A Class on Food Styling and Photography

So as if I didn't have enough going on in life, I'm taking a food styling and photography class this weekend and all I have to say so for is that I thought I knew about taking photos but really, I had no idea. At all. None.

We started the class going over how a camera works and then talking about the different settings that you "should" be manually adjusting. I had never heard about white balance and aperture and all that jazz -- I turned my camera on, set it to automatic and then macro and just started shooting. Not anymore though. One of the instructors (there are three, two pretty famous food photographers and one food stylist) took me through my camera and taught me how to work it and what I need to do to improve my photos -- which was awesome. Then, we broke up into groups and "styled" our own shots. Though the instructors had their cameras set up, all the other students had brought their cameras to class too and so we all got to shoot a lot of great stuff today.

Here are a couple of shots that I took and styled today:

My group, shooting with our own cameras

Artichoke detail

Fig, cheese, and grape plate

Baby Artichoke

Our slightly melting oyster plate

Oyster Detail (I styled that!)

Tomorrow we are meeting at the Greenmarket and going to buy product to shoot in the class and then they are going to lecture more about tricks to help you when food styling...like using Windex and saline solution...and learn how to use photo shop. Yee-Haw!