Some time ago I decided to start documenting my family's recipes. My mom comes from Perú, my father is Argentinean, my grandparents are Chinese and Spanish, so the food at home was extremely diverse.

Just before deciding to move out from home, I decided all this needed to be documented. This is how a journey of documenting more than 60 recipes began for 8 years. Photography of each dish, copywriting of the recipes and graphic design of the book were done by me.






Here are some details of the book and the process I followed to make plus some tips cause everything doesn't always go as planned 😅


As my two previous photobooks (Erasmus photobook and China trip photobook) I decided to print in Blurb (Even though I wish Blurb have sponsored this post, this is not sponsored just honest review haha)

Biggest Learnings of Food Photography as Amateur 

  - Learn how to do a balance composition, like adding extra elements to the picture, maybe some ingredients, a spoon, another plate, a glass.
  - Play with color contrast and textures!
  - Take the photos fast! (you can tell when the soup you are doing a photo is cold or the ice cream is melting)





Before making this book I hadn't had any experience in food photography. I started documenting my family recipes just one year before I move away from home, I was 17 years and this was 2011 (left photo). I finally got to finish it in 2019 (right photo). This is the reason that pictures in the book are diverse in quality, they not only reflect my family cuisine but also reflect 8 years of learning and improvement.
All the photos were taken in my hometown home which is not prepared as a photography studio. So the basic set up for most of the photos were just 3 wooden planks, on one side painted light blue and on the other side the natural colors. This base plus pieces of different cloth were all the elements used in the book.

Here a list of supplies I used in the process
  -  💡Access to a window!! ( this is key as I said before to get natural light). Found your spot and your time of the day, mine was around 2pm when the light was not so direct in my window.
  -  3 wooden planks, one side painted. Or a nice table
  - Different pieces of cloth that you can use to create texture
  - 2 or 3 plates of different colors ( I have one turquoise, one white, 2 small bowls)
  - Talking about the camera, I took most of my photos with a 50mm f/1.8 lens I think it works perfectly! Regardless of this, this is a beautiful lens to have, I highly recommend it to travel or takes portraits.
  - Collapsible reflector 5 in 1 (like this one). This is super useful, plus it is cheap, mostly depending on where your light comes from, for example in my case light is not uniform causing a shadow behind my food, this reflector is an easy way to fix this.

I am looking forward to doing a completely separate post on this, also on how to prepare the woods planks and the details of the photoshoot! 🤞🏼I hope after this quarantine.

Designing a cookbook in Indesign for Blurb

 

After finishing my book I notice that there was a nice Skillshare course on how to do a cookbook in Indesign, you can check it here, I think it cover most of the things you need to know!

How to start doing a cookbook or documenting family recipes?

How to make a full-page photo in Blurb