While I may appear to spend all of my time photographing families in meadows or lovebirds out on the beach, my photography interests aren't strictly limited to people! It feels like most of my income gets eaten up by bills and taxes, but what the government doesn't take from me goes straight into my favorite hobby – dining out. My boyfriend and I are always looking for an excuse to try out a new restaurant, and we have no shortage of options living in New Haven! But with so much to choose from around us, how do we end up picking a place, especially one we've never tried before. What persuades us to risk a new spot, while we have so many tried-and-true restaurants we know we'd be happy with? The answer is simple to many who spend a lot of time scrolling through their phone: food photography on social media.  

My boyfriend, Mehran, may specialize in business and marketing tactics for a living, but as a customer himself he knows the impact that good food photography has on a restaurant because it affects our own meal choices every day. I can't count the number of times one of us has scrolled through Instagram and said, "Wow, look at how cool this burger looks!" and then gone and visited the restaurant that very weekend to try it. It's simple; the human race always has and always will be sold on the visual appeal of products and this is especially true for photos of food – they literally cause us to feel hungry! 

So you might think with such an effective and straightforward marketing tool that restauranteurs everywhere would be utilizing food photography to draw in new customers, but equally as often we actually see many who choose not to. Whether it be due to the hesitation of spending money on this venture, or sometimes even the dismissal that something like this would substantially benefit their business, we've found that many restaurant owners decide to forego food photography altogether, usually with the mantra of "our food will speak for itself". Now I don't disagree at all that this confidence and pride in your dishes isn't admirable, and I'm sure it's probably true! But there's just one problem here: you need to get diners into your restaurant first, before your food can do the talking.

Something important to understand here is that, while this may not have been the case back in Y2K, the social media age has drastically changed how businesses receive new customers since then, and this is impacting both brand new food trucks and 50-year-old diners alike. Food photography isn't just a luxury these days, it's a necessity! Now this may not be quite as drastic for a bakery opening up in a very rural town, as competition will likely be low and word-of-mouth will travel simply by the appearance of a newly-painted sign on a window. But for those opening up in a saturated market like West Hartford where there's already several other bakeries right in their zip code, how do they steal some of that clientele? Or for a coffee shop that's been passed down through several generations and sat on the same street corner for decades; how do they maintain steady business when a trendy new cafe opens up the next block over?

In this time of social media and online blogging, there's one thing that is guaranteed to catch the eye of new potential customers, and that's a consistent online presence and engaging content. And there's nothing that's much more enticing than a photo of the freshly-glazed cinnamon rolls you pulled out of the oven this morning. Content like this is what makes potential clients stop scrolling in their tracks and click through your profile and website; they might even make a mental note to persuade their spouse to go visit your restaurant Friday night!

So far I've dabbled in food photography for a handful of Connecticut restaurants and shops, and I can easily say by far that my favorite has been the most recent photos I shot for Curry On Tap, a contemporary Indian food truck coming soon to Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. While some chefs may be tempted to cut corners and forego photography for their dishes, owner Amol A. knew that photos like this are what's going to capture the attention and appetites of potential customers online. Although it requires a small investment, this food photography is going to be the icing on the cake (or chutney on the samosas?) that ties his website and social media together, and converts those phone-scrollers into real live customers that come to find his truck. 

Because I'm such a diehard believer in the power of imagery, I also want to talk about some alternative tips for any restauranteurs reading here with me. While there isn't a way to truly replace the quality you're going to get from a professional photographer's work and editing, there are still several reasons why you might want to learn how to make some content yourself as well. The two biggest would be:

First, if you're a brand new restaurant and you've already spent your current budget during the grand opening process, you're still going to need some form of content to post and draw in your first customers in order to kickstart your business; later on when you've saved up a little, you can start looking into investing in a small branding session for some more professional results. And secondly, because restaurants change their menus and produce new specials regularly, it's understandable that the average owner may not have the budget for a new shoot every month. That's why in between branding shoots, it's good to know how to create some decent content of your own so that you can sprinkle these into your social media as well, to have a mix of both professional images as well as real-time blog posts of the new dishes you're cooking up. Continue on for a few tips!

