154: 5 Tips to Improve Your Food Photography with Rachel Korinek

In this episode, I share a handy dandy photography tip and we talk to Rachel Korenick from two Love Studio about five things that you can be doing to level up your food photography game. Hey there everybody. This is Bjork Ostrom coming to you from St. Paul, Minnesota, home of the can you guess the baseball name? Not the Minnesota Twins, the St. Paul Saints, the minor league team here in St. Paul. And if you ever come to Minnesota, you got to make it out to a St. Paul Saints game just so you can see the little pig that delivers the baseballs to the ump. It's actually not a little pig. It's a huge pig partly owned by Bill Murray. Fun fact, that is the baseball team, not the pig. Although maybe the pig comes with the baseball team. Anyways, that's not what we're talking about on the podcast today. We are actually talking about photography. But before we do that, wanted to share with you a little Tasty Tip. And the Tasty Tip comes to you each week care of WP Tasty, which is the WordPress plugin site that we operate kind of as the sister site to Food Blogger Pro. The idea being for wptasty, we wanted to make available for other people the plugins that we're using for our own sites. And we have three right now. One is called Tasty Recipes for anybody that has a food blog. It allows you to mark up your recipes in a way that Google and Pinterest and search engines can understand them as recipes and display them appropriately. We also have Tastypins, which allows you to optimize your images for SEO and Pinterest. We won't go in depth into explaining that, but if you want to check it out, you can check out the tastypins page on wptasty. Really important for anybody that wants to be intentional about their search traffic and their Pinterest traffic. And then we have Tasty Links, which allows you to automatically create a link. Could be an affiliate link. It could be a link to your page by including a keyword. So maybe if you wanted to link to Espatula anytime you mentioned spatula, you could put that as the keyword and then link to that with the affiliate link of your choice and even allows you to automatically add a little disclosure to it as well. So those three plugins are the plugins that we offer over on WP Tasty. And each week WP Tasty, quote unquote, sponsors a little Tasty Tip on the podcast, which today the Tasty Tip is about photography because that's what we're going to be talking about. And the simple and quick tasty tip is this. The tasty tip has to do with protecting your camera. And it's really easy to do that if you ever lose your camera. You want to make sure that people have a way to find you and return that. And you could add a little tag to it that has your name and your information, which might get in the way. You could put it as a label, like you could print out a little sticky label that you put on the bottom. But then your information is displayed every everywhere you go. But you could also, and this is something that I would recommend you think about doing, write down your information on a little three by five note card, take a picture of it. And then this is the important thing, make sure that you lock that picture so it can't be deleted. And that way the picture will always be displayed on that camera. If anybody opens up and they look through the photos on your camera, that will always be displayed as your information in case you ever lose your camera. Now, that also means that you have to have the card still in the camera, but it's just a simple little thing that is really easy to do and might come in handy someday if you ever lose your camera. So that's the tasty tip for today. And it is very fitting because we're going to be talking about photography with Rachel from two Love Studio. And Rachel's going to be sharing five important things that she's learned over the past years as she has built her photography practice as a professional food photographer. So we haven't had a food photography podcast for a while, so I wanted to make sure that we did this. And there's going to be some great tastes. So you can get out your notepad, you can jot down some of these actionable items that Rachel's going to be talking about. So let's go ahead and jump into the interview. Rachel, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me. I love the food blogger pro community, so it's awesome to be here.

Yeah, for sure. Now, the first thing that people are going to wonder, it's a podcast and you have an accent and people often say that about me and they're like, you're from Fargo. I'm like, not Fargo, Minnesota, but close. But tell us a little bit about your background and where you're calling in from today.

Yeah, so I'm actually calling from Vancouver, Canada, but as you can see, I probably don't sound like a Canadian. So I'm actually an Aussie, an Aussie, professional food photographer. Now, I recently just moved to Vancouver at the start of 2018, but prior to that I was in Melbourne for five years working with clients and magazines down there. So born and bred Australian, but married a Canadian. So I kind of feel like I'm a bit at home here in North America.

Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. And we were chatting a little bit about that. We were at a conference, everything food. And you had mentioned that you'd recently made the move. So we're going to be talking a lot about photography, but one of the things I'm interested in right off the bat, with your professional background as a photographer, as it relates to building a business, you're in a spot, I'm guessing. You know, people, you're connected. What was that like to make the move and transplant into another place? Did you have to rebuild your clients? Were they remote clients that you're shooting for kind of in your own studio and then sending them images anyways? What was that like?

