Food Photography for Downtown Restaurants | South Bend, Indiana

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as I watched my work disappear, I worked to identify a way to continue being creative. 

I found solace throughout these stressful and isolating days in our kitchen, cooking and photographing the food.

This started with single dishes, using the window light from our east-facing windows as a key light. In the years that followed, I've pushed this area of my photography further and further. In that time, I've been able to land solo clients occasionally. This past summer, I worked on a multi-restaurant project that took me around downtown South Bend, creating editorial-styled food photography for restaurants. 

As I worked through the sessions, I realized that much of what I was doing and applying to the work came from years of at-home practice.

It is often easy for me to think about where I want my work to be, but with this experience, I am trying to hold onto and recognize how far I’ve come to make this work. And to acknowledge that this area of my portfolio wasn’t built in a day but required years of work that was often un/underpaid.

There is a tension with this, though.

To continue pursuing the goal, something must be sustaining the business.

I remember a conversation with another photographer about this tension—we want to photograph at a high level, but to do that, we have to work through the lower-tier and lower-paid work. This work can strain finances and/or creative output.

However, there is no shortcut. 

The phrase trust the process reverberates as I think about this.

This phrase is a cliche because of the truth that it highlights—being engaged in the process of doing the work, there will be an outcome. It may be simplified to: when we take action, there will be a reaction. And, when we take action repeatedly, there will inevitably be a reaction that we aim for.

By doing food photography repeatedly over the years in many capacities and continuing to push, I have found opportunities to learn and practice my skillset. If I had just sat back and waited, I may not have seen the many lessons required to do this job effectively. 

For me and my creative work, not only is setting the goal important, but giving space to practice that goal is vital. This practice will often take far more time and effort than the client work that follows. It can be frustrating to keep working at something that isn’t bringing in income, but in this space, without the confines of client work, your skills will develop. Client work and the focus on outcome often removes the space for creativity. It becomes more of a demonstration of knowledge than pushing boundaries and exploration. 

And I’ve found that these moments of pushing what we know further keep me returning to the work for more. 

I've realized that play is sometimes the only way to get more client work because, without it, we are setting ourselves up to either create stagnant work or force ourselves to learn while on set or on assignment, which is a stressful state. 

Reflecting on this job, I realize it was years in the making.