Although they may not be able to replace the quality of a professional camera, our own phones can do at least a good enough job to still give us some acceptable results for content, but how you use your phone does make a difference! In the examples above I actually used my own smart phone to demonstrate how lighting can have a big impact on the appeal of the dish. The image on the left was taken with the use of some dim yellow bulb lighting, similar to the lighting you'd get in a restaurant. I see this mistake made often, even by restaurants I've been to myself where I know they have good food – but unfortunately photos lit in this way don't usually translate that, especially in conjunction with a phone's lower quality.

However the same exact dish taken with the use of natural light, either outside or by a window, immediately freshens the food up! Now a big tip here is to be mindful of the way that sometimes our phones' auto settings can overcompensate natural lighting to be a bit too cold and blue. If this happens to you, simply go into your phone's editing settings and warm the temperature up, and maybe even boost a little contrast. Same phone and same dish, but two very different results! For some added embellishment, try photographing your dish on the table with some other props, like a pretty cocktail and side salad, or even photograph the plate from directly above the table to get that satisfying symmetry!

So even if you don't feel ready for it just yet, I hope this may have shed a little light on why food photography isn't just a luxury these days and shouldn't be overlooked. I don't say this only as a photographer, but from the perspective of a customer as well! Photography is truly the main selling point for almost anyone who owns a smart phone or tablet; it's what makes us stop in our tracks and click around. What is this restaurant? Where are they located? And what was that amazing sandwich I just saw? So come chat with me, and let's catch some eyes and make your future customers start asking these questions too!

Morgan Ofsharick of MEO Photography specializes in family portraits, engagement, wedding, maternity, newborn, senior, and headshot portrait photography, servicing New Haven, Fairfield, Hartford, Middlesex, Litchfield, and plenty of other regions all around Connecticut! ​

New year, new blog page! For those who have been around for a bit, you'll know that I've been writing blogs for a while, and I mean a long while, even back to my college days in art school. Recently I came to the realization that I felt my blog page had become, well, clunky; between miscellaneous posts about my old illustration projects and even my own growth and changing opinions as a photographer, I just felt there were too many cluttered topics and thoughts going on at once. And so, I threw the whole page away to start over!

I'll be writing about new topics, as well as revisiting old ones to discuss them in a way that I feel is a little more reflective of who I've become over the last 19 months in this journey. (Has it really only been a year and a half? Starting your photography career during a pandemic really distorts all meaning of time.) So to start, I want to go back to the topic that first inspired me to want to help my clients understand what goes on behind the scenes of not only photography, but many vendors and small businesses in general: The Retainer/Booking Fee. What does it mean, why is it necessary, and why it's not scary at all!

If you've ever worked with a professional photographer before, or maybe with the baker who designed your wedding cake, or even a carpenter you hired to redo your front deck, you likely have paid some form of a retainer fee. It's easy to think of this payment simply as a deposit, and in a way it is, but it's also quite different and more than that.

On one hand, a deposit is simply defined as a first installment or payment that is going towards a final product. However, and I say this in the hope that this blog can be helpful to both clients and beginner vendors alike, the problem with thinking of it as – and referring to it as – a deposit, means that legally-speaking it is refundable. If the client does not ever receive an end product, a deposit cannot be rightfully kept by the vendor, as nothing was ever received for the money. Now if you're a vendor that already sacrificed some time and money on this incomplete project only for it to be cancelled, this sounds a little unfair, right?

Which is why using the terms retainer fee/booking fee/retainer payment (and probably even more names for it that I don't I know of) is verbiage that's considered a deposit, and then some. Not only is this payment a part of the total price, it's also acting as a safety net; in its simplest terms, it's insurance. It is retaining and paying for the vendor's time, effort, and finances that are going into the project, before the product is even delivered. Now as a consumer you might be reasonably thinking, hey, that seems like it's really only beneficial to the photographer, is there anything in it for me? 

