As part of my day to day work I am developing food products through a couple of ,y other companies – Ion Syrup and Premo From London. This involves another photographic area that I never really thought about till last year when  I needed to work on social media, Twitter and a blog.  Photographing food is a huge topic and I didn’t realise just how complex this area of photography can be.  We casually flip through foodie and lifestyle magazines, catalogues and recipe books and forget someone has photographed all this food.  When you delve below the surface there are photographers building lucrative careers and developing their own styles.  After researching the whole food photography genre in an almost obsessive couple of months and myself trying to capture recipes for our blog, I became rather insecure.  This wasn’t easy. For example the great blog Top With Cinnamon by Izy Hossack is full of eat me, appetizing photography, all taken by a teenager with a real drive to cook and blog about her passion.  She has her style and sticks to it.  Other photographers, for example those working for food editorial magazines, capture full pages spreads to accommodate recipes, seasonal food guides and new products on the market.  Large format, eye catching placement of food and lighting set to suit the mood – light and bright for a summer picnic, dark mellow shades for winter comfort food cooking or careful choice of props to emphasis a theme – herbs tied with string, sacking and broken china and wooden utensils to conjure a farm home, natural and wholesome.

But how about my style –  am not sure yet.  It seems to be rather formal and restrained, but that’s what photography is about – expressing yourself and how you see what you photograph.  So here is our Pine Syrup mixed with soy and used as an anti-pasta dip. The little bubble in the sauce was a lucky accident and stops the sauce looking too flat.

You can explore my food photography at Ion Syrup Blog, enjoy the recipes and your comments welcome.

Next time you buy a recipe book because you love the photography, look up the photography, explore their work and how they developed their career.  Its fascinating stuff and adds a whole new dimension to buying recipe books.  A favourite of mine is Helene Dujardin and her blog Tartelette. Go have a look.