Food Photography Workshop

Yesterday I travelled down to London to the Scandinavian Kitchen to a photography workshop run by Chris Windsor and organised by Helen from a Forkful of Spaghetti.

Arranging for someone to pick up George from school was the main bit of planning that I had to do, along with charging camera batteries and packing a book to read on the train. I felt like an intrepid explorer from the North with my huge rucksack and a scary looking tripod sticking out, but luckily I got there in one piece after a short but enjoyable hike across from St Pancras in the sunshine.

The session that I attended was designed for DSLR users who wanted to improve their food photography. Most of us are have foodie blogs so it worked quite well that we all had a similar goal. The other bloggers there were Lucy from TV Dinners, Kelsey from Travels with my Fork, and Sarah from Maison Cupcake. as well as Carolyn who wanted to improve photos for a book she is working on.

I arrived quite early so had time to sample some lovely scandinavian chocolate cake that certainly set me up for the afternoon, in fact I couldn’t finish it, it was so full of chocolatey goodness. I really enjoyed the atmosphere in The Scandi Kitchen, quite different to any cafe’s around here and I liked the selection of food they had on offer and would love to visit again to try some more. I wish now that I had taken some more photo’s of some of the people and the interior, but my time was limited so we got down to the job in hand.

Chris went through some basics of photography to start with. He then gave us lots of tips that were really useful. I think the main thing that I have taken from it is more confidence to use Manual Mode on the camera. Back in the days when I was an SLR user (pre digital) I was completely happy with using manual, but have got out of the habit, so now I am back on track and twiddling my dials like the best of them.

It was definitely worthwhile and although initially I didn’t think I managed to get many good shots, with a bit of Post Processing I have got some that I am happy with. The main requirement for me though was to learn for the future rather than to come out with great shots on the day. The photo’s actually look better on the white background of Flickr, but our blog is black…never mind!

Jonas, who runs Scandi kitchen with Bronte, and very generously opened up his doors, and his fridge, for us came over and introduced himself. He also introduced the Hot Dog Challenge. The winner of the best hot dog photograph taken at the series of workshops run by Chris will win lunch for 2 in the restaurant. So here are my offerings! It is quite difficult to make a hot dog look good, without it looking too suggestive for most people’s smutty minds!

Here is Helen’s post, including lovely photo’s of cake, that she took whilst we were ‘workshopping it through’: Forkful Posting

Tagged: Chris Windsor, Food, London, Photographs, Photography, Scandi Kitchen, Workshop

Posted in: Claire, Food, Photography