I recently found myself with more time than usual (yep – that’s just a diplomatic way of saying my work contract ended) and decided to make a little self-improvement directed at improving my blog. Now yes, I know “looking for a job is a full-time job” and being a university student I have that to do, plus I will admit I’m somewhat of a professional procrastinator. However, I digress, I still don’t have THAT much time, so I wanted to try something quick to up my photography game. What game? I know, that’s why I’m doing this course.

So I signed up for a free course called “30 Days to Better Food Photography” by Learn Food Photography. At least I think it’s free, and they may trick me later, but for now I was pretty excited about it. And…there’s a wait list.

Lucky, they recently released a short automated version to keep impatient people like myself occupied and interested in the meantime. Here’s the breakdown:

1) Composing Stronger Food Photos – Part 1 of 3
2) Composing Stronger Food Photos – Part 2 of 3
3) Composing Stronger Food Photos – Part 3 of 3
4) The Garlic Experiment
5) “Easy Storytelling” Class – Part 1 of 2
6) “Easy Storytelling” Class – Part 2 of 2
7) Best Lens Formula
8) Prop Styling
9) Understanding Light – Part 1 of 2
10) Understanding Light – Part 2 of 2
11) Bonus Lessons…

So far I enjoy the conversational nature of the emails, they are pretty informative, and after each, you send in a question or comment. Lesson three is the first time you look at a photo and think about its composition and lesson four, the first photo assignment. I started on Sunday, January 8th, so that puts me at lesson 4 “The Garlic Experiment.” Essentially you have to choose one object and take ten different shots of it – my muse? The humble cauliflower. Humble for now anyway; I recently read an article claiming it will be the next Kale, so I’m sure it will soon be hanging out at hippie bars, getting too many earrings, and wearing tie-dye crop tops. But for now, humble.

This exercise was fun, and an odd, but intriguing challenge, I can barely cook cauliflower ten ways let alone photograph it. So part-way through I chopped it in half for more angles. It is possible that was not allowed, but they didn’t directly say that, so here’s my cauliflower photo-shoot.

Work it cauliflower!

I’ll let you know how the rest of the course goes and whether, when all is said and done, I would recommend it to anyone else. So far I’m leaning towards yes!