Together with Nika of Nika Boyce Studios and Nika’s Culinaria, I’m going to be working on a new project called Food Photo 101. I know my own photography skills need some work. I didn’t really have time to take a class, so I looked around at what I found in blogs until I found what I consider one of the best food photographers out there. As it turned out, not only is Nika’s work fantastic, but she’s really genuine. She’s given me some great advice over the months I’ve gotten to know her here in the blogosphere, and I think my photos have shown improvement. I know they have, actually. What got me thinking about doing this, however, was that I see a lot of really good cooks online that just don’t know how to show off their fantastic food very well. As I’m striving to improve my own portrayal of what I’m cooking, I wanted to invite others to join in, seeing both teacher and student parts of the process. Feel free to contact me using the form below, or check out Nika’s sister site here.

Update 10/31/2007: I think Nika and I have a schedule in mind. On Tuesday’s Nika will post her lesson. On Thursdays, I’ll post my results from the lessons. We’re still working out the details of the exact format, but that won’t be that big of a deal to figure out, and will likely grow into its final form as we go through the lessons. 11/2/2007 “How To Make Your Food Look As Good As It Tastes”.

We’re gearing up to start our online adventure in food photography. Nika of Nika’s Culinary has set up a forum for the ‘class’ here. Also, there’s a Flickr group called Food Photo 101. We’re really hoping for participation. If you haven’t seen Nika’s work, check out her photos here. I’m really excited that she agreed to do this, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot. I stole this info from her post: Course Objective: To guide interested budding food photographers through the technical and creative barriers they may be experiencing with their Point and Shoot (P&S) or DSLR cameras. We will cover:

• hardware (cameras, lighting, computers, other tech)
• software (capture and post processing tools)
• wetware (food styling)
• creative aspects (composition, lighting dynamics, etc)

Philosophy:

• We are going to do this in a way that, we hope, gives you something you can use right away.
• It’s important for people to not feel “disadvantaged” by having a P&S beause these cameras actually have quite a lot of capability that many people never really explore.
• We will cover topics in a way that hopefully makes you feel more comfortable with your P&S or DSLR.

Reading Materials: There is ONE book to read, slowly, cover to cover. This would be the MANUAL to your camera. Read it several times and have it on hand whenever you are shooting your food or other subjects (maybe not at the theme park, but at home). Simply reading it is a start but purposeful practice (fiddling) will pay off more than 100%, I promise you. Methods - the logistics of the Photography for Foodies series are as follows:

• Each entry will be about one aspect of food photography, and when it makes sense, the topics will build on each other.
• We’ll explain the topic, and Nika will go into how to achieve the results for that topic.
• Once Nika goes through the topic, I will then try to go through the lesson, showing not just the how-to part, but the how-did part (or didn’t!).

Timing: Nika will post her lessons on Tuesdays at both sites, and I will post my results late on Thursdays (Wednesay nights are full for me). If others have results, we’ll do a weekly roundup on Sundays of what we’re hearing from any of you that participate. Also, if you do your own post on your blog about the class, let one of us know so we can link to it. If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter for the class, you can register with the contact form above. Put “Food Photo 101″ as the subject, and you’ll get signed up.