Yeah, so I think. Well, first off, my husband got a job which was like his dream job that he was working towards for five years. So, you know, when he got it, you know, I was thinking, I've got to support him. But there was this part of me inside I was like, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm building my business. I feel like I'm gonna have to start from scratch again. So I'd say it's a little bit of both. There's definitely clients that I've had to pass on to other photograph photographers in Australia because it's sort of work on the ground at their studio or they would send me products. It's really difficult to send, you know, heavy packages across the world to get them shot by me. So I definitely had some clients that I no longer, I guess, no longer have, but I've passed them on to some photographers that I was mentoring down there, which is really awesome, I think, to open that spot up in terms of, like, social media and the Internet. I have had clients from all over the world, so I can definitely still take some with me. But I think it's a little bit of making new connections here, building up a business more in Vancouver and North America. So I think that also it's okay as well, because you don't want to be stale as a professional either. You always want to be pushing boundaries and making new connections and diving into a new market. I think at this point in my career, I'm really ready for, so we'll see what happens.

That's Great. That's awesome. Vancouver is a great city to do that in as well, so it's a great spot for that. What was the job that your husband got? Just out of curiosity.

So he works for Lululemon, so he's a campaign photographer for their head office here. So he was the Australian New Zealand brand photographer down there. And it's such a bigger market up here, so he had goals to, you know, come over here and do something different. So he'd been working on that for a long time, so it's exciting that he's finally be able to switch it up.

You guys are a family of photographers. That's awesome.

No, isn't that cool? He's the one that actually. Well, no, actually, we. It's a bit of a random story, but he was the one that inspired me to do photography, so. Yeah, that's really cool.

That's great.

Yeah.

So we're going to be diving into that, talking about. Specifically, we're going to be talking about five different things that are really important for photographers, specifically food photographers, to know and understand. But before we get too far into that, I want to hear a little bit about your story. You touched on it just a little bit there. But when did you start shooting food photography and how has your kind of career developed? What is your focus now?

Yeah, I started back in 2012, which really, I mean, it's six years, but it feels like a lifetime ago. So that in 2012 was when I picked up my first DSLR camera and I started two blogs. As you do when you start a blog, you think you need to start.

It won't be much work.

I'm just going to do two. So I just started to. I was blogging about things that made me happy about hobbies. So I had all kinds of things. But I. I was really gravitating towards cooking food and shooting it. So it kind of just started from there. And I thought I would document my process of starting food photography to push myself to put my work out there and create content all the time. So that's kind of how I started. And then I was lucky that I kind of got in before Instagram was a big thing. So I wouldn't say there was as much access to food photography as there is now. So I started to get clients very early on and I was able to sort of like, work part time and do my freelance so I could build up my skills in that area. I think I'm lucky in that I found something I'm really passionate about. So that I mean, there's lots of niches of photography that are amazing, but, you know, when you find that something that there's like that fire burning inside of you, you're really willing to go the distance, to put in the time and energy it takes to create still life, which is a super hard niche of photography to. Yeah, to get into.

Yeah. And for those that aren't familiar, when you say still life, what do you mean by that and why is it difficult?

Well, still life could be like food. Photography is a type of still life. It's anything where we're creating the scene, so we're responsible for placing everything, for sourcing. Everything is where, you know, when you have, like, landscape or street photography, you know, you're capturing what's in front of you and you kind of have to move yourself around to get the best angle. But still life, you know, we have this vision in our head that we have to fully create with props and food, you know, backgrounds, light, all those types of things. So there's a lot of things going on, as you can imagine.

And the interesting thing is that it is a profession that's kind of molded into. It was previously multiple different professions, and in some ways it's kind of like shaped and morphed and molded into one single profession. Like, you used to have people that were stylists and photographers and, you know, lighting, and you'd have all these individual roles and more and more of those are starting to get rolled up. So do you consider yourself also a stylist or when you go out and do a shoot, is there somebody else that's doing the styling?

