281: The Business of Food Photography - Building a Food Photography Career with Christina Peters

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Hello. Hello, and welcome to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Alexa and I'm part of the Food Blogger Pro team here. We are all so excited that you decided to tune into the podcast today. Today we are interviewing Christina Peters, and she's going to be talking all about building a food photography business. And it may seem like food photography is just one aspect, blogging and creating an online business, but Christina's actually made a business from the process of photographing food. It's a really fascinating interview and she talks in depth about finding clients and what shoot days look like and how to set a rate and so much more. It's a really good one. We're excited for you to jump in. So without any further ado, Bjork, take it away.

Christina, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much, Bjork. I'm so excited to be here with you guys.

Yeah. Before we hit record, one of the things I was talking about was one of the reasons I love interviews like this is because I think it. It overlaps with our. The. The audience that we speak to, which is bloggers. Right. We talk a lot about social media, we talk about blogging, but it kind of, I think, for some people will open the door into another area that could either complement or be the area that they focus on, which is a career in food photography, which you've had for a long time now. You've been focused on food photography in this career of food photography for a few years. Tell us a little bit about your story and how you got into this.

Yes, thanks. So I actually have been taking pictures since I was a child, and then I went. I have two college degrees in photography, but I didn't discover the world of food photography until I was actually assisting a lot of other photographers when I was right out of school. So I took it upon myself. I thought technically I knew enough to do photography for a living. I didn't know the business side, so I was assisting a bunch of photographers and a few of them were food shooters. And so that's when I really clicked in that world. So I started getting some food clients. But I was really like the Jackie of all trades, man. I shot it all. I did headshots, I did product. I shot electronics. Right?

Yeah.

No weddings for me. I did one and it was horrible.

Hard line. Hard line. Yeah. I have so much respect for wedding photographers.

Dude. Oh, my God, that's so hard. That's an ultimate challenge right there. And plus, I didn't like that stress of, like, that most important day in Their life in my camera.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of stress when you're shooting like something that's frozen and it's melting. But it's like a different level when it's the first dance or a kiss after somebody gets married and it's like, oh, it's like two seconds and it happens once.

I know. And if you missed it, you got to stage it. I just, whoa. I don't like that stress. Yeah, the melting ice cream, that's stressful. But yeah, I don't.

Different level. So you started to see, hey, this is something that's a pretty good fit for me. One of the things that you said that was kind of interesting is there's the photography element of it, but then there's also the business element of it. I think that's one of the realities that we're constantly coming up against in this world is for some of us, we're really business minded and we love that. And we kind of use the creative side as a way for us to build a business for others. We're really creative. We realize that maybe the business side is, for a period of time, a necessary evil until you can potentially bring somebody on to help with that. If it gets to that point. For the students that you work with and maybe even for yourself, what did you find was harder? The photography or the business side?

100%, the business side, absolutely. There are, you know, there's a lot of sort of mediocre, semi, okay, photographers who are amazing business people. They're amazing at marketing. They are on top of mind of their clients all the time, you know, and so with any product, it doesn't matter what we're selling, right. You have to be good at marketing yourself, marketing your business and knowing who your clients are and targeting them, going after the clients that you want, no matter what the product is, you know, but in our visual world, right, with photographers, when I'm working with a photographer who is confused about why, you know, I have this great food blog and I want to do food photography. Obviously I do food photography on the food blog, but people keep wanting me to develop recipes, you know, and so it comes around to how are you targeting your clients and how are they going to perceive you when they hit your. Hit your world, hit your space, you know, so when. Business side, man, it's tough.

Yeah, for sure. It makes sense. And I think people will resonate with that when they think about, hey, while hard, developing a skill in art and a craft is difficult, for sure. There's this Additional level of kind of breaking through and getting in front of people for the jobs that you have, getting paid, what you feel like is an appropriate rate, which we're going to talk about all of those things. But what I'm interested to hear is for those that you see succeeding, what is it that they're. What are some of the rhythms that they have? What are some of the norms that they have? Because I'm guessing it's different than when you think about content creators. The rhythms and norms are like recipe development, it's doing photographs for the blog or for social. But it's not as much kind of the sales world. It's content marketing. And so the main thing is you're creating content to kind of build a following and an audience. But if you're. If you have clients, if you're looking to do shoots, if you want to have a day rate, things like that, you kind of have to have a little bit of a sales mindset, which is something that we don't talk a lot about. So for those who are successful in that, whether it be students that you have or people that you've observed, or even for yourself, what are some of the things that they're doing and that are part of the rhythms of their business that help them to be successful?

