the vibrant colors and interaction of the two things just came to life in the shot. Beside minor dust spotting and creative rigging these are true to what we captured in studio. It was great to shoot at Simple Studio, the perfect still life studio with a view! Assisted by Jarrett Murphy

Test Shoot With Janine Kalesis and Penelope Bouklas

2024 started off with a bang! I collaborated with food stylist Janine Kalesis and prop stylist Penelope Bouklas to create these vibrant scenes incorporating cannabis and some indulgent food. Each environment had a color scheme which was complimented with accent props sourced by Penelope. Each food component was styled and created by Janine. This was a super team!! We were able to work around the scenes and capture all sorts of variations, crops, and angles. Can’t wait till the next one.

Check Instagram for more shots from the shoot!

@perrettiphoto

@foodstylistnewyorkcity

@penelope_props

AI-AP American Photography 39 Winner

Wow! This must be the year of contests. So excited to be included in AI-AP 39!! https://www.ai-ap.com/

“This year’s distinguished jury included: Maïa Booker, The Wall Street Journal; David Cooper, Freelance Photo Editor; Maura Friedman, National Geographic; Lauryn Hill, WIRED; Amy Kellner, The New York Times Magazine; Robert Miller, The Washington Post; Laura Oliverio, CNN; Amy Silverman, Airbnb; Allyson Torrisi, People; Karen Williams, Freelance Photo Director and Producer; Andrea Wise, ProPublica; and Cengiz Yar, Rest of World.”

APA Chicago 10th Annual Artist’s Perspective Exhibition Selected!

Excited to be a selected photographer in the 10th annual APA Artist’s Perspective exhibit!

APA Chicago, “Natasha Egan, Executive Director at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, has completed judging our 10th Annual Artist's Perspective Personal Work Exhibition. We are pleased to announce that she has selected 47 images from 42 artists to be featured in our one-night exhibition on Friday, April 28, at Fulton Street Collective. Our celebration includes drinks, food, fun, a photo booth, and more - please join us.”

Fri 28th Apr, 2023
7:00pm–10:00pm

Fulton Street Collective
1821 W. Hubbard Street
Chicago, IL 60612

Free Admission

Link to event and all photographers to be in the show:

https://chicago.apanational.org/events/entry/10th-annual-2023-artists-perspective-exhibition/

Personal Series: Leftovers

This concept has been on my mind forever! A kitchen staple that is so versatile it was the perfect vessel to capture food. I came up with common uses we use aluminum foil that leave residues, grease, colors, and burn marks. In a normal situation we would crumple this up and throw it away. I wanted to capture the beauty in essentially this piece of food trash before it made it’s way to the can. A fun part of this project was how easy it was to manipulate the foil and it hold it’s shape created. There had to be a feeling of movement as if it was actually dancing in mid air. The lighting and rigging on set was really important to me for this project to get the idea across. I used muted backgrounds and surfaces so the colors of the food really stood out.

What else do you use foil for??

Conceptual Series: Pop Art!

This was a fun series to shoot because popcorn, as simple of a product it is every piece popped has unique traits you cannot repeat twice. I’m a fan of popcorn and being in the food business, why not?! I wanted to challenge my technical capabilities in this series with use of macro photography, lighting, and focus stacking; things I would apply to my other commercial work.

The results were so fascinating and fun to see unfold in the stacking process. You might sort through bags of popcorn and hold a piece that looks interesting but once it’s in the light it’s not, and vice versus. Focus stacking allowed me to showcase the depth in the miniature scale of the food and make it feel much bigger when fully in focus. Also allowing the popcorn to be shot on black by itself removes the illusion of the scale of real popcorn and lets your imagination take over.

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Felicia Perretti is a commercial food and beverage photographer and director based in New York City. She works nationally with food and beverage clients in advertising, packaging, editorial, and video. She has worked with food and drink in all shapes and knows how to craft the right team to get the job done! Her passion for food and beverage shine through on set as well as outside of work in her everyday life. Whether it’s trying new restaurants, traveling, or cooking with her husband Joe. Send her an email or give a call to discuss your next project, she would be more than happy to chat!

Interview with TheLuupe: Photography and Career

Screen Grab From Website

It’s so exciting to be apart of a great community of women photographers working in the commercial field. I met Keren Sachs when she was at Offset and was wonderful to work with. She recently started TheLuupe which I’m so happy to be apart of! They recently featured me on their blog. You can see the whole interview here! https://theluupe.com/blog/2019/08/27/felicia-perretti-breaks-food-photographys-cliches-with-pure-imagination/

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Felicia Perretti is a commercial food and beverage photographer and director based in New York City. She works nationally with food and beverage clients in advertising, packaging, editorial, and video. She has worked with food and drink in all shapes and knows how to craft the right team to get the job done! Her passion for food and beverage shine through on set as well as outside of work in her everyday life. Whether it’s trying new restaurants, traveling, or cooking with her husband Joe. Send her an email or give a call to discuss your next project, she would be more than happy to chat!

Personal Series: Dollar Store Dining Stop Motion

This is new, this is fun, this is my latest personal project! I wanted to really have fun with this project and challenge myself by going with my gut instinct. In the process of adding motion work into my portfolio I always found the stop motion pieces interesting. Taking a series of still images and sandwiching them together to make a 15-30 second piece was bringing the stills to life!
    Going to the dollar store as a kid there are always the memories of the novelty toy section; you know the really quirky toys you could pull pranks on your friends or siblings with. Maybe these would be stocking stuffers. One really fond memory I have is getting silly putty and squishing it on top of newspaper comics and seeing the print go onto the putty. That was magic to me as a kid. How was I going to bring this back to food but still have fun with it?
    If you have ever gone into the dollar store you should also be aware of the off the wall food brands and item combinations you have come across. For example: Larry The Cable Guy; he has his own food line, some of which is frozen biscuits and gravy. You may have seen Twinkies flavored ice cream. Another one is those widely toxic colored drinks that come in the gallons. There are some weird brands of food out there and you could probably find them at the dollar store.
    The combination of novelty toys and weird branded and flavored foods brought me to my latest project on Dollar Store Dining. The stop motion piece of these really helps capture the life in the novelty toys but gives me the opportunity to take the setup farther and show more humor and relation between the toys and the food. I hope you enjoy; this is about having fun with food!

Latest Personal Conceptual Series: "Condiments"

Conceptual projects for me come together through daily experiences and things I see that inspire. I really want to develop some unique “mini” series of conceptual shoots that show another side of my capabilities to clients and potential clients. My latest series Condiments really came together nicely. My vision and what I wanted to accomplish with colors, lighting, and camera angle happened exactly the way I envisioned. Constantly practicing the craft can really pay off.

The list of condiments was an ongoing discussion of just using the weirdest condiments in the world, to unique condiments, then to iconic condiments. I have others on the list and if you see any I should photograph I would love to hear your thoughts!

For this particular series I really want to put together a special promotional piece at the end of the year showcasing these images and include a little leave behind that represents the idea.

APA NY Photo Contest Winner

I was so excited to find out I was one of the winners in this years APA NY Photography Contest! I entered the Still Life + Food category with one of my new personal projects I'm working on currently titled "Cartoon Food." I'm re-creating iconic foods from well known cartoons or cartoon movies and photographing them. The winning shot was my recreation of Homer Simpon's pink doughnuts. It incorporated the blue and yellow of his skin and pink doughnuts were in the white box.

I'm still currently shooting some ideas for this project and plan to send out a personal promo along with my new logo!