Diligent Women are Beautiful

[Book] Food Styling for Photographers

Finally, there is a Food Styling book for Photographers.  I took 2 food styling classes in LA before - the purpose was to understand how food was prepared for the camera and also to see how food photographers setup their lights.  I love food photography and read many popular food blogs with their work.  So when I know this Food Styling for Photographers by Linda Bellingham and Jean Ann Bybee came out, I can’t wait to order a copy and I was very happy after flipping through the book.

1. Intro to Food Styling
2. Sets and Settings
3. Chilling fact on cold beverages
4. Making a Salad for the camera
5. Pasta and Sauces
6. Burgers, Sandwiches, and Beyond
7. Meeting meat head-on
8. Veggie perfect
9. Ice cream for hot light
10. Desserts
11. Breakfast for the camera
12. Garnishing basics

This book gives you many tricks of the trade and notes from photographers with lots of setup photos, both food setup and camera/lighting setup.  The printing quality and the page layout are very good - the font size is easy to read, the color pictures are clear, clean and colorful.  They gives you details on how to buy the food, how to prepare the food, how to assemble the food, how to plate the food, how to decorate the food, etc.  They gives you before, during and final photos. 

I also own Digital Food Photography by Lou Manna and Working with Plate by Christopher Styler and David Lazarus.  In my opinion, if you are interested in food photography, buy Food Styling for Photographyers and Digital Food Photography and you are good to go.  Highly recommend these two books.

Illuminating Edibles

I saw a really good article on Studio Photography Magazine on Jan 2008 issue talked about Food Photography.  In the end of the article, they also has a photo that show the set-up of camera, subject, lighting, and reflector which gives you a better idea how everything work. Enjoy it!

Illuminating Edibles . . . Shooting Fine Fare in Its Best Possible Light by Patrick Wadley

All still lifes require considerable lighting expertise and discipline, but food photography has its own special challenges. Unlike jewelry, toasters, or apparel, food moves. It shrinks, expands, shifts, melts, and changes shape and color. On the set, you need to work quickly, and, depending on the type of food, you may need multiple setups to get the perfect shot. Before setting the first light, there are some preliminaries to think about.

The most important aspect of food photography is preparation. There are three essential areas that demand attention: understanding the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) rules about "truth-in-advertising," knowing how to deal with the client or art director, and recognizing the value of a good food stylist.

The FTC regulates advertising and sets policies for the protection of consumers. These policies and rules affect verbal and visual advertising claims. There is a lot of information about truth-in-advertising at www.ftc.gov, but in a nutshell, "Advertising must be truthful and nondeceptive." This means you cannot misrepresent a product in an image or in writing.

. . . . . Keep Reading

Food Styling Workshop 2

I went to LA for a 3-day Food Styling Workshop in October 2007 and it was a lot of fun.  So I went to LA again last weekend for a 2-day Master Food Styling Workshop.  This time the classroom was at Surface, a restaurant supply and gourmet food store with a huge selection of stuff.  They also have a small café on site that provide coffee, drinks, sandwiches, salads, etc.  In the back of the store, they have a big industrial kitchen with commercial appliances with plenty of seating area, which is good for a cooking class.

I drove from San Jose to LA taking highway 5; however, I would not recommend you to do that in January and I would not do that again either.  On Highway 5, the weather between Lebec to Santa Clarita (about 30 miles, which is about one and a half hours outside of LA) is very bad – not only did it have heavy snow on the nearby mountain and ice on the shoulder, but also is lots of fog and rain.  So I drove 101 back home.  Next time, I would fly to Santa Monica, take a taxi to The Culver Hotel, and walk 10 minutes to the classroom. 

We had about 18 students this time (two are male, very rare) and about a hand full of students are from October’s workshop.  It was great to see them again (Bea, we miss you).  Last time we had students from as far away as Asia, this time we had students from Middle East (I don’t remember if from Turkey or Egypt).  This time is all about learning the individual basics for each type of food, but it is also hands-on for everything.  It is not as easy as you think.

We are going to learn about how to make grill marks on a steak, how to make a raw whole chicken look like it is cooked, how to assembling a hamburger and sandwiches, how to plate pasta, how to make fake ice cream and fake beer bubble, how to fix a pie or cake, how to arrange salad, pizza and melting cheese.  Remember, we have only two days and each day is only about five hours of class time.  It may not seem like a lot to take in but I almost collapsed at the end of the class.

Don't get me wrong; it was very educational and fun.  We all learned a lot from Cindie and Denise but it is harder than it looks.  The time goes by so fast that I feel I have a hard time to digest at some point.  The most fun one is the fake ice cream.  It took me about ten tries to get it right.  The secret is that you need to heat the scoop first and then to put the dough in.  The smaller scoop works better than the large one does.

I have learned so much and have a totally different perspective about food stylist.  They need creativity, good communication skills, patience, and a good personality.  I also realized that food styling is not for me because I think I am more talented on home staging and photography.  By knowing how food stylists work, I feel I would work better with them as a photographer when the time comes. (Photo courtesy of Matt Bites)

2/20 Denise and Cindie are going to Singapore for a special one-day master food styling workshop.  If you live in Asia and are interested in food styling, don’t miss this great opportunity.

For more pictures, please click on My Flickr.

