How many times have you seen one or two people carefully snapping photos of their food? I know that the photographer in you can spot a few errors in the way they set the focus or how terrible the lighting is in that restaurant. Almost instantaneously, you would wonder if you can make some money from food photography.
Well, the short and simple answer is yes. Yes, you can make money from food photography!
Demand for Food Photography
If you do a quick search for blogs today, you would definitely see that there are a lot of food blogs and self-confessed foodies taking photos of their meals. If you turn on the television, you would find at least 10 cooking shows. And if you check a newspaper or a magazine, you would find tons of ads for restaurants or dishes.
In 2004, a guy named Tucker Shaw photographed every meal that he ate the entire year. Soon after the year ended, he published a book about everything he ate that year which was aptly entitled “Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of the Mouth” and because of its popularity, it inspired people from all over the globe to do the same. So is food photography in demand? Very much so.
Flicker, one of the biggest website for sharing photos has a lot of food photography groups and millions of uploaded pictures of food.
So is food photography a profitable niche for a talented photographer? Very much so.
Starting a Food Photography Business
Food photography is just like any other form of photography, except of course, the main focus is the food. And aside from breathing, eating is a necessity of life.
It will never not be needed
Restaurant owners need it for advertisements and their menu book. Food manufacturers need for packaging. And professional food bloggers need it for their websites.
If you want to start a food photography business, you have to remember that each photo you take must represent the taste, the smell and the texture of the food. With food photography, you have to capture all the senses with just the sense of sight! This makes the job much harder.
Step 1: When you start a food photography business, make sure that you have the right techniques, so read about effective food photography.
Step 2: Put together a portfolio of your best food photographs and make sure that it will showcase your talent for photography.
Step 3: Next, decide now whether you would like to open a local photography shop or if you want to sell food photography online.
Local: If you will go local, of course, start with the restaurants in your area and see if they need a food photographer. You can also consult with publishing houses if they have an in-house photographer and if they could interview you for it.
Digital: If you decide to go the digital way, the first thing you need to do is to create a website or blog. List all your services and categorize the food according to food type (pastas, entrees, etc.).
Step 4: Start marketing! Now, here comes the make or break part of your food photography business. A lot of talented photographers fail because they do not know anything about running a photography business. There are a lot of books or photographers where you could get advice.
Food photography is easily one of the areas in photography where you could make a reasonable income. There is always going to be a demand for it and a lot of people are willing to pay to get quality food photos. Take advantage of this opportunity! Just be sure that you know all the best food photography practices and all the best business strategies. You can learn a lot from this stock photography resource and in fact that’s where a lot of food photography shots are found. Have a squizz at the link above to see if it suits you and if this is the type of shoot you want to take further.
…hope this has been of some help.
Ray Baker