I think that's a tricky one because I think there's a differentiation between stylist and food stylist. So for a food stylist, you know, you really have to have a lot of knowledge in terms of, like, cooking and not necessarily, you know, like, we're not talking about 80s McDonald's, you know, fake sort of food photography, but there is things to be said about cooking a turkey and how you approach that. So it's still plump but not dry. And there's all those sorts of things that go into it. I wouldn't consider myself a food stylist. I would say that I do styling, but depends on what the job is. I know where my skillset lies when I need to get somebody else in to work on a specific job. And it's really great to work with a team because you get to. I get to focus on the photography. The composition happens at two sort of stages. Styling level, but then how you compose in the camera, so I can focus on that, editing, lighting. And it's really great to work with a team because, you know, everyone is working for their strengths. So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's one of the things, even just in general with business that we found is like, as much as possible, if you can have somebody focusing on one thing, really beneficial, interesting reality. For a lot of the people listening to the podcast, I would assume that as the individual creator, a little bit different, they're shooting for their blog, so it doesn't make sense to hire stylists. But when you do a shoot with a budget, with a brand, it's going to make sense for them to be efficient and to really focus in and have those different people doing those different roles.

Absolutely.

And I think important for people to remember that are listening to this, that. And this is one of the great things about doing an interview with you is that it's this reminder of all of these different things that exist in this world. This world being food, recipe development, content creation as it relates to food. And a lot of people that listen to this podcast aren't necessarily food people or they aren't in that niche, but just how many little subcategories there are.

There's a lot.

Yeah. So you don't have to think like, okay, this is exactly what it looks like. You can be creative in thinking about what are the things I'm most passionate about and where can I really dig deep and focus in on. Go ahead.

Well, I was going to say I think it's awesome that you can kind of work out what that is for you and then craft your business around that. So there are times where clients will expect you to do everything. But I think you can really stand your ground and say if you want quality work, if you want the stuff that you are really excited about, this is what I do and this is what I need to get in someone to get into in order to produce that quality work.

Yeah, for sure. That's great. So let's jump in here. We have five different things that we're going to talk about from a photography perspective, and these would be important considerations for food photographers. Is there a better way that you'd say that? What would you say these five things are?

Yeah, I'd say food photographers, definitely. And, you know, when. When we tend to find, you know, when we're googling, you know, how to improve photography, we kind of think like improve is, you know, I'm a beginner and I'm trying to Improve it. So these tips are also, you know, anyone at any level, even for myself, you know, if I'm shooting for a client and I want to improve the shot, these are the things I would go through. So it's not necessarily just for beginners. These are the things that I really see that make a difference, no matter what stage of photography you're in.

Great. So even if you've been doing this for a long time, these are important things to look at, to shake up, to reconsider, and we can jump into those. Before we do that, I want to say this and hopefully we can talk more about it at the end. You also have a free photography course, so we'll link to that in the show notes. Otherwise you can go to2lovestudio.com and there's information on that. So if you want to go deeper on it, that's available. And we're going to hit some really important stuff here as well. And then we'll talk a little bit more about that at the end.

Yeah, exciting.

So the first thing that you talk about is textured backgrounds. And I think people will know backgrounds in general, but tell me about textured backgrounds and why those are so important.

So, yeah, texture is really important in any sort of photography, I think. And the reason being is that a photograph is two dimensional. So for food photography, how do we get the people that we're, you know, the audience that we're targeting, how do we get them to, you know, connect with our photo? How do we evoke emotion? And so one of the ways is to add texture to the image so it kind of looks more 3D. So with backgrounds, they are, you know, they're the backbone of our shot. They can really make or break an image. And when we. I mean, textured backgrounds aren't the easiest thing to acquire. And sometimes, you know, I think when you're starting to acquire your backgrounds, you'll tend to just find things that are kind of flat or have like a matte finish. So texture is anything, you know, that has some grit to it, you know, that might be like plaster or sand grains or, you know, even multiple layers of paint can have a texture. So it's. When you're, looking at it, it's something you can kind of see. It's not flat. You can tell there's some patterns and shapes within. It is, you know, what I would consider the textured background.

Yeah, I think of this time when Lindsay and I, we lived in the Philippines for a year and we went to this market and it was this loud and crowded market and there was hundreds of people and she was trying to find a background for food photography because we didn't travel with our backgrounds to the Philippines. And so we were navigating this crowd and we found this table maker and he had made these tables and they're super affordable. But Lind, the one that Lindsay saw was the tape, like the super old, kind of decrepit, falling apart table that he was selling the tables on. And he wasn't displaying it because it was so old. And it was us, like trying to communicate to him not speaking Cebuano, him not speaking English, being like, that's the table we want, not the new one. And because I think it had some of that texture that you're talking about.

It's all the way too. And, you know, really beautiful pieces, they kind of just happen organically. It is difficult to make them as well. But with Instagram, there's so many background places that are emerging and competitive as well. So, you know, you can get sort of canvas ones or wood, there's even really good vinyl that you can start getting now. Even though to run your hand across it, it would feel smooth. There is this appearance of texture. So I would say texture just really allows us to turn that two dimensional image into something that our viewer is going to connect with.