Extended reading - Food Photography, Mittbites, 

Food Writing Class

I love to eat, shoot, and write.  I am getting picky on what I eat, how to shoot, but I still have a hard time to write.  Writing is hard for me.  How to make readers feel the same way I feel through words?  It is hard to writing in my native Chinese language and even harder in English.  Since I was born and educated in Chinese, I think it is easier for me to write in Chinese than English even though I have studied in American college for four years.  I can write research papers and legal real estate contracts which are required for my job, but writing for food is still hard.

I have always wanted to improve my English writing skills, especially for food and travel.  Recently I received a Continuing Studies catalog from Stanford University, and one of the classes is the Online Food Writing, 10 weeks from 1/14-3/23, limited to 17 students, registration starts on 12/3.  I am really interested in this class, but not sure my schedule would fit.  I post it here in case someone would be interested.

Food Writing: The Literary Gourmet (Online Course) (EGL 243 W)

If you love to eat, cook and read about great food, and you'd like to learn more about the many different forms of food writing, then this is the course for you. In this course, you will read a wide variety of food writing by some the most successful practitioners at work today, including former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, food blogger and bestselling author Julie Powell, chef Anthony Bourdain, science and food writer Michael Pollan, and Vogue contributor Jeffrey Steingarten. Using their work as models, you will learn how to write restaurant reviews, how to test and develop written recipes, and how to write travel stories focused on food. You will also each write one personal essay and one magazine article in which food—either dining out or dining in—takes center stage. We will discuss practical aspects of the business as well, such as how to submit your short pieces to publications and how to write book proposals. This is an online writing workshop, so be prepared to respond to other students' writing in an editorial capacity, and to receive great feedback on your own.

Created in close partnership with the Stanford Creative Writing Program, this online course will be useful for students looking to improve their craft. Because this course can be taken anywhere, anytime, it is designed to be attractive to those students who live far from campus, or who lead busy lives and can benefit from the flexibility of the online format.

Malena Watrous
Former Stegner Fellow
Malena Watrous is a fiction and nonfiction writer based in San Francisco. She has taught creative writing at the University of San Francisco, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Iowa. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and was a Truman Capote fellow. Her fiction has been published in such literary journals as Story Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and The Massachussetts Review, and her nonfiction has appeared on Salon.com, and in The Believer, Real Simple, Organic Style, and other magazines.

For other online writing classes, please click HERE.

Food Styling Workshop

Have you ever wondered why every dish looks so good on food magazines?  Those beautiful photos are the hard work of food stylists and photographers.  I didn’t know that until I took a 3-day food styling workshop at Food Fanatics with Denise Vivaldo and Cindie Flannigan in LA last week. 

We had 14 people in the workshop (all women), and we all came from different Cities, States or even Countries – San Jose, CA; Honolulu, Hawaii; Walland, TN; Boston, MA; Tarentum, PA; Vancouver, Canada; Costa Rica; Korea; Singapore; and Philippines.  We all have different backgrounds – Realtor who loves food and photography (that would be me); personal chefs; well-known food blogger (Bea of La Tartine Gourmande); graphic designers; even stylist from a resort.

 

The classroom is held in a big studio with big windows and skylights.  In the back, there is coffee, tea, juice, bagels, pastries, banana on the table, water and yogurt in the fridge, and a microwave.  There is Yoshinoya, Pomodoro, Starbucks, and Whole Food around the studio for us to go for lunch.  The weather is great in LA all year around.  The instructors, guest speakers, photographer, and participants are all nice, fun people.  By the third day, I knew I am going back in January for the Master Food Styling workshop.

The first day, we learned about the business side of being a food stylist.  It’s not fun but it is something we all need to know about in order to have a successful business.  We learned about the intro of food styling, the portfolio building, the apprenticeship opportunities, the marketplace today, food styling kits, different forms of media for food styling, the client interview, how to work with other stylists and referrals, etc.  We also reviewed different food magazines’ cover photos to talk about what is the new trends of food styling and photography.

On the second day morning, we went through the studio, checking out where we are going to prepare our project tomorrow, found where the shooting area is, and we also looked through some food photos from the past of different stylists and photographers, and some previous student work from the workshops.  We also learned about our place as a food stylist and how to work with an art director and photographer on a job.  We had Matt (with his partner Adam) to speak to us as an art director and food photographer.  We talked about our project with the photographer in the afternoon and then three of us went shopping.

The last day was our group project; it’s a day for us to get a taste of being a food stylist. We learned that the way a chef presents the food may be different than how a stylist would because of the way the camera sees the dish is different than how the human eye sees.  We learned how to build a set of drinks for a drink shot.  We learned that most of the food is not completely cooked – we used pigment to dye the chicken; we used a micro torch to make chicken/salmon looks cooked; we learned how to make “sauces” that wouldn’t run like water; we learned how to make ice tea look cold without really puting it into fridge.  And then we learned that food looks different in front of the camera so we need to rearrange the food and the setting.  So by the time we finishing the shot, the food went straight into the trash can.

Now you know why we had a great time.  It was a wonderful, fun experience.  It gave us a true perspective of being a food stylist.  Just like any other occupations, we need to be passionate about what we do in order to be the best at what we do.  See you next year for the Master Food Styling Workshop.

Check out Bea's and Karine's stories.

- more photos on my flickr

Extended reading - Food Photography