Papad Chai: long distance course.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

I completed 30days Food Photography Course Online

Everybody loves to eat exotic food and some of the dishes are so visually tempting, that one wants to capture the image immediately. The food arrives, you drool, but before you even take one spoonful of that delicious food, you click on an impulse. Most of the time you click ‘bad’ pictures. What do you expect on an empty stomach?

Learning food photography is a serious business. It is an art. It has to be done the proper way, preferably from the experts who know it well.

I stumbled upon a post on Facebook that said “Learn food photography in 30days’’ and immediately got interested. I signed up for the free course and shared the link with many friends, hoping that they would be interested too.

Neel is my Guru for this course and he has been the perfect guide. During the month of March, everyday, at 12:30am India time, I found his mail creep into my inbox.

This one-month journey has been the most creative and entertaining month for me, where I have done hands-on assignments that came each day into my inbox. Briefly I have shared my journey along the way, so that I could refresh myself on the go.

You can check my journey by going through my post on Food photography series

Part one Soup Pictures

Part two Understanding Angle

Part three Field of Depth

Part four Frames

Part five Telling a Story

Part six Lighting

Part seven Prop Styling

Part eight Food Styling

Part nine Planning a photo shoot

A lot of discipline is required to do online course, you tend to slag, to become lazy, postpone it for another day, but Neel knew how to keep us on toes. He invited us to a private group on Facebook where we could share pictures with other members who had enrolled into this course. We posted our assignments everyday that not only helped us improve our photographs but also inspired us to post our own. We learnt from each other, pointing out the flaws in pictures, critique work and also to encourage the good photographers. There was improvement in the pictures as the days passed. We learnt, angles, composition, lightings, props and many more aspects of photography.

Everyday there was a new lesson, and everyday a new trick. There were useful links posted everyday that gave great insight to food photography and the famous photographers from whose work we could learn. There were live sessions too (mostly during week-ends) whereby Neel came on web stream line and conducted power point presentations. and answered our queries and our struggles during photography.

Although I took a free course (there was paid course too called VIP, that might help more serious photographers, with video lessons and more details) but this course helped me a lot.

I am not saying that I have become expert in 30 days, no, that is not what I mean, but this course has helped me understand the basics of food photography and I plan to improve on the tricks that have been furnished till now.

Improving the skills is not just doing the course, it is all about practice, practice, practice, after you have learnt the basic. Someday, I hope to print out my photographs and decorate my kitchen walls.

I have already made one picture that I hope to print this one and put it up in my kitchen...seriously!!