This is a topic I've been meaning to write about for quite some time. I teach and coach a lot of photographers who are truly great food photographers, but they don't believe so. They will go out of their way to try to prove to me that they are not as good as I tell them they are. It breaks my heart. What Is Imposter Syndrome? The phrase, "imposter syndrome" was coined by two clinical psychologists, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes in the 1970's, so this is certainly not a new idea, and it came about when Clance and Imes were studying very successful women in the academic world who had reached great success but felt like they were just lucky. There's more to it, but you get the idea. So yes, it's a real thing. Simply put, imposter syndrome is when you feel like you are accidentally successful, that it was mere luck involved with your success and that sooner or later, someone ...
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The Best Food Photography Backdrops, Backgrounds, and Surfaces
There are several types of food photography backdrops, backgrounds and surfaces to choose from these days. I'm going to break down the different types, and when it's best to use each one. I'll also share some resources for where I get mine, show you how I store them, and how I show them to clients before our shoot day. The very first thing we need to do is define these terms as many food photographers are actually confusing some of these terms when describing them. What Is The Difference Between a Background, Backdrop, and a Surface In food photography, anything your food is sitting on is a surface. Anything BEHIND the horizon line of your surface is a background, which some people also call a backdrop. I'm not sure how this started but when food blogging was starting to take off, several bloggers started calling anything under their food, backdrops. This can get ...
Using Photography Marketing Lists To Get Clients
There are several ways to make money with your photography, and freelance photography jobs is a big one. I even have a post on the blog listing food photography jobs. What I figured would help you is telling you HOW to get freelance photography jobs. So I'll be making a series of posts about this. This works for any photography discipline, not just food. I talk about getting photography clients heavily in my Food Photography Club membership site with several courses and webinars about the topic. There's a lot to this. I realized that I haven't written much about this on the blog, so this will be a helpful series for you. Before we get into this first part - I do need to clarify something. I will be talking about working with businesses as your clients, commercial clients. This is called B2B (business to business). As a commercial photographer, I am never taking ...
Avoid These 14 Mistakes On Your Photography Portfolio Website
If you are a photographer, you MUST have a photography portfolio website! Instagram or Facebook is not enough. The goal is to send ALL traffic to your website. You use your social media channels to get your clients OFF of the social media platforms and on to your website so there are no distractions from them seeing all of your fabulous images. This post will be talking about all the mistakes I see photographers doing with their websites. I have looked at 1000's of photographers websites. How? From my free Facebook group and from my website review service. In order to get into my free Facebook group, you have to tell me why you want to join, AND you have to show me your website or show some proof that you actually do food photography. The Facebook group has over 5000 members so I've seen a ton of websites. I am constantly shocked at what some people ...
What Is Lens Creep And How To Stop It
Lens creep is a really annoying issue that happens with a lot of lenses. Many times you don't even know your lenses are doing it until you notice your framing on your image just changed, and it cropped into your shot. As food photographers, we need to use a few different types of lenses. We have prime lenses, and zoom lenses. For those of you starting out, here are some lens basics. Before we go into what lens creep is, you need to understand how lenses physically work. Prime lenses have one focal length, like the 100mm lens or the 50mm lens, for example. That number, the 100 or the 50, is the focal length of that lens. And because there is just that one number, that’s what tells you it’s a prime lens or fixed lens (same thing). Zoom lenses have a range of focal lengths. One of my favorite zoom lenses is a 24-105mm zoom lens. So this lens can be a focal length of 24mm ...
Myth: Never Use The Color Blue In Food Photography; Wrong!
I've been shooting for a long time. There are all kinds of weird photography "rules" that have been around and keep resurfacing that really don't make much sense. One of the most common myths is this rule that you should never use the color blue in your food photography. What Is The Origin Of This "Rule"? I believe this rule started in the 1970's when food stylists were called Home Economists. I think this became a rule from that era, when food photography had, shall we say, much to be desired! Just have a look at this post where I featured some hideous images from that time. Let's be honest, there's a lot of things from the 70's that should have never happened, and this rule was certainly one of them. There IS a lot of talk about this with the psychology of color in general however. When people talk about the best colors for restaurants and food packaging, over and ...