Before I get into answering that, I want to dig a little deeper into why collecting this retainer fee upfront is so very important for vendors, and why we actually couldn't do our jobs without it!

Let's imagine for a minute that I didn't take a retainer fee upfront, and instead all payment was taken afterward once the photos were delivered. Someone reaches out to me online and wants to book an engagement session with me, and so we plan out a date and time that we'll schedule to meet. In the meantime leading up to the day of their session, I have someone else reach out to me looking to propose to his girlfriend, inquiring about the same date. I ask if there's a different date we could choose because I've already been booked, but unfortunately that date is very important to the proposal, so he moves on to find a different photographer.

Now the date comes where I'm scheduled to go meet up with my engagement clients. I get showered and dressed, and fill up my gas tank to go drive an hour away to the pretty lake that they've picked out as their location. When I get there I notice that they haven't arrived yet, so I text them to know where I'm parked and I wait. Ten minutes go by, fifteen minutes go by, twenty, and I still don't see any sign of them and haven't received any texts. I try calling – it goes straight to voicemail. After waiting for 40 minutes, I have no real option except to drive home, as it's nearing sundown and there wouldn't be enough light left for photos anyway. 

When I get home I do try to send a few more messages and emails to see if something happened, but I never hear back from them. About a month later, I look up her Facebook out of curiosity and notice her profile image has changed to an engagement photo – by a different professional photographer. 

Just to clarify, this entire scenario was not something that actually happened to me, but it very easily could happen if I didn't collect a retainer fee. There was nothing in place to stop this client from ghosting me and going with another photographer without telling me. Unlike with a salaried job at a place of employment, there are no labor laws protecting me from my client and guaranteeing pay for my time. Despite driving a total of 2 hours, waiting for 40 minutes, wasting that gas, and foregoing any plans for that day, there is no government department I can call to report these lost wages. If anything, this situation caused me to lose money, because I even had to turn away another client who wanted to hire me for that date as well.

Now at this point, I'm sure it's fairly obvious why a retainer fee is imperative to a vendor's business, but does it give any benefits to the client as well? In my opinion, it definitely does. When I see a business that's requiring some form of agreement and booking fee in order to start a job, that says to me that they're professional, organized, and competent. If they weren't asking for these things, I would be a little concerned that they might not entirely know their way around their own business just yet.

This could also give the vendor the opportunity to flake out on you. If there's no agreement and retainer fee that's holding you accountable to them, there's also not much holding them accountable to you either. This could result in poor communication, no shows, slow progress, or even possible ghosting. While a business certainly wouldn't last long with behavior like that anyway, the retainer agreement and exchange of an upfront payment at least can symbolize some faith that this vendor is professional, and is going to do exactly what they've promised to do in the agreement, so that they can get paid, and also achieve your project together!

So remember when I said a deposit can be taken away if no product was ever received by the client? With the use of an agreement, a retainer fee is also paying for the vendor's time, dedication and other sacrifices leading up to creating the final product, not just the product itself. So for any beginner photographers or other commission-based freelancers reading this, make sure you get this verbiage right and use those contracts! Booking fees are the job insurance that we don't have, and without it, photographers couldn't even exist.

I know that sounds funny and a bit dramatic, but with no job benefits or labor laws protecting the self-employed, we actually need to make our own! Things like this are what give us the security to do what we do, so that we can safely put time and effort into growing our business and giving our clients our full attention and dedication, while also protecting our income and ensuring the benefits that would normally come with a standard job. A retainer fee is what retains our ability to stay in business and continue growing better and better, for the benefit of ourselves, and our clients!
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Morgan Ofsharick of MEO Photography specializes in family portraits, engagement, wedding, maternity, newborn, senior, and headshot portrait photography, servicing New Haven, Fairfield, Hartford, Middlesex, Litchfield, and plenty of other regions all around Connecticut! ​