I work on a contract basis with different companies and for photographers and food stylists.
If I’m doing food styling, I go grocery shopping, bring all the ingredients to the set and cook for the day. Photography assisting usually involves getting coffee and pastries, drinks for the client, moving a light when the photographer needs you to.
After high school, I tried to work without education and then went to OCAD University to follow my dream. When you’re training as an artist, people try to talk you out of pursuing what you’re good at because you can’t earn a lot of money, but I was determined to make it.
I graduated from OCAD in the spring with a BFA in photography. The school encourages interdisciplinary studies, so I was able to take sculpture and painting courses. In art school, years one through three are very fine-art-based. They’re teaching you to be gallery-ready, to think conceptually and to practise your technical skills.
In year four I started to blossom into commercial photography. I spent my year building my book and am still building it. They encouraged us to intern and to look at other product and food photographers. I was really lucky that three other women in my program were doing food photography, so we bounced off one another and shared techniques.
I come from a foodie family. I love to eat and cook, and I think food is beautiful. Living in North America, I have food on my table and the luxury to be able to go out to dinner, while in other countries food is a basic necessity for survival. Those ideas really intrigue me, and that’s where I find the beauty and social conscience in food.
There are a lot of tricks of the trade, but it’s not the 80s any more. Things are not plastic and fake. We use real food, and it’s organic. When you cook for the camera, it’s much different than cooking at home. You undercook a lot of food. You might turn a grill pan on high to sear beautiful marks into what you’re cooking, but you probably wouldn’t do that at home because it doesn’t taste very good.
What about waste? How much do you get to take home? Most of the time I get my groceries for the week because we buy two and a half times what we need for the shoot, and I take it home if it’s not used.
A culinary program is the route most food stylists take. It was harder for me to get into the industry as a home cook. That said, I do have pretty good cooking skills. In my family, we grew up cooking and baking, and there were high expectations for our creations.
As a food photographer, the benefit of going to OCAD is that my fine art background sets me apart from those who focus on product photography.
A food stylist has to be personable. You have to cater to clients in your studio, prepare lunch and be a good host. You can’t be afraid to share your opinion – you must speak up. You also need to delegate. When I’m an assistant, it’s important that the people I work for tell me exactly what they need and when.
The most temperamental food I’ve ever prepared is strudel, made from homemade pastry that I had to stretch from the size of a softball to the length of my dining room table. It becomes super-thin – you’re supposed to be able to read text through the dough. I made it at home as the assistant. It was hard, but I was actually able to achieve the strudel.
