SOLD OUT’A Magic of styling’ one day Food Photography Workshop/ Bristol

THE WORKSHOP HAS NOW SOLD OUT

THE PRESALE STARTS 19th APRIL 6pm British time —–> BUY YOUR TICKET HERE

Grab the ticket quick -the last workshop sold out in less than 2 hours

Unlock the magic of your food photography style & create jaw-droppingly gorgeous images that will stand out from the crowd & connect your audience with your unique story.

Yes, YOU!

Your eyes sparkle every time you hear anything ‘food photography’ related and you could spend all day next to the window, photographing every angle of your favourite cake. (Even if your friends don’t get it!) It’s what you LOVE.

But you know that AS A PHOTOGRAPHER YOUR STYLE IS YOUR CURRENCY, it’s what sets you apart, what makes your work recognizable and what wins the clients, and this is something you are ready to focus on. You also know that the difference between a good photograph and the one that grabs people’s attention every time – is hidden in the details, so you want to push your comfort zone, take your food photography to the next level, and learn the secrets of styling that will take your images up a notch.

This workshop is for you if:

*you feel that your images lack that ‘special something’ and are ‘invisible’ among others
*you want to create images that are recognizable as ‘yours’
*you are curious to learn how to style the food so it looks like a showstopper every time
*you want to create images that will make people stop as they scroll down their Instagram feed
*you are confused what backgrounds, props and colours work best for the food you are about to shoot
*you are stuck and keep repeating the same photography set up over and over again

I can relate – I faced the same challenges! And in this class I’ll share the tips and tricks that I’ve learnt from the years of working as a professional food photographer & stylist.

If this gets you excited, my lovely creative, then join me for this inspirational 1-DAY WORKSHOP designed to help you find *your magic* and give you the confidence to create images that you are proud of.


What the WORKSHOP WILL COVER:

*How to UNLOCK YOUR MAGIC
Learn how to define and own your creative style. Unleash your potential and get to know the tools to help you build a cohesive portfolio and make your work recognizable.

*STORYTELLING KNOW-HOW
Learn how to tell the story that will connect the viewer with your photography and evoke emotions. You don’t want people to ‘see’ your images, you want people to ‘feel’ them.

*STYLING TIPS and TRICKS 
Learn how to bring your photos to life and to evoke that feeling ‘as if your viewer was there just about to grab the food’.
Learn how to make the food look irresistible in your images, all with ‘edible’ methods
Uncover the power of colour theory.
Learn how to build a prop capsule without spending a fortune.

Workshop details.

Price: £245 early bird, £285 full price, (early bird from 19th April – 26th April 2018)
Date: Saturday 7th July2018.
Location: The Forge Bristol, Bristol
Time: 10.30am – 3.30pm

Inclusions:

  • Hands-on styling demonstrations
  • Guided assistance to help you find your unique style
  • Small intimate class size
  • Lunch with passionate creatives
  • Live Q + A
  • Workshop course notes
  • One 30 minute skype session to get feedback on your new styling skills

Make sure you grab your ticket quick – last workshop SOLD OUT in less than 2 HOURS

 

Open to beginner and hobbyist through to semi-pro photographers.

What to bring.

Please bring a DSLR camera, lens(es) and a tripod (optional). A notepad to take notes, your creativity and a smile!

Refund Policy:

No refunds are available after booking unless you can find someone to fill your space. This event is capped at 9 attendees. Be sure to register quickly to secure your spot! The event will proceed only if 7  participants or more are registered. Travel is not included. If you intend to travel to this workshop, please wait until the minimum number of enrolments has occurred. In the even the workshop doesn’t go ahead, we will contact you to arrange an alternative solution. By purchasing a ticket you are agreeing to these terms.

Got questions? Email me!

If you have a question about if this workshop is for you, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I’d be glad to hear from you.
hello@beascookbook.com

ABOUT THE VENUE

The Forge Bristol is one of the most beautiful studios I have ever worked in. You can feel the inspiration as soon as you walk in to this space. The light in there will make you jump with excitement to grab a camera and shoot all day.


