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Food photography and me

Feb 12, 2020
Hello there!

I’m Lynsey, welcome to my blog! I would love to bring you along with me and into my food photography studio, where I will share my tips, behind the scenes pics (because we all love to see those) and tutorials of amazing things I’ve learned over the years – such as how to shoot ice cream in the height of summer, and tips and tricks I plan to discover along the way – there is always something new to learn right?

My mini back story

I’ve been working as a creative, graphic designer and, for the latter part, photographer, for the last 21 years. Working for small and large agencies and then going on to own a successful design agency myself, where I worked with some incredible clients for over 10 years. I loved my job, however for health reasons, I unfortunately had to take a step back, the story of which I’ll save for another post.

Slowly but surely, photography crept into my work until I was shooting on a weekly basis – I just couldn’t seem to get the look I was after when I outsourced the work, so (back then), I took up my trusty Canon 70D and started my fulfilling journey into food photography. I didn’t know at the time that I would become totally and utterly hooked. I didn’t know I would be dreaming up image ideas before I went to sleep at night or that I would scour the supermarket shelves looking for the prettiest looking artichokes – who does that?! I couldn’t wait until the next shoot, until I could shape and tailor the food and light just so to get the perfect image I had in my mind’s eye.
Eat, sleep, shoot, repeat – yes please!

So, in October 2019 I decided to step away from the safety of my designer’s spinning chair and see where this new culinary journey of mine would take me. It’s something I’m now so deeply passionate about, my every waking (and sometimes sleeping) moment, my mind is racing full of ideas, set ups and themes I want to try out, I just have to be patient as there are only so many hours in a day!

Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been a smooth ride so far. I’ve had my fair share of disasters, melting chocolates in the sun, setting sauces, browning fruit and chocolate goo that looks like lord knows what in my shots! But learning the tips and tricks a successful food photographer has up her sleeve, and putting them into action, is so much fun – I have a major thirst for knowledge so bring it all on!
No one said it was going to be easy

I’ve found over the last couple of years, food photography is prettttty hard! Composition is harder than it looks (one out of every two food photographers say it’s one of their greatest challenges), waiting for the sun to go in/clouds to move/rain to stop, can be very frustrating, but when you get it right and the clouds move in front of the sun to diffuse the light perfectly, you click the shutter, and you know you’ve got the shot, it makes it all worthwhile. Of course, we could use a nifty little diffuser here, or even a white sheet, but I’ll tell you all about that in due course. ;)
My first tip for you

Being a complete foodie, I love to cook, bake and make, and I love even more that food is now playing a role in my work – I just have to remember my golden rule – ‘Always eat just before I shoot!’ The one fall-back of being a food photographer is being around delicious looking food all day long.
So my very first tips for you in my very first blog post are these:
1) Eat before you shoot
2) Have healthy snacks to hand - this is a must for me
3) Don’t pick at the food you’re shooting, because:
a) once you start you can’t stop (been there, done that)
b) you’ll be surprised how many calories you can consume in one shoot, mindlessly picking at bowl of tasty props
c) you might have forgotten that you just sprayed that fruit with lord knows what to make it look super delicious. Eeeek!

So I’m going to leave you lovely lot with that thought and I hope you will come back and see what #tips and #inspo I will share with you next time.

Thanks for stopping by! x

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