That's great. So for those that want to find what you'd consider to be a good textured background, would there be some go to places that you would recommend, places that you really like, or would you say, hey, in order to have it be really authentic, you should make it on your own. What would your recommendation be?

I think it depends on your skill set. So there are some tutorials out there how you can create textured sort of looks with paint. So Belbis, if you check her out on Instagram, she did a guest post on my blog and she sort of does this tutorial where it's kind of four or five different colors of paint. So you kind of choose similar hues and then you just sort of dab them around. And that can work really effectively. The biggest thing I think with creating backgrounds is the first one or two times that you do it, you're not going to be awesome at it. So it's a matter of, you know, just keep. You can go layer upon layer upon layer. So you just wait for it to dry and you try again. So if you have the time to do that, I think you can really create some cool things. You know, you can throw sand in there or you can get plaster and add paint to plaster and play around with it. But at the same time, if you, if it's something you aren't good at and it takes a lot of time away from, you know, where your main focus is, it might be better to, you know, get some off. You can get great vinyls off Amazon or there's. I've got a whole bunch from Food Styling Backgrounds on Instagram. Angani's done a lot of custom things for me, which is really cool too. You can send them a photo and they're much better at making it than I am. So awesome.

That's great. And I'll say this for any Food Blogger Pro members. So if you're a member of Food Blogger Pro, we have a discount to a company called Ericsson Surfaces. And they do. They have a huge variety of different backgrounds.

And so that's a perfect example of textured backgrounds.

Yeah, And I'm looking at one like it's kind of this exposed paint and it's chipped off and it looks like something that maybe you'd find in a barn if you go in and, you know, are searching through the wood that's been in there for years. So, so great. So that's really helpful and I think an important consideration. One last question about the backgrounds. When you're shooting, are you also putting some type of background at the end? Like. So I'm imagining a little bit of like an L shape. Are you putting up a board at the end of the background in order to do shots at like a 45 degree angle or.

Yeah, yeah, you can definitely do that. I guess it depends on. There's a couple of factors like the height of the table that I'm shooting on, the angle and lens combination. If you have a really large background, sometimes you don't need the L frame because the background is just continuing in the frame. But if you're doing a really straight on shot, you will have to get something that will look like an L frame, which is an interesting point when you think about texture. When you have an L frame, you don't want a background that's too busy. So we still want to have that texture there, but we want to make sure that it's not competing with our main subject. So that's a really interesting. Yeah, good thing to think about.

Next thing you talk about here is this idea of capturing shadows. Can you talk about why shadows are important and how you can capture those?

Yeah, I, I love shadows. So, I mean, I would. I think it's been about 18 months now, but I said to myself, like, my goal in shooting, I think I said for the next six months is to really explore and capture shadows. And I'm just totally in love with it that I've just continued to do it. So I think what we got to remember with photography is we don't have light without shadows. So they both come hand in hand. And being a self taught photographer and teaching a lot of students, and I did this myself, when you start to teach yourself, you want to add more light, more light, more light. And you get to this point where you just have too much light and we have no shadows. Shadows are important for revealing dimension, but also that texture that we're talking about, they help to reveal the form of our shapes, of our dishes. We see the texture. So that is another key aspect of making that connection for our viewer and turning that two dimensional image into a three dimensional image.

Yeah. One of the things you said was that it's possible to have too much light. How do you know if you have too much light? Is that something that's just a look and feel kind of thing? What is your recommendation?

So I think we need to remember that we're talking about food photography here. So with weddings and portraits, people, people don't want to see the texture on their face. They want it to be really smooth. So in niches like that, we see really airy subjects with not a lot of shadow. But for food it is different. We want to make sure that we are capturing shadows in order to tell our viewer what's happening in the frame. So someone once said to me that you can always tell what the light is doing by watching your shadows. So if you do manage to have too much light, there's too much fill, you're using a lot of reflectors and you don't have shadows. Your images will feel very flat and you'll look at them and you won't make a strong connection as much as an image with a little bit of shadows. So I think that just gets to a point in everyone's journey where we just, you know, we're so focused on manipulating natural light and exploring that we get to a point where we don't have any shadows anymore. So you got to kind of come back a little bit. But I think that's okay because you're still working out what your style is and natural light's always changing, so it's always something you have to reassess.

