Food Photography

This workbook gives you practical exercises, structured worksheets, and ready-to-use checklists that accompany each module of the Food Photography course. Work through each section as you complete the corresponding lessons. By the end you will have a personal reference system, a repeatable shoot workflow, and a portfolio of practice images.

Build your visual instincts by practicing the core decisions — hero selection, prop restraint, color palette, and finishing technique — on real dishes before moving to client work.

Choose one dish from your kitchen. Style it three separate times using a maximum of three supporting elements per scene. Photograph each version, then compare the results and identify which arrangement was most effective and why.

Complete this sheet before setting up any styled food scene. Fill in every field before touching a prop or plate.

Practice placing and shaping light on a real dish to understand how direction and modifiers change the mood and texture of your images.

Using the same dish and the same window on the same day, shoot three sets of images: one with backlight, one with side light, and one with front light. For each position, also shoot one version with a white reflector opposite the window and one without. Compare all six images and document your findings.

Record the details of every lighting setup you use so you can recreate successful setups and learn from unsuccessful ones.

Set up a one-light scene. Starting with no modifiers, take a base shot. Then add a white reflector, shoot again. Replace the white reflector with a black card, shoot again. Add a flag to block light from the background, shoot again. Export all four images side by side and write a caption for each describing the effect of the change.

Develop consistent compositional instincts and build muscle memory for manual camera controls so technique stops being a barrier between you and a great image.

Style one dish and photograph it at a true overhead angle, at 45 degrees, and at eye-level without changing the styling between shots. Review all three and determine which angle best serves the visual story of that specific dish.

Fill in your tested settings for each common food shooting situation. Use this as a starting point reference for future shoots rather than guessing each time.

Build a repeatable editing workflow and practice the professional communication and delivery habits that define reliable, bookable photographers.

Select three RAW files from your practice shoots — one underexposed, one with a color cast, one with flat contrast. Edit each using the seven-step Lightroom sequence from the course. Export before and after versions side by side and write a one-sentence description of the primary correction made in each case.

Complete this sheet when receiving any brief from a restaurant, recipe, or brand client. Fill it in before replying to confirm the booking.

Treat one home-cooked meal as a restaurant client shoot. Create a shot list in advance covering: one hero dish from two angles, one detail close-up, and one table-context wide shot. Stick to the shot list without improvising additional setups. Edit and deliver the images to yourself as a ZIP file within 48 hours of shooting.