Yeah, so it's a great way that you broke that down. So when you have a food blog, it really is about creating a space where people are going to find you using your SEO, Right? I mean, it really comes down to that. And so in my world, and I think in the world with the photographers who are really successful, they're selling themselves regularly, they're very consistent with their marketing, and they're going after their clients. I call it proactive marketing versus passive. So if you're sitting there, you build this beautiful site, whether it's a blog or a food portfolio, if you're just sitting there waiting for the people to find you, it's going to be a long wait. So I've always been about making that step between you and shooting a lot shorter and just going after the people that you want to target. So the people who are doing it well are constantly marketing themselves. They are getting in and having meetings with people. Right. So now we do virtual meetings. So there are, you know, photographers who meet with agencies, and we're using zoom and so we can FedEx the book in, and then we have a virtual meeting. It's about building a relationship with that client so they trust us enough to give us a lot of money to Take some photos for them. It's a huge ask, really, to go to a complete stranger. Give me thousands of dollars and I'll take pretty photos of your food. Right. So you really have to start building that relationship with people and with blogging and that type of content. The trust is there from your blog where you're emailing that hopefully they're getting on your email list, they're reading your posts. It's a completely different way of building trust.

Yeah. And it's building trust around a different thing, which is the reliability of a recipe. Like for. When I think of Pinch of Yum, one of the things that we hear people talk a lot about is we know we're going to go and make something off of Pinch of Yam and it's going to be a reliable, tested, quality recipe.

Exactly.

I think a lot of those people are thinking about what went into the photography process or the video process, because they are in the mindset of, will this recipe be a good fit for me, considering what I want to make tonight and will it be reliable? And what I hear you saying is if somebody wants to add to or focus as the primary thing in their business, food photography, as a food photographer working with clients, it's not going to matter so much the reliability of your recipe. What's going to matter is the reliability of you as a partner in the process that somebody's going through to have a deliverable, which is a photograph.

Exactly.

Whether that be for a product or for a menu or for their own social account. One of the things that you had said a few different times is you've used the phrase going after. Can you talk about what that actually looks like? And for people who want to do food photography and work for clients, how do they go after people? What does that mean?

Yeah, so, you know, I'm a total hustler, man. You know, I've been doing this a long time and a lot of my colleagues are giving up their studios. They're not shooting anymore. They're in a completely different profession now. And so I've always. And this wasn't taught to me in school. This just seemed sort of what I thought made the most sense. So I go after my clients by thinking about, first of all, who are those clients? Which people do I think I would be a good fit with? I stalk them, I look at everything they're doing visually and see if that type of photography that they are using, obviously that's what they like because you're using it. Well, that resonate with me and my style. And so if I think that's a good match, then they're on my list, they're on my target list. I'm going to go after them. And that means I'm going to be emailing them, I'm going to be calling them, and then I'm going to try and get in and show them my book. And I will also mail in postcards. So I have multiple different types of touch points because these days you need like 20 for them to even remember who you are, you know, so.

And that's that proactive marketing as opposed to kind of passive inbound marketing. It's outbound marketing. In doing that, are you essentially trying to communicate? I'm a food photographer and I can help you out with the skills and abilities that I have, 100%.

So my emails are real short and sweet. And I just introduce. If it's a total cold, like, I don't even know this person yet. It's not a referral from somebody and I don't have friends that know them in my industry. It's total cold, cold, cold stone. Then like, hi, my name is Christina Peters. I've been a commercial shooter for, you know, 27 years or whatever it is at that time. And then I give them a link to my portfolio. But then I also talk to them about a project they were working on. I also stalk them and find out what advertising campaigns they have worked on that got awards. What food packaging design have they done that has awards? So I really. They know when they get my email. Oh, this chick's been following me. She knows what we're doing.

Doing. You know, it's not a Dear sir slash Madame. Like, you get those emails sometimes and it's like, okay, especially is Bjork, which is like potentially one of those names where people don't really know. It's like, you don't have to do too much work to figure out I'm a guy, but. But I. Every once in a while I'll get mail that says, Ms. Mrs. Bjork Ostrom.

Dang.

And it's kind of an indicator for me that there's maybe something I can dismiss with it. But there's a. There's a level of personal connection and personal touch to those and credibility comes along with that by saying, hey, I get you. I know you. I've been following along. I've done the work leading up to this. It's not some kind of easy email that, that you're sending out. One of the questions that I have is, you know, as you think about what it's like to reach out to those people. What, what do you find is most important to include in those? Because sometimes we talk about this idea that it's sometimes helpful to like give before you have an ask. Is there any type of give that can be involved with that or do you find that for this type of outreach, the relationship really is I have this service, it's going to be the give is going to be a really quality product that you will get if you work with me.