I can’t wait to see you there.

Bea xx

How I create images for a magazine – an article for Sister Mag

Aaaaaaa!!! THIS IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN! That was the first thought that flew into my head as soon as I heard the idea for the new magazine feature that Sister Mag wanted me to work on for their March Issue about Mary Poppins. I mean, who doesn’t like Mary Poppins?


The idea was to create a collection of 3 sweet recipes along with the images for a feature titled  ‘A spoonful of sugar’ and the team gave me all the creative freedom to interpret this idea.

Ready to hear all about my creative process?  Then grab a cup of tea, put your feet up and enjoy the reading! And don’t forget to let me know what you think in the comments below!

Just a little note here:

Before I’ll take you on this journey through my process of creating, I really want to highlight that none of these steps should be taken as stiff rules to follow. I am a huge believer that all rules should be stretched, bent or broken. I don’t want to impose things that work for me onto you. Every project is different. And most importantly, every creative person is different – YOU DO YOU!


Stage 1 – BRAINSTORMING THE THEME

The first question I always write down when planning my work is:
How do I want the viewer to feel my image?

You don’t see a photograph, you feel it.

Just think about it for a moment.  Everything in life is about how we experience it. How it makes us feel. Art, people, day to day situations. We can be scrolling through our instagram feed feeling uninspired and then we suddenly stop the second we ‘see’ that striking image that makes our heart beat faster. But we don’t just see it, we feel it. We connect with it straight away.

We have strong (positive or negative) emotions or no emotions at all about something before we can even describe WHY it makes us feel that way. We know instantly if we like a photograph or not, but it takes us longer to figure out what is it about the details that makes us feel that way.
We feel something- before we think about it- that’s the emotional nature of human beings. Which as you know, might make life complicated sometimes 🙂

EVOKE EMOTIONS

In photography, however, thinking about these emotions can make the process of creating easier. The minute you decide to embrace the emotional nature of your viewer and take her/him for a beautiful ride with your imaginary, that’s when the true connection happens. How we want the viewer to feel will determine the overall mood, light, colours, food (if you develop the recipe), props and background, angle,composition and styling you choose for your photograph. Really,it determines ALL YOUR CHOICES for creating the image.

This thought wouldn’t leave me as I was discovering my style at the early stages of my photography journey, and it changed totally how I approach my photography process these days. It’s all about evoking these emotion in your viewer! Not everyone will connect with your art and your message and that is TOTALLY OK. But knowing what emotions you want to evoke with your images will allow you to create your work more intentionally and will give you the CLARITY of how to capture that striking photograph.And isn’t that what we are all striving for?

BRAINSTORM the theme or RESEARCH IT

For my personal projects I usually have a strong vision in mind of what story I want to tell and I will only do a research if  I experiment with colours that I’ve never worked with before, or food that is new to me, or I want to try an idea that is different to my style.

For my client work – if there is no brief – I always do a research, because I am working with someone else’s idea and I want to explore this idea to make sure I interpret it well.

When I did a research about Mary Poppins, these few things stood out for me the most – colours (whites & reds), kites, umbrella, Britishness and the famous lines from the musical, and these few words echoed in my head: 

  • fun
  • playful
  • vibrant
  • feminine 
  • dreamy

Ta dah! I had the mood for the article!

Stage 2 – MOODBOARD

The next step is to put all these wild and fun ideas into a united vision to see what works together and what is best to leave out.

Here is what my Pinterest moodboard for this feature looked like.


What idea does this collection give me? 

  • The colours that I’ll use- white and red – which perfectly highlight my theme and the vibrant mood of this feature. The colours you use impact the overall mood of your images. TREMENDOUSLY!
    Something you have probably already noticed in my work is that I play with colour A LOT. It’s because I am FASCINATED by colour psychology and how certain colours impact our emotions. (But that’s a topic for another conversation).
  • I’ll add an element of polka dot or stripy pattern – to make the feature more fun and playful
  • I’ll add something of a shape of a kite or umbrella in food styling –  to add a fun element and create all these ‘Mary Poppins’ feelings
  • I’ll use lace napkin or cloth – for the girly touch
  • I’ll incorporate typography with famous lines from the musical

You can see that there is no food images here that inspired this article. It was inspired by the movie.

