It’s hard to believe that it’s the last week of the online food photography and styling for bloggers workshop that started in early January! It’s been a great experience. Most of the photography classes I’ve taught have been one or two days events. While the face to face work is great… having 4 weeks to work with someone and see how they take your feedback and apply it to their work has been really amazing. I love to see those “a-ha” moments!

It’s also been great to work with photographers from around the world, and learn about some beautiful new food blogs, like The Winter Guest and AgoisFoto, both Spanish blogs by workshop students.

Here’s how the classes work. Ron Goldman & I craft 4 different lessons about various aspects of food photography, from the lighting, shooting angle and camera aperture to how to pick props and make the food look the freshest. We also cover some basics of how to prep your photos for the web so they look the best online. The lessons are packed with sample photos and setup shots (with natural light as well as with artificial light of various types).

Each week, students download the written lesson (in PDF form), and have the week to study it and practice shooting on their own schedule. Each lesson includes an assignment that introduces new skills to practice (as well as continuing to work on the skills from the previous weeks). Ron and I (and often, other students!) are available to answer questions on a Q&A forum, whether they are questions on the assignment or other aspects of food photography. In January’s class, this message board was very active with questions from everything from how to deal with reflections on silverware to what the best way to manage long term image storage to how to setup a blog.

If you wanted to attend the workshop that Béa & I were teaching in France but weren’t quite able to make the timing or the finances work, these online classes might be a great option for you! Sure, it’s not France, but you’ll have lots to learn from!

The class starts again this Friday, February 3rd, 2012 and again on March 2nd if you’d like to attend.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your interest in our Food Photography & Styling Workshop! We are opening up official registration today, as of now.

Here’s a little more about the workshop:

Student rate: $2250 US
Non-student rate: $1650 US (includes accommodation, same meals and drinks only as those offered in the workshop). There are limited spots.

Beside soaking in the French culture (hello farmer’s market and village life!), and a lot of hands-on exercices to teach you food styling and photography (we’ll cover from camera basics, use of Lightroom and Photoshop, to lighting), included in the workshop are:

- 5 night accommodation (May 19th to 23d) Note that rooms are shared
- 5 breakfasts
- 4 lunches
- 3 dinners
- Food/drinks we will shoot with the workshop
- Soda, coffee and tea all day
- Wine during critique hour
- Bikes which will be available for your use at no charge Saturday through Tuesday
- Transportation to and from group activities
- A goodie bag from Béa & Lara

We strongly recommend that students who want to attend the workshop own an SLR camera, if their main interest for attending the workshop is food photography.

Update: The workshop is now full, but we are taking names for the wait list if you are still interested.

To register, please send an email to lara AT laraferroni DOT com, that includes:
– Your name (and name of your traveling companion, if applicable. Non-student companion prices are listed above.)
- Your mailing address
- Your blog address, if applicable

(If you are concerned about potential email server delays, you can leave a comment here first, followed up by your email with your details.)

Registrants will then receive an email (and contract to be signed and returned), and details on how to submit a $300 non-refundable deposit to confirm their registration. In case the list is filled, they will be placed on a waiting list.

Confirmed attendees will then receive a detailed (but tentative) itinerary, and more details about how to complete the full registration.

We hope to see you there! We are excited to make this happen with you all.

Béa & Lara

Let us know whether you are interested so that we can confirm this time slot! We’ve had a lot of interest, so we’ll be opening up the official registration soon! Look for an announcement, and don’t delay signing up, as the class will likely sell out quickly.

We cannot wait to meet you there.

I hope you all had a very merry holiday and a great week leading up to the New Year! Just stopping in briefly to announce the winner of the giveaway of our Food Photography & Styling for Bloggers class. Via random number generator, our winner is Stacy Ernst!

Stacy – I don’t have your email, so please email me for further info.

Happy Holidays everyone!

I’m also happy to announce that we are giving away a free spot to one lucky participant! To enter (see fine print below), all you need to do is add a comment below this post, that contains the text “I want to take your class“. Only one of these comments per person gets you an entry. Additional comments won’t get you more chances to win. Make sure that the email address you leave with the comment is valid so we can contact you if you win!