So it totally depends on your type of client you're going after specifically for food. Right. So if it's an agency client, these people already know how photo shoot goes. They know the drill, they know that. So there isn't much I can teach them about that process, but I can tell them a little bit about my process. When I am doing my targeting emails, the entire goal is to get them to my website to see more. I don't write these emails even expecting to hear back from them. Sure, I will constantly hit them up. Sometimes it'll take six months, sometimes it'll take a year. But I make it so I'm top of mind regularly. And so with the pro agency type clients, the bigger brands, there's not much I can teach them and they're not going to be sort of looking around. They don't really have a lot of time. Honestly, they're producing jobs and they're like slammed. If it's a smaller client where there's no agency, this is called client direct work, then that relationship is very different. You almost need to have more trust in that relationship because they've never probably hired a pro shooter before. They really don't know what's going on. So I always suggest to make that front end content that is teaching them, hey, here's how you hire a food photographer. Here's the process of doing a photo shoot. Why do you need a food stylist? So you can write articles and things like that that could also be SEO driven that, you know, you could let that person know. Especially if you check them out and like you can tell they are not professionally styling their food and you're like, oh Lord, I can really help these people. Just sort of drop little hints in there, like, you know, curious you might want to consider or you know, check out my article I wrote about food stylists and why they're amazing and can make product fly off your shelf or whatever, you know.

And so it's almost. There's an educational component involved with people who might not Be as quick to understand the process with it. It's interesting, I think of my friend Nate, who is a videographer and I'm. I've been hanging out with him more because he's. He has an office in the same building as we do and he's kind of educating me on his world of shooting video.

Yeah.

And some of these same things that he's talking about are starting to come into the conversation. And he's talking recently about this agency that he's connected with in San Francisco and they've hired him to come on and shoot for this really big Salesforce video that they're doing. But he's also, this weekend he's up at a resort in northern Minnesota shooting for the resort with them directly. There's no agency involved, kind of preparing to do some marketing video for kind of the fall and winter season at Bluefin Bay. So client direct and then agency. And one of the things that he's talked about is he doesn't he. He's gotten to the point now where because of these connections he has and he's established with these agencies and the trust that they have with him delivering a reliable product and showing up and doing good work, that, that kind of is. There's a little bit of a, call it a flywheel or kind of a stickiness factor in, like you said, being top of mind. So once you do make those connections, how do you continue to. Or I guess the question is this, what does good work look like? Then if you are with an agency or client direct, how do you as a food photographer deliver a service and a product that is excellent? What does that look like?

So with each job that I work on, even sometimes with the same client, it can be very different. And so what I always bring to the table is I definitely end up even educating my agency clients as well because maybe they've not worked with food that much. And some of the agency clients, they're bringing in designers that don't even have experience with food. So you'd be shocked at how many huge brands I'm working with where I find out this is their first food shoot. And I got the job because I was the nicest and I seemed like the most low key somebody that you.

Would want to work with, essentially.

Right.

And you know, is this person going to be. Deliver a good product and be a good person to work with and be fun?

And so it's shocking. You know, there's people I bid against a lot and I am, I get constantly told I got the job because they've never done food before. And I seemed like I was going to be less judgmental and the nicest to work with to learn how to do this huge job. And so when they are straightforward, because you can kind of tell, I have these qualifying questions that I'll ask them just to sort of, and I'll throw out, you know, like, stand in food. I'll sort of say a few things and just see what their response is. Like, do they understand the language I'm talking about? I can't just come right and say like, have you guys ever done a food shoot before?

You know.

Right, right.

There's an agency in LA that does a lot of car work and then they got a huge food account. And so this was one of those situations where I was bidding against somebody I bid against a lot. And during the phone call, this other photographer actually said something like, it sounds like you don't have much experience with shooting food, you know, which was really offensive to the art director. And so, and what they do is, it's like a kind of before you get the job, they're interviewing you on a conference call, right? And so they're asking you questions. And so I said, you know, well, why don't I tell you a little bit about my process. And so I started mentioning, you know, we have a prep day and with this particular job, it was a week long job. So I said I'd be more than happy to come into the office and help you guys with the pre production and really get our shot list tight. And then we're going to sort of have to plan things on the, on the prep day. It might be nice to work with some stand in food for certain situations to make sure it's going to work in the packaging. And then all of a sudden they were kind of quiet and I was like, do you guys have any questions? And then the art director just said, I'm going to be totally honest with you. I don't even know what that means. Stand in. And I was like, oh my God, you guys, I'm so sorry. Okay, there's some weird language here. If I say stuff like that, just let me know and I'll totally teach you what that means. And I was like, it, like, it's crazy. It's so crazy.

Can you talk about that? Because when. That was one of those terms for me too, I'm like, I don't know what stand in food is or the other. The other day I was talking to a developer and he's, he was talking about the bus factor. He's like, I'm just, you know, kind of concerned about the bus factor. And I was like, I don't. Can you explain what bus factor is? He's like, oh, it's like, if somebody gets hit by a bus, then who's going to take over their job? I was like, oh, oh, I haven't.

Heard that one before.

Like, that makes sense. Bus factor. What is stand in food? Like? Is it. Is it kind of like when Tom Cruise has an actor who comes in, stands in for him 100%.