So when it comes to the shadows, I would imagine that there's multiple different ways that you can kind of manipulate the light. And this could probably be an entire podcast episode on its own.

Yeah.

But one thing I can imagine people doing is going super extreme and saying, okay, I need to have shadows, therefore I'm going to put the light here, and I'm just going to cast this mega shadow. So the other extreme is a super flat image that's really, really light. How do you land somewhere in the middle where you. You still have shadows, but in a way that's not overdone?

Yeah, well, I mean, as humans, we like to simplify everything. And I find a lot of times we have two boxes. Right. So we'd have bright and airy or dark and moody. And you've got to fit into one of those categories, but there's a whole bunch of categories in the middle. You could just have bright, or you could have bright and moody. You could have dark, but not a lot of shadow. So I would say to bring it back to the point where you have shadows, you want to try and diffuse your light less. You may even get closer to the window and not use a diffuser at all. One really great thing to use is what's called negative fill. So that would be, like, a black foam board that you would place on the opposite side of the light, and that's just going to soak up some of that light so we're not reflecting it back onto our scene is a really easy way just to get a little bit more shadow. So when I say more shadow, think about, like, the depth of shadow. So you can have a shadow, but it can be very diffused and transitional, but it could also be, like, deeper and darker as well. So just playing around with some negative fill, you know, close to your food or further away, just to see how the depth of that shadow changes the image, is a really great thing to do.

Cool. And there's two things you mentioned there that I think would be good to clarify. One was a diffused light. Can you talk about what it means to diffuse your light?

Yeah. So if we think about, like, our window, our lights coming through there, if you had, like, baking paper, would be a really great example. You can stick baking paper over the window, and that would be diffusing your light. You know, also a white sheet. You know, you can also buy professional diffusers, but anything that's, you know, the lights coming through is and is diffusing onto the scene is basically it.

And when would you do that?

I would say you really want to think about what you're shooting. So what sort of food, what sort of emotion. What sort of story are you trying to tell? So if you diffuse light, you typically get soft light. So that's when we have soft shadows that transition, they're a little bit lighter. So any kind of, you know, a breakfast scene or a summer scene usually has diffused light. That. That's sort of, you know, it's really soft. We're focusing on the colors, things like that.

Got it. And then the other thing you said was a negative fill, which is something I've never heard about. So.

Yeah, it's a.

Usually fill would be you have a white board that reflects back, but you're saying in this case it's black. How does that work?

Yeah, yeah. So when we think about fill, we're basically, we're filling. Are we filling our scene with more light? So when we have a white reflector or a white bounce card, you know, the light is hitting that and coming back onto our scene and filling our shadows. So with negative fill, basically we want to avoid that bounce back onto our scene. So by putting a black card opposite to the light, the light is being absorbed in a way and isn't bouncing back onto our scene. So that's a really good way to make sure that we're not totally killing the shadows on our scene.

That's great. Really interesting.

Yeah.

Okay, Number three, you talk about always using layers. What is a layer and why should we use. Use these?

Yeah. So I think layering in any still life is super important. Layering is one of, I would say, the most popular lesson that I teach in some of my masterclasses, like my composition essentials. And so basically for me, how I think about it is layers of interest when we're building our scene. So, you know, that could be, you know, what garnishes are we focusing on to put on our dish? Or if we're baking a piece of, how are we making sure that the top of the pie is interesting? So are we doing a lattice work or are we using a little cookie cutter to create a little symbol in the middle? So I like to look at it as the things that we're actively thinking about in order to create interest in the scene. So the viewer comes and thinks, wow, this is amazing. I like to think three or four layers of interest is what we should aim for on our set. So layers to me is food, but also props.

Got it. So let's walk through and do a made up shoot. So let's say that I come to you and I'm a chocolate chip cookie company and like I the Only thing I have right now is a chocolate chip cookie, and I want it to look awesome. How would you go about in a situation like that, layering for that shoot?

I think that's a great example because it is a flat subject and we tend to struggle with flat subjects, so. So cookies, there's a number of things you could do. You could potentially have like a little box that you could stack the cookies inside. So the box would be one layer. You could put baking paper in there if you're able to, with any sweet goods, sprinkle some sort of powdered sugar on top. That could be another area of interest. You could also maybe stack the cookies themselves or they could sit on, like a little cake stand. So thinking about how you can bring products props to sort of just create more than the cookies, you know, if you're able to have any sort of gooey chocolate that you can put on the top, just so there's like that additional thing that we're looking at in the image.

