Food Photography Class: My Final Portfolio

My, where has the time gone? It seems like just yesterday I started this online photography class through Social Fabric. Alas, it’s been six weeks, and while I have learned a lot, I also learned that I have a long way to go!

One thing I realized is that food photography is a lot of work. If I took the time to set up all of the shots properly, I think I would only post once a month or so. However, I think that my photography should improve even if it’s not all staged as I’d like–I’m much more aware of lighting, styling, and editing tools that are available (psst . . . if you want to check out the free program we used in the class, called Pixlr, I highly recommend it!)

As part of my final assignment, I had to choose my five favorite photos. I’ll share them below, along with comments about each one.

This is by far my favorite photo that I think I’ve ever taken. I happened to get out of work early one day and stopped by a roadside stand to buy a quart of the first strawberries I’d had for the season. I love the clean background and even the little stemless guy on the bottom.

You might remember this from my mother’s day post. The whipped cream is a little overexposed, but I had so many people tell me that this photo made them hungry! It’s funny, someone in my class said they liked how I “made it look like someone had eaten some.” Well, I HAD eaten some! I was in the middle of it and decided that it would make a neat photo.

Noticing a theme here? My sister in law also made a strawberry dessert for Mother’s Day. I like how this photo shows off the shiny strawberries against the whipped cream. And, as with the other dessert photo, I think having the spoon digging in adds a nice touch.

Taking a break from the strawberry theme, this asparagus shot is one that you saw in my midterm photography class post. I edited it to focus more on the spear tops. I still love the color on this, although I’m thinking an overhead shot would have been more effective. Other than the dessert shots, all of these were taken on top of a huge entertainment center in front of a west facing window. We recently got new appliances and so there wasn’t a whole lot of other window space open as we’re still rearranging things. Let me say, getting a good angle standing on a chair in front of an entertainment center while juggling the camera and white card is not easy!

Finally, the last photo I included in my portfolio was this shot of spring greens. It was too close to the window as you can see that the left side is much brighter than the left. I still love the colors though, and the chive blossom in the middle.

I’ve had a few people ask me how they can take this class. Truthfully, I have no idea! I was selected to partake in this pilot class through Social Fabric. They are still working out some bugs in the platform, so I’m not sure when they will be offering it again. If you do an internet search for food photography blogs or food photography class online, there is a lot of information out there. There are some excellent free blogs as well as some rather pricey online classes. What I appreciated most about this class is that the size was limited to 25, and each week we posted our photos and the other students commented on them. Although it was a bit nerve wracking (especially on weeks where my photos just did not turn out AT ALL), it was interesting to see the different perspectives that everyone brought. It helped me improve how I see photos from different perspectives.

As I mentioned in my midterm post, I see this as just the beginning of a very long journey to better photography. Thank you for all your encouragement. It can only go up from here!