So when we're working with foods that are really delicate, like salads and things like that, and we don't really have our lighting 100% locked in. I'll ask the kitchen, my food stylists, to create a stand in with the dish that we think we're going to use and the food item that we think we're going to be plating with. And I do a rehearsal lighting on it with the client there in the studio or virtually. We'll, you know, I'll take pictures and send it to them via zoom or email, whatever they prefer. And then I always say, you know, this is for position only. It's called fpo. So this is what I'm thinking the light should be. And this is stand in salad. This is not hero salad. And so we're gonna be, you know.

Yeah.

Really making a.

You don't have to dress it up like it's not gonna. Yeah, it's not gonna go.

It's a handful of lettuce thrown in the bowl, you know, literally. And then often what is really, like on the back end, like, it's. It's kind of a little bit manipulative. But when they see the stand in and we're working it and, you know, I'm thinking like, this is just literally a handful of lettuce thrown in the bowl. And then they're like, yeah, this looks kind of nice. And I'm like, oh, people, this is just a stand in. Wait till you see a hero.

Right, right, right.

Hero comes in. They're like, oh, my God. Because they were just looking at the stand in for an hour.

Right, right, right. It's like the warmup band where you're like, gosh, maybe they have the settings off a little bit so it doesn't sound quite as good. And you're like, oh, my gosh, this next band is awesome. So you essentially, it looks like doing good work, which we could dive into the mechanics of doing good food photography. What goes into that Understanding that we won't really get into that. That's a given. Then there's this other kind of, you know, if there's, if there's another art, if there's the art and science. One of the arts is the art of being a relatable, helpful, kind person to work with. And I think that's important to point out and to be somebody that you want to work with. My guess is the other variable is being on time, delivering stuff on time. Because in that world I would assume it's really common to need stuff yesterday and to have a quick turnaround. So would you consider those to be kind of the three primary factors? The actual photography, obviously, who you are as a person to work with, and then delivering on time and being reliable. Anything else that I'm missing there?

All of that is awesome. And also your production skills. When you're pulling together a shoot like this, there's a lot of moving parts. I'm actually a really good producer, it turns out. But those that aren't, they need to hire someone to really help them coordinate so that you can make like your third point, the deliverables on time, what's necessary. There's a lot of retouching involved. Sometimes with these agency jobs, you got to coordinate and wrangle all that stuff so it'll really come down to the wire where there's a deadline and there's still retouching going on, but then the client's changing their mind and then the retoucher has to go in and work on it. That's going to take more time. But our deadline doesn't move, you know, so things like that. So you have to be really good at juggling an enormous amount of hats, honestly, or hiring someone to help you do that if you're not. Yeah.

So one of the things that I feel like I'm pretty good at because of having been in this space for a while is being able to quickly kind of crunch numbers around a website in a certain industry. So I can say like, okay, if you're getting started, you know, maybe you want to. If you're shooting for the $100,000 mark, at that point you can start to work with an ad network. You might get like 10 to super high end 25 RPM. That would be a thousand to $2,500. You can layer in affiliate to start to do these number crunching kind of exercises with a blog. But when it comes to working with an agency, when doing client direct work, the idea of a day rate, again, this Is something that Nate's talking to me about. He's like, yeah, 10 years ago, I could never imagine having a day rate at this period of my life to be able to go and shoot video. And it's awesome. What does that look like for somebody who is getting started in food photography with that as their profession in regards to realistic income that they can make from that? And is day rate kind of the equivalent of a blog RPM for ads? Is that kind of the number that you go to as kind of the base number for how you create an income?

Yes. So your day rate typically is your creative time on that project and then your day rate charging all of the expenses on top of that. When I'm being approached by a client and they're asking me what is my rate, that means they're probably working with a junior shooter in the past who has charged them an hourly rate or a flat fee. Day rate, meaning all inclusive. It's going to be this. And I don't work that way. And with bigger jobs you just can't. And so, you know, so with pricing, when someone is talking about their day rate. So my rates for advertising work typically start at $5,000 plus usage fees, plus all the expenses. So it's a really good job. So a usage fee is totally based on where the client is going to be showing those images. And the usage fees are based on really how many eyeballs are going to see it. And at the end of that question is how many, how much product can they potentially sell from my image the way they're going to use it?

Sure.

So if that usage is a lot, then I need to be compensated for that because they could potentially be selling a lot of that food product. But we don't deal with royalties. Right. So we have to estimate and guess on the, on the sort of beginning part. All right. This is a really huge usage. This is for a nationwide magazine ad. This is going to be in all of their. All of their stores. Like if they're franchise, for example. Right. Then my day rate is going to be this and then the usage is going to be this per image for this length of time. It gets really specific quite quickly. And the agencies rattle off all types of different usage for you when you're doing your estimate. Or they ask for the mothership of usage, which is unlimited usage forever.

Yeah, right. Which you need to appropriately be compensated for that.

Right?

