Freelance Recipe Developer & Food Photographer — Mid-Autumn Festival Mooncakes

We're a DTC cookware and kitchen brand building out a series of culturally rooted holiday recipes for our blog, developed by creators who celebrate the holiday themselves. For Mid-Autumn Festival, we're looking for one recipe developer/photographer with a genuine connection to Chinese culture and the holiday to create an original mooncake recipe using a hero cookware piece we'll ship you, and shoot it beautifully enough to be the lead image on our site and in an email. This is a single-project engagement to start, with potential for future holiday collaborations & ad hoc recipe development if it's a great fit. What you'll do: - Develop one original mooncake recipe tied to Mid-Autumn Festival, following a brief we provide. This includes an introduction, cook/prep time, ingredients and measurements, and directions. - Cook and style the mooncakes using the hero cookware piece we ship you (we'll confirm which item once we've aligned on your recipe direction) - Shoot one hero photo plus supporting angle/detail shots (exact shot list will be in the brief — think: overhead hero, close-up texture/detail showing the filling when cut open, in-process or ingredient shot, styled table context) We want this to feel personal. There's real range here, so pick whichever feels most authentic to you. Some ideas include: - Classic Cantonese-style baked mooncake - Snow skin mooncake - Suzhou-style mooncake - Five-kernel (wu ren) mooncake What we provide: - A written brief covering recipe direction, photo/styling guidance, and brand visual references - The hero product (shipped to you) plus any supporting props/ingredients we specify — which is yours to keep! - A point of contact for questions throughout - Reimbursement for groceries Timeline: Deadlines are firm and tied to our email/content build schedule. Final assets are due 1 week before go-live to allow time for our team to review, edit, and publish to the blog. Exact dates will be shared upon hire — you'll need to confirm availability for that window before we move forward. What we're looking for: - Someone with a genuine, lived connection to Mid-Autumn Festival and Chinese culinary tradition - A personal point of view on the mooncake — a family recipe, a regional style, a small twist, a meaningful detail - Photography skills that can stand on their own as hero-quality, editorial-level food photography (not phone snapshots, not overly staged/stocky) — including a clean cross-section/cut shot showing the filling - Comfortable working from a creative brief and incorporating brand feedback To apply, please include: - A portfolio or Instagram/blog link showing past recipe + photography work - One or two mooncake styles or fillings you'd propose, with a sentence on why they're meaningful to you personally - Your day rate or flat project rate for this scope (recipe development + styling + shoot + edited delivery) - Confirmation you can receive a shipped product at a US address and turn around content within one week of receiving it