There is nothing wrong with being inspired by other food images (I am all the time!!!!), but it’s always interesting and valuable if you can bring inspiration to your food photography from other fields, like for example from film or design.

Stage 3 – Marrying the idea with the food and props.

It’s time to bring these details to life by choosing the right props and the food that will be the main star of the story.

FOOD

You can’t always choose the food that you will be working with but in this case I was responsible for the recipes too. I started by writing down few sweet recipe ideas that would reflect the mood of the story, so connect with all these words I collected in the last two stages. I ended up choosing 5 recipes that I tested, picked the best 3 and tested them again.
At this stage I had hand pies that were a creative canvas for the title of the feature ‘A spoonful of sugar’, cookies that would be cut into kite shape and hold well after baking. And of course there is nothing more sweet and more British that Eton Mess 🙂 In this case I went for Eton Mess Pavlova.

PROPS

As for the props – I chose the spoons to reflect the title of the feature. A red ribbon – as this is something you see in the movie a lot and it would add a fun element and movement to the styling. And just few more little bits and pieces to support the story of the food, but which were not too distracting from the main subject – like cookie cutters, book pages, vanilla, jam and icing sugar.

The propping is very minimal here – the food tells the whole story and the red colour helps to draw your attention to the most important elements.

COLOUR

As red is an attention grabbing colour – and can be overpowering – I only used red here to highlight the IMPORTANT things in the photographs – like typography, lines that draw attention to the important elements in a frame, and to add lot’s of depth to the image (like in the pavlova example below).

Stage 4 – Executing the idea

IT’S FUN TIME!

LIGHT

As the light is the main component in telling your story, I went for bright light, not too warm but not too cold, with minimal shadows – to support that ‘vibrancy’ feeling.

Everything sounds so perfect and easy at this stage right?? But the problem was – the light I had available that day was totally the opposite to what I wanted. It was a grey and dark day, and the light was creating very strong shadows (suprise, surprise – did I forget I lived in England?)

The good new is that once you know what light you want in your images, you can manipulate the one you have available to your liking. I shoot all my client images at 100 ISO to minimise the noise as much as possible and I wanted to keep my aperture here at least f 3.5/f 4 to have the important details in focus, so I shot all 3 recipes on a tripod and slowed the shutter speed down to 1/20. It was a dark day. I also added a reflector on the side and on the bottom to reflect the light and I played with the white balance to get the colour that I wanted to go for. It turned out 6000K was that perfect temperature that I liked in these circumstances.

ANGLE

To really showcase the shape of the food I chose to shoot all three recipes from overhead. The typography was also a reason for deciding to go for this angle.


ADDING DEPTH TO THE FLATLAYS

In 3/4  or straight on angle , you can create a lot of dimension by choosing to shoot at a shallow depth of field but the flatlays are a little bit more tricky. The shallow depth of field in flatlays might make some of the important element in the frame blurred and make it loose that crisp look. As the name indicates – the image you shoot from overhead can be ehhm…….flat……To add depth to the images captured from above, I am always very mindful of using layers and textures which will draw the viewer to the photograph and make you feel as if you are there, just about to grab the food. I’ll tell you all about it as we’ll have a closer look, I mean feel 🙂 at the final photographs.

 

FINAL IMAGES

Hand pies

 

Kite cookies

Eton mess pavlova


Here is where you can find the recipes —-> Sister Mag

I’d love to hear what you think and if you want to pick my brain,
I am here to answer all of your questions 🙂

And if you are interested to learn more about how to create a unique story with your images that will ‘WOW!’ your viewer every time, learn all the styling tricks and secrets to bring your photos to life and uncover the power of colour theory that will add that *special something* to your style  – SAVE THE DATE  – and join me on one of my WORKSHOPS on the 7th of July in The Forge Bristol . More details coming soon!

Hugs, Bea x