Yeah. It's interesting, I think, about parallels in the, in the music world. And like you, you had mentioned royalties, but this idea of like every Time your song is played in different places, you get compensated based on where that is, how it's played. If a band covers it in a. In an arena versus if it plays in a bowling alley versus if it plays on the radio versus the background of a TV show. All of those you get royalties for. And so it makes sense when you think about it with other creative art that you're creating, you need to take that into consideration. There's a value that you get depending on the value that they're getting from using your work. Is there any type of equation that you use for that, or is that the agency coming to you with that? It feels like there's a lot of potential wiggle room with what that looks like.

There is. And unfortunately, you know, there's so many food bloggers who, when they started getting on the scene, they were just giving up their copyright for nothing. And so then it created what I call a very predatory practice with the brands where they're like, oh, we don't have to pay Christina this much. We can just get that food blogger over there and we'll give her a bag of potatoes, we'll take her copyright.

Awesome.

You know, and they're excited to do it. It's like completely flip things around. So I'm a massive copyright advocate, and I don't want people to sell their copyright. And when brands start demanding that I don't work for that brand, I mean, even McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, all of these huge, huge. Have never asked for my copyright because it's going to cost them a pretty penny, and they understand that. So we negotiate usage. And the reality is, it's food. They're going to be reshooting that recipe or redeveloping that recipe within a year's time. So very rarely do they need to have that type of usage. And so I think some attorneys are getting into the ears of these brands, and they recognize, oh, yeah, these desperate photographers will just give it all up. So let's get that. And then they can sell your stuff and you have nothing to do with it. So the music industry really has helped protect their artists, their photography industry. We don't have anything like that. You know, we do have copyright law in this country. Every country's a little different. Our copyright laws are not acknowledged outside of this country. Sometimes they are, and, you know, stuff like that. But so it gets. It gets complicated pretty quickly when you're talking about usage versus giving them full rights. I hate that term. I never use that language. I want us to Outline exactly where the thing's gonna get used and you need to pay accordingly, what's appropriate.

Yeah.

And there's no real. You were saying a calculator. It's all about, how big is that brand, how much money can this possibly bring in for them? And then it's just based on, here's our budget. Sometimes this is what we've got. Are you cool with it? And it's yes or no.

Like they come to you and they say, we have a budget. Here's what it is. Does this. What are you. What are you able to provide given this budget?

Exactly.

Yep. That makes sense.

And if they want the moon and that budget isn't going to allow for that, then I will turn around and I'll say, we can't do what you're asking here, but here's what we can do. So instead of 100 shots, we could do 50, you know, or whatever. Right?

That makes sense. Yeah.

So give them an alternative if what they're asking for is inappropriate or their budget just isn't enough now. And then, of course, there's the crazy, like, we've got 200 images and our budget's $200 and we want to shoot at 15,000 different locations. All the food is included, right? Yeah, yeah. Then there's those.

Yes. Which is, my guess, is an easy no. But at the same time, one of the questions that I have is for those who are getting started, you know, I think of our journey with it's sponsored content. So it's different but comparable in that we now have some pretty strong opinions on brands that we work with, things that we're okay with. We're not okay with a brand really controlling the voice of the content. We're not okay with putting a bunch of links in. Kind of in the same way that you've developed some strong opinions based on probably good experiences and bad experiences. We've done the same with sponsored content, but it took us in those early stages, like working for a bag of Paula Deen's frozen vegetables and like doing a piece of content for $250, that wasn't a good fit. And realizing this was so much work and we shouldn't do it again. So let's say somebody is interested in doing this. They start the process of being top of mind or trying to be top of mind for agencies. They're networking, they're reaching out, they're following brands, they're understanding the work that those agencies and those brands are doing. So they're doing that work. And at Some point, there's an email that comes in and it says, hey, we're interested in working with you. We want to hire you as a food photographer. How do you do that? Like, what does that first potential job look like? And how do you deliver something confidently that's not going to be so overblown that it rules you out from working with that. With that agency or that client?

Right. So if, when I. As soon as I get approached by an agency and I get that email, I don't respond right away. If I don't know them, if I haven't been targeting them, then I start, I totally check them out. What are they working on? What clients do they have? If they let me know what the client is in the email, then I will go try and find all the creative. What have they done in the past? What type of photography have they done before? Are they using pro shooters? Are they using food stylists? Are they using prop stylists? I try to gauge the size of the client and what type of production they're used to. Are we dealing with a $5,000 total all in production or a $90,000 production for one day? So I try to determine who they are and then I just start asking them questions and I try to get them on the phone, actually. That's usually what I bet if they're younger, sometimes they don't like to do that. They're all about the email and stuff like that. But, you know, I'm 50, so like, if the people reaching out to me are like at my age group, that type of thing, we love talking on the phone. But if they're younger, they want to be all email and stuff like that. So it might be a lot of questions and asking them things back and forth to determine what type of budget are we dealing with? And many times, Kirk, I'll just come right out and ask them, do you have a budget? Do you have a budget in mind? You know, some photographers feel you never do that. But, you know, there's a saying, the first one to list a number is the loser. Right. But I've been very pleasantly surprised when I have asked this question, like even very recently.

