Food Styling and Photography Workshop

This workshop has ended but please send an email to [email protected] for future workshops and events.

Who We Are:

I’m a former pastry chef and baker. I also worked for Whole Foods Market as a bakery manager for 10 years before becoming a stay-at-home dad and a full time food blogger. I’m a self-taught food and drink photographer with features in web and print  including Gluten Free Living, Huffington Post and The Los Angeles Times The camera I use is a Canon 6D and I switch between my two favorite lenses, a 100mm macro and my 24-70mm.

Alanna is a also a former pastry chef-turned food photographer, stylist, videographer, and cookbook author. Alanna’s cookbook, The Alternative Baker, just won an IACP award for Best Healthy & Special Diet Cookbook. Alanna currently works with Sarah as a food stylist for the New York Times, and her work has been featured in web and in print, including Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Go Gluten-Free, GFF Magazine, and The New York Times. Alanna shoots with a Canon 5D Mark III and switches between her 50mm 1.2/L, 100mm macro, and her newest lens a 35mm.

Sarah is a self-taught gluten-free baker/home cook, who started a blog while earning her PhD in Education and now, four  years later, works as a food photographer, stylist, videographer, and freelance web designer and developer. In addition to working as a food stylist for The New York times, Sarah shoots product and recipe photography for many companies for national web and print campaigns. Sarah shoots with a Canon 5D Mark IV and switches between her 50mm 1.4

The Workshop Details: While spending three days on a food styling and photography retreat with us, you’ll get to eat freshly prepared gluten-free meals, sample local wines, and go on an antique prop-shopping excursion. These are just some of the perks, below is a full description of what you’ll learn from the workshop:

Camera & Workflow: From understanding and getting comfortable the manual settings of your DSLR (aperture, shutter speed, and iso) to selecting the best lens for different shooting scenarios, we’ll demonstrate our workflow start to finish. We’ll walk you through our process from capturing to processing to exporting, and you’ll practice capturing the shot you want, while taking fewer photos.

Finding your Voice and Developing your Style: Everyone has something unique to add to the conversation –we’ll help you pinpoint what that is and what tools you can use to communicate that. You’ll analyze the light, depth of field, styling, and editing of various styles, including each of our own, and then you’ll get hands-on guidance and practice in developing your own voice and style.

Styling and Composition: From conceptualizing a dish that will photograph well to styling and propping your shot, you’ll get experience creating a visual story that makes your food look beautiful and appetizing through colors, light, and more. With shooting demos and real styling assignments, including access to a collection of surfaces and props, you’ll practice the entire styling process from selecting ingredients with food styling in mind, shopping for props that will photograph well, communicating a particular mood, shooting for clients and including branding in photos.

Photography in Action and Lighting: You’ll learn how to bring life to your photos when you shoot alone by stepping in front of the lens. We’ll show you how to take food photography action shots – how to capture movement and a piece of everyday life. Important in this process is light. Manipulating natural light is essential to telling your story– whether light and bright or dark and moody, we’ll demonstrate how we manipulate light and talk through the strengths of each direction of light (both in terms of cardinal direction – NESW – and in relation to the food – side, back, front lit). You’ll get practice directing light and shadows and choosing the best light for different dishes.

Lightroom & Photo Editing: When you take a RAW image, photo processing is just as important as styling, lighting, and clicking the shutter. Our Lightroom tutorial will have two parts: the first part covers the Lightroom “under the hood”– how to use the features Lightroom, how to build develop and print presets, and how to export and upload retina-optimized images to a website. The second part covers how to maximize the functions of Lightroom to tell your story. There are infinite ways to edit a single RAW file and make it look beautiful –we’ll each go through our process of using Lightroom, what features we regularly use and why, and how to make your images pop for Pinterest or editorial use.

Photography Business: Beyond the fun, artistic elements, it’s important that you value your photography work. We’ll cover contracts, pricing, and negotiating, both in terms of sponsored work on your blog and Instagram and as a freelance photographer or stylist, providing sample contracts to take home.

Requirements: To get the most out of the workshop, please bring a DSLR camera and lens(es) and a computer loaded with Adobe Lightroom (download 14-day trial here)

What’s included?  Two and a half days of live demonstration and hands-on styling and photography lessons with a printed handbook and all food for shooting 3 nights lodging Meals: 3 breakfasts, 2 lunches, 3 dinners plus drinks and snacks. Prop Shopping excursion and welcome gifts.

Please note that airfare and transportation to and from the airport are not included in the ticket. The nearest airports are Oakland (OAK <1.5hrs), San Francisco (SFO ~1.5hrs), and Sacramento (SMF ~2 hours).

Ticket Options: We have room for ten overnight attendees. There is already a long pre-order mailing list, so be sure to reserve your spot promptly!

(4 total) Single Bunk Bed in Shared Room: $1950 SOLD OUT

(5 total) Full Bed in Shared Room: $2265 SOLD OUT

(1 total) King Bed in Shared Room: $2375 SOLD OUT

(2 total) Locals-only non-lodging: $1775* SOLD OUT

To register, e-mail [email protected] which option(s) above you would like to reserve. If more than one option will work for you, list them in order of preference and we’ll reserve your spot in that order based on availability! You will receive confirmation from one of us promptly that your spot is being held for deposit. To reserve your spot, we require a 50% non-refundable deposit up front and the remaining balance is due by May 21st, 2017.

We hope you can join us!

*We added this as a special rate for people who have a home locally because it doesn’t seem fair for people who live locally to have to pay for lodging where they won’t be staying.

By purchasing a ticket, you agree to have your name and/or website shared privately among attendees for the purposes of collaboration and, unless you opt-out, in a recap post on our blogs, Snixy Kitchen, Foodness Gracious, and The Bojon Gourmet.