You can also qualify for a second entry by letting others know about it. Simply post about this give away… on your blog with a link back to this page, on your Facebook page, pin this page on Pinterest, or simply Tweet about it with the hashtag #FoodPhotosForBloggers with a link back to this page. Then, come back here and leave a second comment here letting us know where you posted (with a link please!).

This giveaway runs this week only, from December 18, 2011 until 11:59pm (pst) December 23, 2011. All entries posted later than that will not be counted.

I’ll announce the winner here on December 26th. Wouldn’t this be a great way to ring in 2012?

Good luck everyone!

The inevitable fine print:

Want to know how we pick the winner? All entries will be assigned a number based on the order they are received. The first valid comment will be entry 1, the second entry 2, etc. At the end of the week, all entries will be added up and that number will be placed into a random number generator to select the winning entry.

The giveaway is limited to 2 entries per person.

This giveaway is void where prohibited by law. Winners will be responsible for any applicable taxes and/or fees associated with the receipt of this prize.

If you do not agree with or cannot follow these rules, please do not enter.

A few Wednesdays ago found me somewhere particularly unexpected: on the rooftop of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel with about a million bees. The bees are the project of Chef Gavin Stephenson, who was accidentally inspired after a chance meeting with Corky Luster, Bee Ambassador. I’ve heard that happens. What makes this particularly interesting though is that Stephenson, who shoulders the title beekeeper as well as chef, is allergic to bees, so epi-pens are always close at hand (luckily, he hasn’t had need of them yet).

The bees, I learned, all feast fairly close by, on the maples that are scattered around downtown. The bees all orient themselves by flying straight from the hive in a single direction. So, the best place to get stung is to stand right there. If you stand off to the side, they pretty much ignore you.

They are housing two types of bees at the Fairmont, although for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what kind they were. I was snapping, not taking down notes. The bees naturally segregate themselves into their own hives, and produce very different looking and tasting honey. One type is clear and golden, with citrus notes while the other has a greenish tint and I swear has a hint of freshly mowed sweet grass. Both are delicious.

I’ve been feeling a bit bee-like myself for the past few months. Flitting from project to project, and making the honey. It’s been chaotic and busy and pretty much wonderful. And, now, I finally have some great news to share from a couple of those projects!

First off, the food photography & styling book I began last year is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

I couldn’t be more excited about this book. While there are some great books out there on food photography now, I think this book is a bit different. Sure, there are lots of tips and techniques outlined by me on lighting and exposure as well as food styling basics that don’t require toxic chemicals, but what really makes me excited about this book are the case studies about some of my favorite food photographers and stylists currently working in the field. I had amazing contributions from Colin Cooke, Iain Bagwell, Lara Hata, Sara Remington, Lisa Golden Schroeder, Dennis Becker, Charlotte Tolhurst, David Land, Francine Zaslow, David Clancy, Valery Rizzo, Johan Vanbecelaere, Keiko Oikawa, Diane Cu & Todd Porter, each sharing their personal stories, tips and beautiful work. I know I learned a thing or two from them and I hope that you get as much from their insights as I did!

Right now, I’m just putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of my next cookbook! I’ve kept kind of quiet on this one, mostly because the publishing process is so long and I know that tempting you with something you can’t get for over a year is kind of crazy. But, the time has come to share a little and ask for some help. You might ask yourself what cookbook could possibly follow up one on Doughnuts. More doughnuts? Nope. But, definitely snack food!

But not just any snack food. After doughnuts, I started playing around with more whole grains and better sugars, and my next book is all about that: Real Snacks: Sweet & Salty Treats Made WIthout All the Junk. Think Twinkies, made with whole grains and no high fructose corn syrup. Or Doritos, with no MSG or Red #5. These are snacks that taste great, have the flavors we all crave, but made from real food so you don’t have to worry about consuming all those “ates” and “ites.” For those of you (or those with kids) with allergies, there are all sorts of suggestions for how to make version that are safe to eat, including nut free, gluten free and vegan options. There’s also a whole appendix on DIY pantry staples like powdered sugar, yogurt coating (for pretzels and the like), garlic & onion powder, vanilla extract, evaporated milk and chocolate syrup!