Yeah, we do a similar thing with kind of have a type form onboarding for sponsor content where we just have some budget levels. I think it helps to know if somebody's coming in with a $2,000 budget. That's not bad by any means. And there's going to be lots of people who will be. It'll be a good fit. But for pitch of young. The type of content partnerships that we're doing are above that. And this kind of helps to shape that a little bit. So it is something that we're asking and doing whatever we can then to fit something really quality and awesome. If it is a budget that it makes sense for us to work with.

Them on, I think that's a huge consideration too. So you were talking about, I like to call it the sliding scale of experience. Right. So what I'm going to charge on a job, someone who has only picked up the camera a couple of years ago and they're starting, they're not going to charge the same thing that I am. And the client is aware of that, and the agencies are aware of that too. I'm very open when I talk about pricing. I don't mark stuff up and pad extra crap in there to make extra money off the client. That's a huge practice in this industry. I think it's actually not very honest at all. And so I talk about that, I talk about my estimate, how it's going to break down, what the costs you see in the expenses are exactly what I'm paying. I'm charging enough of my fee so that I don't have to mark any of this stuff up. Just know when you're comparing my bid to others, you might see some different numbers in there. Ask them are they marking it up? So I have this kind of a conversation. So they're like, oh, this, this broads actually being pretty honest with me, you know, and sort of open that relationship. So if you're just starting out, you know, you could. Your day rate might be starting at 2000 for something where I might be charging 3500, 4500 for something like that, you know, so it all depends on the client.

Yeah, that makes sense. So let's say you get into this and you start to have some of these jobs coming through, you start to get some traction with it and you start to say, hey, this is something that I want to. I kind of want to focus on. What does that look like from a portfolio from a social media perspective? What are the things that maybe need a shift a little bit for people who are shifting from focusing on just blogging, getting page views, building a following for their, for their blog, versus, hey, maybe I'm gonna do like blogging and I'm gonna have this as a, as a additional component of it, or maybe just shift entirely and say I'm going to focus on food photography as my business. How do you do that? Well, from an online presence perspective.

Yeah, so that's a great question. I like that you use the word shifting because it is a shift in mindset. It's very, very, very different going from sponsored post blog content to creating visuals that are going to be used in advertising, maybe some online content in store promotions, like, you know, like I always love Panera Bread's a great example. They have beautiful photography in their stores. Right. So if you want to type of work that pays very well, by the way. So what you really need to look at your sort of your brand as, let's say you're the food blogger. You need to set up your website in a manner where you have a whole area dedicated to the pro food shooter in you, right? So if you do have a blog that has a very like a typical food blogger name and it's very obvious when you hear the name of your website, it's a food blogger, then you've got just a little bit of extra work cut out ahead of you because you have to have a dedicated section for your pro food photography. So you have to talk about that. You have to talk about. This is what I do for these types of clients. This is the type of work I offer and have a portfolio of images. Again, always keeping in your mind, who are you targeting to do food photography for? Those people want to see the images they're going to hire you for already in your book. They want to see it over and over. They want guaranteed repeatability for results. They want to see the image they're going to hire you for already in your book. So you put together your food portfolio with that in mind. And it's really important with that food portfolio, you got to show finished, beautiful prepared food shots. There's a lot of bloggers who they might not feel they're that good at food styling and they have beautiful, I call them ingredient shots where it's fruits and vegetables that are, you know, in their natural state. You have to show prepared foods, finished cooked dishes. Like what you know at Lindsay, what you guys show on Pinch of Yum, you always feature a nice gorgeous shot of that hero food dish, cooked, ready to eat. That's what you have to show. And also the ingredient shots. And if you do process shots for your blog, that's great for cookbook photography. So start breaking things down in a series and a sequence to show like, oh, wow, this gal is a baker. However, look at her photography. She really knows how to showcase the recipe, which is great for cookbooks, you know.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And one of the things that you had talked about earlier was just being really intentional to go after the clients that you want to work with. And I'd imagine in building out that portfolio, you want to build it out in a way that it aligns with the people that you want to work with. So it's like, if you want to do food photography for candy, like, don't have a bunch of salad shots, or if you want to only shoot keto recipes or whatever, it would be like, what is the genre that you want to focus on and the people that you want to work with in building your portfolio around that 100%.

Because the way I teach this is very different with my students. They basically get told all the time, take all kinds of beautiful photos, make them amazing. All different photos, shoot all different things, then put together a website. Now go get clients like, no. So it doesn't work that way. It's absolutely important to shoot all kinds of things for yourself, to discover what you love and don't love to do. Right. Because it is weird. You go on my website, it's pretty clear what I do. However, I'll get people who like how the food photography looks, and then they'll ask me to do some lifestyle stuff with people. And it's like, did you look at my website? I mean, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. That's not my jam. So that can happen. But, you know, so then, I mean, I'm able to turn that job down because I don't like doing that kind of work. And so I'm saying, you know, I'm so sorry I'm not the photographer for you, but here's some good buddies of mine who are really great at lifestyle photography. That's what I suggest, you know.

