Amanda Long of Amanda Photographic and I dive into the entrepreneurial side of food photography, booking your first food client and wisdom for aspiring food entrepreneurs. Part 2 of 2.
Tough Cookie is a podcast that celebrates badass women in food – from product makers, to chefs, to digital food boss ladies. If you are or know someone who works in food, please send me an email at darlene (at) picklejarstudios (dot) com and tell me about it! Now booking for the 2017 podcast season.
Listen on your favorite media player, and please leave a rating and review!
Show Notes for Tough Cookie Episode 006:
Darlene Veenhuizen is Owner, Designer and Food Content Creator at Pickle Jar Studios
You can find Amanda Long’s work at Amanda Photographic
Tips for new/aspiring food photographers:
- Research the restaurant – eat their food, go there during a non-busy time and take a photo of your lunch. Post it. Don’t go into a restaurant expecting a photography gig if you’ve never eaten there before. It’s unreasonable for to expect them to support you if you don’t support them.
- Ask if the restaurant will experiment with you – ask what day is their slowest and see if you can start releasing photos for them on that day – see if it makes a difference
- Consider doing something in trade (for food?) with the restaurant in exchange to have the chance to practice.
- Eat and try a lot of different food. If you want to work with food, you have to be willing to eat.
- Have a varied portfolio – many angles, many types of food, lunch, dinner
- Get some numbers if you can, to find a more direct or quantitative direction and show a monetary value for yourself.
Amanda and Darlene said:
Go legit as fast as possible. Don’t give anybody a reason to question your legitimacy. Even yourself. Get a webpage, even if you are just starting out.
You cannot be afraid of your competition and you cannot judge yourself against your competition. Because there will always be someone who can do what you do better. There’s enough negativity in the world…you don’t need to feed into that.
Build your community to refer work (and get work referred to you).
Hiring good people is important, our business babies are worth too much to have that destroyed, so interns and second shooters, please take note – we are bosses with high expectations.
You are the only one responsible for your business.
Interview your client as well, and watch for red flags. Guide them through a process, and collaborate.
Keep an open line of communication with the restaurant/chef/food client.
Where to find Amanda:
Follow Amanda on Instagram
Follow Amanda on Facebook
You can find Amanda Long’s work at Amanda Photographic
Where to find Darlene
Pickle Jar Studios website
Pickle Jar Studios on Instagram
Tough Cookie on Instagram
Pinterest
Resources Mentioned:
Buzz Feed the Try Guys – Asian Food Octopus
Darlene’s post: Why Your Restaurant Needs A Website