Food: Shoot It Or Eat It!

Back in Barcelona from France, I put all my efforts into making my dream of becoming a photographer true. As I said before, I still didn’t know what kind of photography I wanted to take professionally, so I had to try as many types as I could to be able to decide. First on my list: Food photography. My thought process was: if I love cooking it and I love eating it, then photographing it should be fun. How wrong was I?!

My first step was to go on YouTube and watch a million tutorials to learn the science behind food photography. That helped, but still I felt like I was missing out on something. So I contacted the photographer behind one of the food photography blogs that I followed (http://www.365mm.cat/en/) to see if he was willing to give me private lessons of the essentials of food photography. And he said yes!

His name is Martí Sans and from minute one I realised that his outgoing personality and his contagious optimism were surpassed only by his photography skills and his beautiful art. Martí was an aspiring baker who one day figured out that what he enjoyed the most was not baking but taking photos of what he baked. Like he puts it, he used to photograph what he cooked, now he cooks what he photographs. He started taking photos of what he baked at school and now he works on campaigns for big food brands, takes his food photography workshops throughtout the country and runs a succesful photography business.

After learning the basics of food photography during our private lesson, I attended his workshops to learn more about the craft. Food photography is about making the dishes look like they are your very last meal. Even if for that purpose you need to stuff the food with glue, plastic, varnish, hairspray or paint! I soon realised that it just wasn’t for me. Being a control freak, this kind of photography sounds like it would be perfect because everything you see on the photo is controlled to the minimum detail. But it also requires being extremely patient, paying attention to details and having a good eye for composition and for making the dishes look like edible pieces of art… when they are actually everything but edible! Besides, I am a people person and it kinda felt very lonely in there just you and your subject.

I leave this type of photography to the masters like Martí.

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