Yeah. And I think that what's great about that, to tie back to something you said earlier, is there's a. There's a process to get there. And you. And you will learn by doing. And it's not without doing that you start to bump up against some of those walls where it's like, wait, this isn't where I want to be. And you can refine that, but it requires people to just show up and to start doing it, which sometimes is the hard part. We've kind of talked through at a really high level, you know, the different stages, getting started, some of the considerations, how to get clients, what it might look like to actually do a job, what you can expect from a payment perspective in terms of a day rate and kind of some general pieces of what might Go into that. Can you tell me a story about whether a student that you've worked with or a story of your own of somebody who of a process kind of start to finish and what that looked like? Because I think it's helpful for people to hear, hey, what is it like to actually do this with a client and to go through the process of doing the shoot. Share the name if you can. Otherwise you can kind of share the general area that they were. But I'd be interested to hear kind of a quick story around what that actually looks like in practice.

Yeah, so there were some clients that I shopped for regularly, like a local high end grocery store. Right. So I shopped for Bristol Farms for many years and also Gelson's Market in Southern California. And so the process became, you know, we were like an oiled machine. So the client reaches out. Hey, we've got a photo shoot. Are you available next week or sometimes even like Wednesday, you know, if it's Monday. Yeah, yeah. Hey, we've got this advert coming up and we realize we need to get something new shot. So it's like, okay, that's great. Do you have a shot list? And then they'll say yes or no and then, well, I want to talk to you about it and see what we really might need, that kind of thing. So there'll be a lot of pre production phone calls is what I call that. So the production hasn't happened yet. We're pre planning our shoot and I'm making sure the day of the job we know exactly what we're going to be doing. Or at least we have an attack plan where we have a shot list and might be the case where if we don't cover everything on the shot list, we have our priority shot list is what I call it sometimes when the client wants to make sure, hey, throw these in if we have extra time. So the pre production is figuring all of that out. And then once the I've agreed with the client what we're doing, we have like a final shot list. Then this is when I start like going to the food stylist and the prop stylist. Okay. Hey, hey girls. This is what we're doing. I give them the shot list and these are the prop requests from the client. And sometimes we'll get visuals. Some clients even make you a deck. It's a laid out plan visually of everything they want and that's awesome. So then I share the deck with my food stylist and my prop stylist and then I Say to the food stylist, any food questions, let me know immediately because we want to get all of her questions answered. So on the day of the job, we are not missing some food product that we need. And there's no mysteries on set about what we're going to do with that. Right? So that all happens way before the shoot. And then I always do a pre production day. I do a prep day before the job. And I honestly do this whether I'm paid or not because it just makes it so much smoother the next day. Day, typically, I try to charge half of my day rate for a prep day and then the expenses. And sometimes my crew will join me on the prep day if it's a big job. So the food stylist will come in, she'll bring all of the stuff she was able to pre shop. The prop stylist will come in, she'll bring in and set up all the props. So we're each sort of working in our own little department in the studio. I'm building the set, I'm working on lighting, I'm preparing the computer for shooting digitally. And I might even do some test shots on the prep day, send them over to the client and say, hey, heads up, this is where I'm at. This is where when you walk in tomorrow morning, this is where we're at. But if you don't like the direction I'm at right now, let me know and then I can tweak it and then we'll be really full steam, ready to go in the morning. And they love that. So I create a little gallery of images. I send that to them towards like four or five o' clock in the day. Say, hey, if you don't mind, just check these out before you come in tomorrow. So we have a plan of attack. Then shoot day happens, everyone shows up at the studio, or if I'm shooting remotely, I sort of, you know, I'm emailing everybody what my schedule is going to be like for the shoot day. We're going to try and do this dish at this time. This dish at this time. We try to get two or three shots done before breakfast or, sorry, before lunch. Sometimes that doesn't happen. We break for lunch and then we do our afternoon. And so throughout the day, if the clients are there, I'm a huge fan of making a really nice client area. So they have a large television where I'm actually screen sharing what I'm shooting on the computer. So they're working, you know, they have their laptops, they're all working in the client area, you know, so as I'm shooting, it's popping up and then I walk over. Hey, just heads up. That's where we're at right now. Do you like it? Do you want to change it?

And are you just tethering over from your computer?

Yeah. So I'm using Capture One Pro. So Capture One Pro, it gets a little wonky, but it works. So Capture One Pro has an app called Capture Pilot. And so that app is on your iPad, and then that iPad is mirrored to your Apple tv.

Sure.

And that's plugged into your television through an HDMI cable.

