Styling Soup - How It Got There

I have another edition of How It Got There and this time we are talking about styling soup for food photography. In these short videos, I take you through the project, prop selection, and the final shot so you can see what went into my thought process.

This month, I’ve been talking to you about creating or finding your style in our CreatingYOU.® newsletter. In today’s video, I talk about individual style as it relates to my own creative work and the work I do for my clients so that you can decide for yourself if you believe style is something that should be adapted.

Three Key Factors for Creating a Photography Style

Audio Block

Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more

Identifying a style in photography is something I consider to be the most difficult thing in my work. It’s because I love A LOT of things. Dark, mysterious, shadowy mood is as interesting to me as bright oversaturated subjects on colorful backdrops. 

But loving just about everything and finding joy and inspiration in it, doesn’t mean it’s true to me. 

I’m on a style journey myself. I was warned early on that reevaluating your style and being drawn to new techniques in styling and how you take photos is something that will evolve - with your experience, age, and place in life. 

And I’m there right now. I’m asking myself - do I still love my work or am I ready to explore new looks? (It doesn’t help that I’m pretty sure the answer to both of those is yes. Haha!)

For me, style was something that I knew I needed, but I initially didn’t seek it out. I only knew I’d established one when people started telling me that they could definitely identify my photography style.

I’ll say that I think it’s a much better way to go if you seek it out first. But by reflecting on things and breaking down what I put into my photos, I was able to kind of work backward to better understand what had really created it. I sum it up into these three key factors.

Knowing what invigorates you.

Most people might say inspire, but I prefer invigorate. Invigorate means to bring energy and life to, to animate, and also to stimulate. When I see art or create art that speaks to me, I feel downright invigorated. I get excited, it gives me energy, and it stimulates a sense of creativity and eagerness to be productive.

Some examples of this in terms of subject for me is where our food and drink comes from and that extends from farms to food culture and travel. Human elements in food photos, but only hints and in abstract ways, like the knife in the artichoke photo on the left above.

I’m invigorated by captures of these things portrayed in muted tones, but not those completely without color. I fall into late summer and early autumn when it comes to seasonal color psychology. And I love photos that play with light and shadows.

This also extends to the type of environments that invigorate you. I love outdoor light at dusk and dawn, foggy days, and natural shadows created by winter light. This is why I also prefer natural light in a studio setting.

What invigorates you? What do you undeniably love when you see it – either in a photograph or another work of art? How can you bring that into your own work?

Using your location and experiences.

 We all live in a place that is unique to us and we have all had unique experiences, no matter how mundane your life may feel at times.

Place and geographical location is one of the top complaints I hear for lack of inspiration. I’ve listened to one person complain about living in New York City with a lack of flowers and vegetation while I simultaneously watch another person create exceptional photos and videos of the same place. I know people who feel the Midwest is boring. Meanwhile, I can’t wait to get out and see vast fields of corn like those I grew up in when I visit my family, just so I can create new photos.

What are you overlooking? What about you, where you come from, and where you have been can you add to the inspiration for your work? Does growing up around more concrete than vegetation allow you to uncover a beautiful perspective others miss? Does being a parent make you exceptionally organized in how you work? Does being single give you more control over your time to explore new techniques? Use it.

For me, while I live in California now, I grew up in Indiana and that is where my love of food and farm began. I also have a background in nutrition which drives my view of clean, simple, fresh produce. I travel a lot and I bring bits and pieces of that in the form of props and linens home with me to use in my photos. I’m also adventurous in how I seek out surfaces.

Find that thing you do.

 A style goes beyond a subject. You can carry a style through many subjects. Style also doesn’t have to be a choice between creating bright photos or dark, moody photos.

Style can come from the type of light you always use, the same aperture, styling with a repeating composition, the angle you most often shoot at, something creative such as always shooting through or always creating deep shadows.

Start with what you like to do and repeat it. If you don’t know what that is, take a look at past photos and see if you can identify any similarities that result from something you always do.

