I love food. I love to eat it and dream up new ways to engage with all its different ingredients. I enjoy playing with my food, photographing it, telling stories about it. Clearly food is much more than a source of nutrition and sustenance. For me–and many more people like me–food is art.
My food obsession has reached an all time height, thanks to the accumulation of decades working in restaurants and writing this blog. Because of my heightened interest in food photography (and incessant questions about how he does what he does), my friend Matt Armendariz generously offered to allow me to sit in on his recent Food Styling and Food Photography class with the ladies of Food Fanatics at his studio in Long Beach.
Between jokes and colorful industry gossip, Denise Vivaldo and Cindie Flannagan offered students a handful of tricks learned over the years (nay, decades) they’ve been working in the food styling business. Vivaldo and Flannagan gave students insights into making food ready for camera and how to think about food styling as a career.
Food Styling Tips from the Pros
Use non-edible (but not poisonous!) items to prop things up.
Just because you use a cosmetic sponge to prop up a piece of meat before you shoot it, doesn’t mean you can’t eat the meat. Take the picture, remove the sponge, and dive in! The ladies at Food Fanatics suggest that if you don’t have a lot of an ingredient (say pasta or rice) you can fake a false bottom with wet paper towels to give a bowl or plate additional height.