So it's that type of stuff. Just as a tech nerd, like, I love the idea of, like all of these things kind of.

When that. When that first came out, look what we could do.

Yeah.

Now I have to buy a bigger TV in the studio.

Right? Right.

No, not really, but I just think I do. Right, right.

Nice excuse to do that. Are there any other tools that you are especially interested in or excited about or an important part of your workflow from a photography perspective?

You know, my core stuff that I just love, I have my computer, my Apple Tower. I have that as an editing base station. I work on two very large monitors here. And then when I'm on location, I have an Apple laptop. And then I also bring an external monitor. If it's an agent job, if it's a restaurant job, I'm not doing that. And then really, you know, I have different types of cameras for different types of jobs, depending on what those are. And yeah, I mean, there's so much software that's amazing.

That's right. Right. We could go on and on.

Yeah, there's a lot of Lightroom.

Is that your primary or Photoshop or.

No, I never use Lightroom. I use Lightroom when I'm teaching the students because, you know, Adobe has dominated the market with the Lightroom, and so everybody thinks that's what you have to use. It's very unstable, it crashes a lot, and I hate it. I actually use Capture One Pro.

How do you really feel about it?

Sorry about.

That's the editing suite that you use. Okay.

Yeah. So I use Capture One Pro. It's just like Lightroom in functionality. However, it doesn't crash every five minutes and it doesn't stall. And its color editor is amazing. And you can tweak it and quite nicely on set with your client right there, and then process out. And then I use Photoshop to finish everything.

Got it.

So that's my Process Capture One Pro, shoot minor edit tweaks in Capture One Pro and then process out to Photoshop and then just finish everything there. And if it's agency work, then my TIFF files go to my retoucher.

Sure.

And then he really, you know, does whatever the client wants at that point.

Yep, got it.

Yeah.

There's a lot of stuff that we covered here and I know that there's going to be a lot of people who listen through this and they say, you know what, like this, it's tip of the iceberg. We kind of covered a lot of things at a high level and they're going to be really interested, I think, in diving deeper into this world. I know you have a lot of resources that you've built around it. You have something that people can download about day rates. Is that right?

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So I have a free little gift for everyone. It's called the Four Figure Day Rate Plan. It's a 10 page PDF where I break down sort of the three main topics of getting your photography up in price, up in value. So we talk about pricing, we talk about your portfolio and then we talk about getting your clients marketing. So that's a little freebie there. You can just go to food photographyclub.com forward/pinch.

Awesome, that's great. And we will be sure to link to that in the show notes as well, so people can check that out. And then how about anywhere else that people can follow along with what you're up to if they're interested in learning more? Any other social handles or sites that you want to plug?

Sure thing. So my blog is super fun. I write on that as often as I can. It's food photographyblog.com and then you can check out my commercial site@christinapeters.com so you can see how different my blogging content is to my commercial photography content. They're two different worlds entirely. And then I have a tiny little Instagram @thefoodshooter.

Cool. Awesome. We'll link to those as well. Christina, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it.

Oh, thanks so much. It's wonderful chatting with you today.

And that's a wrap on this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thanks again for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed this interview with Christina. And as they mentioned, there are a lot of links mentioned there right at the end. So you can go to foodbloggerpro.com 281 to snag all of the links that they talked about and I wanted to let you know that we are actually in the midst of our last sale of the year. This is for an annual Food Blogger Pro membership and it's called the Gobble Palooza Sale. I love that name. Seriously. I think you should try saying it out loud because it's super fun. But during this Gobble Palooza sale that lasts Till this Thursday, December 3rd, you can get an annual Food Blogger Pro membership for just 279 and that is actually over $70 off of our current pricing. So it's a fantastic deal. And if you' looking to get access to instructional videos, step by step instruction on what you need to do to build the strongest blog that you can, as well as get access to deals and discounts, a community forum where you can ask your questions and collaborate with others. I really suggest you checking out this deal. You can actually learn more@foodbloggerpro.com sale or you can just email us@supportoodbloggerpro.com if you have any questions. But just to wrap up today, I wanted to actually end the episode with a little bit of a testimonial from a past member named Deborah and she said the value that you have offered with this program is way more than even what the actual price is. My blog is not a food blog, but I decided to purchase the program because I felt like I could learn all the ins and outs of blogging with this program. Thanks to you, I know that I will succeed with my blog. I actually have no doubt about it. You have given anyone who purchases this program a real shot at creating a blog that will flourish if they simply follow your lead and work hard to provide good content. And I love that testimonial because I think it captures the spirit of Food Blogger Pro and our membership so well. So again, that that URL, check out the deal and to learn a little bit more about it is foodbloggerpro.com sale and it'll be an active sale until this Thursday, December 3rd at 1pm Eastern or 12pm Central. So that does it for us this week. We appreciate you so much and we'll see you next time. Until then, make it a great week.

Sam.