Flipping through a magazine, your eyes focus on the juicy red tomatoes sitting atop a bed of fresh lettuce. Driving down the street, you can’t deny the billboard showing cheese stretching from a piping-hot slice of pizza. Creating these images for the food and beverage industry is a rewarding, yet often overlooked specialty. Join professional food photographer Joe Lavine as he teaches you to create images that make your clients happy and their customers hungry.
Joe begins the week by introducing you to five main categories within this niche of photography and discussing the pros and cons of each. As you learn about the commercial and advertising, packaging, editorial, stock and fine art markets you begin to see and think about food images in a different light. In the studio Joe provides helpful demonstrations that illustrate how to set up a basic shot and introduces you to the tools of the trade (including tweezers, Q-Tips, glycerin and paintbrushes). After practicing on a classic meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a glass of milk, you graduate to producing images of food items of your choosing—everything from styling the shot to delivering the final product. Focusing on the unique challenges of photographing beverages, Joe teaches you techniques (and some clever tricks) to make a bottle look cold and how to create the illusion of steam. You also learn how to compensate for bubbles, frosted glass, colored liquids, and the difference between staging hot and cold beverages. During group critiques, Joe gives valuable feedback on your images as you identify ways to improve. Understanding that the business and marketing aspects of being a photographer are as important as the images you create, Joe covers contracts, usage rights, rates and the importance of adhering to a budget. He provides pointers on building your portfolio, having an effective Web site, using direct mail marketing and successfully entering new markets.