The book isn’t out until next fall (see, publishing takes a long time!), but I am looking for a few recipe testers to help me put the finishing touches on the recipes. If you are interested, send me mail with your favorite junk food and any dietary restrictions and I’ll send you a recipe or two to try.

There’s much more to come, including a little tour of my new food photo studio down here in Portland, and several other great cookbooks I’ve shot over the last couple of months, but now I have to fly!

The AMD awards honor outstanding folks in three categories: food, photography and entrepreneurship. A strange combination, for sure (although I personally feel connected to all three). I haven’t watched all the videos yet, but I encourage you to check out at least the photography section, where one of the photographers has created these amazing Alice in Wonderland type images while another helps connect photographers with non-profits to produce heart lifting (and breaking) images around the world. It’s powerful stuff.

Plus, if you vote, you might win something.

photo courtesy of Matt Armendariz; Styling by Adam Pearson

See, this photo hits one of my own personal challenges in food photography: Making a landscape photo look great. Whenever I am required to shoot landscape (and it usually takes a requirement), I cringe a little inside. It’s quite a bit harder to get depth into a photo when you have limited vertical space… and I find myself trying to figure out what in the world to do with all that horizontal space around it (unless I know that some copy will run there).

For this challenge, make a simple, non-lettuce based salad (I highly recommend following or at least adapting Matt’s recipe, because tomatoes photograph beautifully) and shoot it in a landscape composition like the original photo. Note where the light is coming from here too… you are going to need some sort of bounce to offset that lovely backlighting.

It’s really helpful when you use the new diptych format when you post your results! For this diptych the original photo goes on the top, and your take on the bottom.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of August.

I knew I perhaps had a problem at the last blogger meetup I attended. As everyone was going around telling a little bit about themselves and their blogs, I began to worry. Which blog to I choose? Do I really list all of them? People might start falling asleep by the end. But, some people know me from Cook & Eat, others from Still Life With, others know me as that crazy doughnut lady or the photographer who is sharing a studio with Clare Barboza. And, would it surprise you if I said I had possible plans for even more?

The time had arrived to give my blogs a single, simpler home. Now you can find (almost) everything that I blog all in one spot. You can subscribe to the whole kit and kaboodle, or just the categories you are interested in:

• Cook & Eat
• Still Life With
• Doughnuts
• Photography Portfolio
• Love

I also added a snazzy new archive page. Literally. The plugin I’m using is called Snazzy Archives, and it’s kind of sweet looking.

I’m sure there will be kinks I’m working out of the next few days, but I hope you enjoy it!

I’m happy to announce the first of what I hope becomes many food styling and photography workshops in my new studio space, Spare Room! The classes are small, so if you are interested, you’ll want to get your tickets soon before they fill up!

You can purchase tickets on Brown Paper Tickets:

Natural Food Styling & Photography

This 1/2 day Natural Food Styling & Photography Workshop is for anyone interested in learning the basics of food styling and photography for editorial purposes. We will focus on simple plating and propping of food for the most appealing photos without resorting to tricks that render the food inedible. We will also cover creative lighting techniques using natural light. Students should have a working knowledge of their camera setting. This class is limited to 6 people.

Cost: $99 (plus ticket fees)
April 17, 12:30pm to 4:30pm

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/104299

Natural Food Styling & Photography

This 1/2 day Natural Food Styling & Photography Workshop is for anyone interested in learning the basics of food styling and photography for editorial purposes. We will focus on simple plating and propping of food for the most appealing photos without resorting to tricks that render the food inedible. We will also cover creative lighting techniques using natural light. Students should have a working knowledge of their camera setting. This class is limited to 6 people.

Cost: $99 (plus ticket fees)
April 28, 12:30pm to 4:30pm

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/104302

Low Light Food Photography

This evening photography workshop is for anyone interested in learning how to deal with low light situations when photographing food. We will focus primarily on using off camera speedlights to replicate a natural, daylight look for food, but also cover a few tricks for getting the best results from alternative light sources such as candle light. Students should have a working knowledge of their camera setting. This class is limited to 6 people.

Cost: $99 (plus ticket fees)
May 3, 5pm to 9pm

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/104305