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

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??

Fine Art Food Friday

This was a fun creative exercise exploring simple foods and viewing them through fresh eyes. Working with my medium format system allows me to explore products under a close view without obstructing the quality of the image output. The color spectrum I was able to produce with these images made for a magical photograph! The play with light and shadow, and shallow depth of field turned the food into abstract objects allowing you to immerse yourself into the photo.

Understanding this really helps with creating packaging photography for my clients which is one of my Favorite things to shoot! I love those super tiny details and how the light is shaping the product.

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!

New Series - Munchies

Happy 4/20!

My idea was showcasing stoner's nostalgic snacks they crave after getting high. I re-created the environments using psychedelic colors, lighting, and camera angle. The discussion around marijuana is becoming more accepting as we have seen states approve use for recreational purposes but also see it being used in medical circumstances. People are cooking with the drug, restaurants are adding it to their menu, and the entrepreneur is creating a new market for it.

https://www.businessinsider.com/legal-marijuana-states-2018-1

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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!