For me, if I had to narrow it down, this is really negative space. I love space in my photos, empty space. This goes for how I style food and how I capture photos outdoors. I also feel that always using natural light contributes to my style.

And this is the biggest area for me that I’m exploring in terms of style. I don’t plan to leave my current practices behind, but I’m working to establish more things that I do to build on the style I already have.

Struggle with style? The CreatingYOU.® newsletter is here to help you find yours.

Five Things That Fuel My Creative Process (and two things that don’t)

I’m always advocating for looking outside your niche for inspiration that you can bring back to your photography, or any type of art you create. 

This practice gives us a different perspective and can help spark ideas for how to style a photo, create a mood, and fill a frame. 

There are a lot of things that I do that fuel my creative practice. They help give me ideas for new images to create, colors to combine, and stories to tell with my photos. 

And there are also some that I used to do regularly that no longer help me. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that over time they hurt my practice. It took me a while to realize this, but what I thought was helping to spark ideas was more often making me feel inadequate.  

Today I’m sharing five things that help me along with five that don’t and why. 

Five things that fuel my creative practice

• Art walks and museum browsing. I’m a longtime Monet fan and I love browsing museums with similar exhibitions whether from well-known artists or local, up-and-coming talents. Paintings spark ideas for color combinations and textures that I can explore with my food photography.
  
  

• Travel to experience culture. I travel a lot. And I realize that not everyone has the ability to do this. I can’t underestimate how important travel is in my work, though. So even if your version of it is watching a travel-related television show, I encourage everyone to work it in somehow.
  
  

  Travel gives us a better understanding of how things are done both differently and similarly to what we are familiar with. It sparks ideas for capturing how things are presented, how foods are served, and common colors and tones that relate to our cultures around the world.
  
  

  I’ve traveled to 26 countries and lived in Brazil for a while, but I’ll never forget the time I traveled to Italy specifically for a food photography workshop. My style was so stuck on neutrals, and stones, and woods, which I still love. But that isn’t the reality of kitchens in cultures throughout the world. The plaid, and florals and bright colors opened me up to new ways of thinking about my work. 

• Walking gardens and farms. Whether it’s a neighborhood walk looking at flower gardens or going to a u-pick farm, searching for unique angles, colors to coordinate, and layout designs is something that always benefits my creativity. 

• Flipping through home design and decor books. Reviewing the moods created with design styles gives me ideas for types of textures, layouts, and colors to use in my my food and product photography. 
  

• Observing wildlife. I’m an animal person. I can watch cows grazing, harbor seals lounging, and birds pecking for hours. At it’s simplest, it calms me and helps me to reflect on my work, but more importantly as I’ve started to photograph wildlife I see how I can work the colors and light of nature into my other types of photography as well. 

Two things that hurt my creative practice

• Browsing Pinterest. I still like this social media platform and I do still encourage beginners to use it as a place to see a lot of different types of photos to understand what they like in a photo style. But in the past I used it to help me generate ideas. Now, I really feel like doing that clouds my own creativity and keeps me from developing my own original ideas, those that come to me through the five things I mentioned above. 
  
  

• Browsing magazines. Photography, especially food photography, is a trendy thing. And magazines focus on what is trending. Don’t follow trends. Because they will change quickly and your work will soon look dated. It’s fun to experiment with trends, but its much more beneficial to focus on developing your own style that can be carried through your work even as your focus, and minor details around that style, change. 

For example, I was much more into dark and moody, deep woods, and all that with my work early on. It spoke to me. Today, I still love mood, but I also like a slightly brighter look. I’m not chasing trends, I’m creating what speaks to me and what I want viewers to feel when they look at my photos. 

Honestly, I stay away from most magazines for the purposes of reviewing photos. It can be a helpful practice when starting out and determining what you are drawn to, but just be sure you are viewing issues from a span of five years or so in order to see photos of all styles. 

Struggle to coming up with new ideas for your photos? Check out the creative guide,