Got it. I will. This will be a shoot that maybe you'll be able to do someday. I recently did a pinch of Yum Instagram takeover and I talked about one of my favorite cookie recipes growing up. Up, it was called Three ingredient Cookies. And I would buy a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies, and I would take a paper nap, like a paper napkin. And I would get it wet and I would put it on it and then I would microwave it and then I would take it out and they would be like freshly baked. They wouldn't be.

Yeah, it would be terrible. But anyways, they had that appearance. Yeah.

But I was able to share that. That quote unquote recipe with a pinch of Yum Instagram followers. And I doubt that it'll be one of the most popular recipes ever, but maybe that will be the. If I do a photography shoot, that'll be what I shoot for cookies.

Yeah, I think that'd be interesting.

Love that. So the idea, being with layers, that you are trying to give the photograph more story, more personality, more to look at, why is it. Why is it important to have layers?

So I think it comes back to context and dimension in the image. And because we really want to evoke emotions within our viewer, we want to make sure that we have all those little pieces of detail that makes a larger story. So at the pie, I'm trying to think of the best example that I have. I think I use this chocolate cake that I cook, and it's a beautiful cake. God, it tastes amazing, but it is very ugly. And it ends up, you know, once you take it out of the oven, it kind of always ends up sinking. And so, you know, if you put that. If we just shot that as it is, like, it's just a big brown sort of mess. So there's less story there, there's less feeling. But, you know, as soon as we take that and we might put it on in a textured cake tin, we might sprinkle some icing sugar over the top. Like, we might allow the cracks to be a little bit deeper so that we're looking and cutting a slice out. We can start to see all these little details and personalities and facets of the food that we can start to make a story with. And it just completely transforms it from, you know, the brown blob to something that's, you know, I can see the inside. I can see the cracks. I can see how the, you know, the icing sugar's on there. We can sort of imagine a little bit more how it would be to eat that particular food.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And with any photograph, as much as possible, you want to surround that with the context and the story for that photograph, whether it's food or, you know, an athlete or model or whoever it would be.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And that's why I like to call them layers of interest. Just so, you know, if you really think about that interest, like, how many interesting things do I have around my subject? Is it a good way to think about?

That's great. Awesome. So number four, color theory. This sounds like kind of an intimidating thing, especially if you're not an art student. So why is it important to understand color theory as it relates to food photography?

Yeah, well, food, I think in order for us to really connect with that, color plays such an important role. So I think I was speaking about this at the conference, actually. The example is, like, a strawberry. You know, we know our brain knows what a strawberry looks like, what. What color it should be. So if we see anything that kind of differentiates from that, you know, if it's brown or if it's yellow, we sort of don't want to eat it. So making sure that we're getting really strong colors in our image is just such a simple thing that we can do to bring them to the next level. So color theory sound might sound intimidating. It's actually really quite easy. There's a number of different color pairings within color theory. So the easiest and the one that I like to use the most is called complementary colors. So basically, in color Theory, we have a color wheel and has all of the colors in it. And so complementary colors is just a way of pairing two colors together that are on the opposite sides of the color wheel. So a great example would be blue and orange, which is a really easy one to work with in food photography because a lot of baked goods kind of sit in that sort of orange area. So being able to take your baked goods, pairing them with, you know, maybe a background that has a blue hue or a blue linen in there, well, it's just going to allow the image to be more aesthetically pleasing. So there's a little bit of design theory behind that. But basically, if you take those sorts of complementary color pairings, it really sort of guides you as to what colors to pick to go with your food.

That makes sense. So do you have. Let's use the complementary colors example. Do you have the. Those kind of memorized in your head, or do you literally have a color wheel that you can look off to the side and say, okay, if I know that I'm shooting this, you know, strawberry, strawberry, period, then you can look and say, okay, what's the complimentary color to that? And then grab a board or a towel or something like that that goes along with that.

Yeah, I would say I definitely know some go to ones that I tend to use all the time. There are more complex or more advanced pairings that I probably would need to get a color wheel out. But there's a ton of free resources for color wheels. You know, even if you just look on Google images and you can see what's across from. From one another, I think I tend to like to use the orange and blue one a lot because it just really works for me. But you. If you find something that is sort of working for you or you have those sorts of props, you know, you'll just sort of remember those color pairings.

Got it. And so, you know, hey, if I'm gonna do a baked good, that use the cookie example again, that's kind of like yellowish, not orange necessarily, but it's kind of that in that range that you can say, okay, I know that blue would probably be a color that goes really well with this as opposed to brown or red or, you know.

