Food Stylist
OFO No:
What is a Food Stylist?
Do you ever flip through a magazine and see a photo of food, like a bowl of ice-cream, strawberries and chocolate and drool? Do some food-photographs make you want to lick your lips and taste what you are seeing? If the photograph is making you do this, the Food Stylist has done their job.
A Food Stylist is a therefore a culinary professional whose job is to create a perfect, artistic and realistically-finger-licking food scene so that the photographer can take photos for a cookbook, magazine, brochure, website, commercial, television or movie set etc.
Making food dishes photogenic is not easy. The best Food Stylists have an abundant knowledge of food, an array of various techniques and tricks to assist them.
You will be surprised to know that a Food Stylist sometimes creates illusions. You might think you are seeing big balls of delicious vanilla ice-cream but in fact, it’s a bowl of mashed potato! Ice-cream would melt under all the photographer’s lighting. Maple syrup is exchanged for motor oil – and Disprin is sometimes added to champagne to create extra fizz!
All these tricks are there to help the photographer make the dish look exceptionally good and tasty.
What does a Food Stylist do?
- meets with clients and photographers
- experiments with new recipes
- prepares and cooks food for the shoot
- learns and creates new culinary tricks to make food the star of the show
- always paying attention to detail
Are you … ?
- passionate about food?
- a person with a lot of cooking/chef experience?
- extremely creative?
- detail orientated?
- organised?
- focused?
- experimental?
- good under pressure?
How do I become a Food Stylist?
Most Food Stylists have a Chef’s or a food preparation background.
See under Chef for more training details.
If you work really hard, you could work as an assistant to a chef or in a kitchen and skill yourself up by reading and experimenting in your spare time.
It’s up to you to let your passion drive your ambition.
- THE FOOD AGENCY
TRAINING:
- CLICK HERE to check for a training institution near you to see what they offer.
- Make sure you understand their entry requirements for each course.
- To avoid scams, make sure your institution is registered with the Department of Higher Education.
- CLICK HERE to check accredited Private Higher Education Institutions.
OTHER CAREERS TO CONSIDER: Caterer … or … Make-up Artist
Is becoming a Food Stylist the right career choice for me.
