Food Styling & Photography Backdrops, Workshops, Online Courses and Resources

I have worked in marketing and content creation my whole career (nearly twenty years now, gulp!) both in-house and freelance, and have been teaching content creation from start to finish for the last three years via workshops and online courses.

There are three things that come up over and over again with my students that you may be struggling with too –

• Finding a comfortable mix of being authentic while pushing for sales (which we all need to do) 
• Knowing what to post to offer value & connect with your audience
• Thinking bigger than social media

So today I'm going to share some simple strategies that should help you create your content -

• authentically,
• offering value to your audience,
• while gently reminding them that you offer products/services they can buy

with the added bonus that you will naturally build organic SEO and become a trusted authority in your area as a by-product!

First off let's look at the content mix and my 4/5 rule to share authentically while still pushing for sales

We all know that content creation is about sharing your passion, showing behind-the-scenes and telling your story.  People invest in people, especially at the small business end of the market.

It would be easy to tell you what our best sellers are but they're not necessarily what's best for a beginner.  We sell to a massive mix of clients ranging from top experts of the food photography industry to global creative agencies. magazine and cookbook publishers, as well as home makers, recipe bloggers and crafters - everyones' needs are unique and everybody's skill level and experience will be different.  

At the start of your content creation journey - whether thats as a newly trained photographer, social marketer, maker or crafter - your priorities and budget will be very different to that of a seasoned content creator or somebody with an established prop collection. 

That's exactly what I want to share with you today, five photography backdrops that -

• are absolutely timeless,

• will give you the perfect foundation for a strong prop collection,

• work best for those with limited lighting experience OR content creators who shoot and edit on their phone.

Its the question everyone always asks - what do food stylists use to make the dishes look so amazing in food photography? 

The real answer is years of experience and practise of course!

But you can get a bit closer to achieving that perfect burger or beautifully frosted berries by having these bits of kit on hand ready to brush, stick, tweeze, spray, blast and blaze. 

Obviously the kit you need will change from shoot to shoot, dish to dish with extra machines and kit required depending on what food you're styling - if you work in a niche food group or only bake cookies for example you'll soon figure out what they are and how best to style your food for photographs.

Hi! Thanks for visiting my blog, today I'm sharing a recipe and a bit about how i shot it and the food photography set up as, like many of you, I shoot food content at home in natural light - which can be challenging in the UK!

The recipe is for a pudding i made for a family meal last weekend and shot on a new backdrop (Delia) for some quick content to promote the food photography backgrounds you'll find on this site. The pudding went down so well I am now writing up the recipe as part of my #lazytastypretty recipe collection - if its easy, looks pretty and tastes good it's a winner for me!

Hey!  If this isn't too late for you I've just updated my foodie calendar for the first quarter 2020 - copy and paste it below or download a clean version (without weird web formatting) in my resources and downloads section for free.

If like me you are required to come up with topical or trending food content for your clients this is a big time saver, or it could help you develop your own marketing plan and give you the confidence to focus on a few dates and ignore the ones that don't fit your brand.  

Hi! Asparagus season is here in the UK so I'm enjoying it A LOT at the mo.  One of my favourite ways to eat it is dipped in eggs and rather fortuitously a friend dropped round some neighbours duck eggs yesterday so I have been dreaming about this lunch since then!

Skip down for the recipe below or get this for a food styling win - I had a happy accident when boiling the eggs!