And there's a lot of color pairings. And, you know, I, for people are listening to this, you know, take these things with a grain of salt. You know, just because the complementary colors say blue and orange, if you want to use something else, like, go for it. It's just if you're feeling like you're getting stuck or, you know, because we can have too many colors in an image. So, you know, what am I aiming for? It's just a really nice way to help you just pick props, you know, I think works best.

Yeah, it's nice to have some guidelines that you can use to start, but not necessarily rules that can't be broken.

Yeah, so the orange and blue one, you know, I think that's really simple, especially for bakers out there. So, yeah, love to see them try that one.

Great. And then number five, we talk about focusing on the details of the food. Why is this something important for food photographers to understand?

So going back to still life, you know, we're responsible for creating that entire scene from nothing. So there's so much going on in food photography. You know, what our food is doing, how we're cooking it, how are we styling it. Then you've got how we're manipulating the light, how we're going to edit it, how we're taking that, our camera settings. So there's so much going on that. That at the basic level, we can sometimes forget about those little details in our food because we're so busy with the other, how many things we need to do. So I like to think about it in two ways. So we have our overall scene, but then we have the smaller micro area, which is our food. So really focusing on the small details that we have there. So that could maybe tie back into sort of layering. Know what garnishes are we using? What kind of lattice work are we putting on our pie? That's going to make it a little bit more interesting. How are we sprinkling? You know, we might be sprinkling chia seeds on, you know, our little bliss balls or something like that. So just thinking at the food detail, like, have we done enough to make sure that that really shines? So my style of photography is, I like to call it food portraiture. So really focusing on like minimal. Minimalist props so that I'm really have strong sort of food styling as much as I can. So making sure the food is like really the hero. And I think that comes down to making sure that we're looking at the little details in our dishes and making sure that they're as strong as they can be.

That's great. So to do a quick little recap here, we talked about the importance of textured backgrounds, the importance of capturing shadows using layers. Number three, number four, color theory. And then five, focusing on the details of the food. I think those are really Great, actionable things for people.

Definitely.

Let's, let's. As we're coming to a close here, let's take a little bit of time here to speak to the person that is in the beginning stages. Maybe they're in their first year, maybe they've been doing this for a while, but just feel like they're kind of in a rut with photography. What would your advice be to those people in order to kind of break through to that next level? How do you continually improve as a photographer?

Yeah, I think that's part of the journey. There's this idea that when you get to be a professional, you don't have creative blocks or you don't have days where you hate photography, or we don't get in ruts, and it's just not true. So we're human beings at the end of the day, and we're doing the best that we can. But every time you get, get to the next level, you know, we're always shooting for what's next. And with photography, there's always something new to learn. So you definitely get in creative ruts or, you know, when you're really pushing boundaries and learning a new skill, there's definitely times where you're just not getting results. So I'd say that the most successful photographers probably just keep pushing through. Just, you know, when you face something that is challenging, you know, just remembering to yourself that I'm learning a new skill, I'm not going to be great at it right now, but if I keep going, I'm going to get better at it. And then you just get to the next point where you have the next thing that you're trying to get better at. So I definitely know what it feels like to be there, and I think we all go through that. So just knowing that it's normal and part of the process, I think is really important.

Yeah. And it's a good reminder because I think sometimes what can happen is from the outside, we can look and see other people and we can think that, hey, they have it all set and they know what they're doing and they never are frustrated. And everything they create is beautiful. And we're looking at the highlight reel for many, many people.

Yeah.

But what we don't see is that kind of constant struggle and effort that happens behind the scenes and those bad days that happen because very rarely do people document those, even though it's so, so, so calm.

Yeah, definitely.

So I think that's a great thing to call attention to. And were you going to say Something else.

Well, you know, I guess for me moving to Vancouver, like, you know, I sold a lot of the things that I had. I sold gear, I sold props. So I've got to a place where, you know, I'm, I'm starting again with all that stuff. The light is different here in Vancouver and things are opposite. So like a north facing window is not as good as it is is in Australia. So I mean, I'm in a space now where I'm learning new things, like I'm acquiring different props. I'm kind of trying to work out, you know, what the light looks like, what my space looks like. I don't have the ideal shooting setup because we moved, you know, but you know, those things just happen. So I just wanted to share that with people because sometimes, you know, when you look at my Instagram feed or my portfolio, you think that everything is, you know, I, is organized and I'm, I've kind of made it. But you just keep pushing yourself. So. And there's always areas where things don't go well or you're rebuilding. So definitely happens.

That's great. And it, that actually ties into. You had mentioned kind of having to sell a lot of your stuff and I'm guessing you kept a handful of it. The most important things, one of the things I know people love talking about and hearing about are the pieces of equipment like the photography gear. And I think all photographers know that, that it's not the gear that makes the photograph. But we love talking about it. So can you share some of the things that you love most? I know that you have a page on your site where you talk about the things that you really like and the gear that you use. But what are the things that are most important or most helpful for you as a photographer?

I would say my favorite lens is. So I shoot Nikon, so I've got an 85 1.8 and I just love that lens. It's actually super light as well, so it's really, really good for overhead shots. But it's a narrower focal length and it's considered a portrait lens. So I like to shoot with that because it helps me get my sort of minimalist style. There's less in the frame, so that is not a typical food photography lens. But it's kind of my go to. So I really like that one. Just for creating my sort of style, I would say I couldn't live without a tripod either. So even when I'm shooting artificial light in order to get really crisp, sharp photos, I don't have the steadiest hands in the world. So a tripod definitely makes things easier. And then if you are creating a big scene, it just helps that you can have the camera set up. You have your hands free to move things around. So those two pieces of gear, I would say also crucial in having a shoot that goes well and feels more joyful than more work. Being able to tether as well to the computer will really help your composition. If you're not doing that already, you can definitely do that. In programs like Lightroom, you can get a cable for about 50 bucks a tether tools cable and it just will transform your images. So I love to be able to do that because I also can't rely on the back of the camera to see if things are in focus. And it just helps you see the whole story and pick up those little details that really make strong images. So those three things I would say are crucial to getting my sort of style. I don't know that I have any props at this point that I couldn't live without. I kind of, I think I got rid of 99% of mine in Australia. So I wanted to start again from a clean slate, knowing my styles changed and just invest in a few, few more simple pieces. So I'm kind of working on like a prop capsule at the moment, which I know people get excited about. So maybe another podcast episode.

Yeah, that's awesome. Great. And I know that as we're wrapping up here, one of the things I want to make sure that you have some time to talk about is for those that want to learn more, you have some courses available, free course. And you also have some master classes. Can you talk about what those are and how people can learn more about those? We'll link to them in the show notes as well.

Yeah, so I have a 7 day free email course which just goes through some really powerful tips that will actually make a difference. So I do like to share as much as my knowledge to, you know, beginners as possible. Then I have two master classes, so they're online. So one is Lightroom Magic. It's the editing secrets to create food photography that you're proud of. And then the other one is Composition Essentials. So that is how to step up your styling and compose next level images. So I like to take teach masterclasses basically so that you can learn a subject really in depth and become a master in that area. With photography, there's so many things that we need to learn that I like to focus on all of them in depth, and you would just go through from one subject to another. And I think that's how you end up getting work that really shines. So if you take a course and it's just kind of the basic levels, you won't progress. You know, if you're really interested in composition, learning about all the tools and theories is really important.

Yeah, that's great. And like I said, we'll link to those in the show notes. And that's part of the process is continually learning and stretching.

Yeah, there's always something to learn with photography. So that's why I say it's a journey, not a destination.

Yeah, that's great. All right, that's a wrap. Last thing. Where can people follow along with what you're up to? We talked about your courses, but would love to hear social media and then your site as well. Where can people learn about a little bit more about you and follow along with what you're doing?

Yeah, so I have. My site is2lovesstudio.com I blog all things teaching, food photography over there. So you can head over to the site and check out some of the articles. Also on Instagram is where I spend a lot of time, maybe too much. So 2 Love Studio. You can find me on Instagram. I do lives, I do photo challenges, Q and A. I recently just got story highlights, which is really exciting. So I'm sharing a whole bunch of resources, settings, Q&As, a whole bunch of fun things. So I hope you come and join me.

Awesome. That's great, Rachel. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

It's awesome. I hope to see you guys there.

Hey, wonderful listeners. Alexa here bringing you the review of the week. And this is one comes from Julie from julieseatsandtreats.com and it says, I look forward to each new podcast. So much great information. I always leave feeling inspired and refreshed. Keep up that great work. Thank you, Julie. And thank you all for listening and tuning in this week. We so appreciate our Food Blogger Pro podcast family from all of us here at fbphq, make it a great week.

Sam.