Awards, prizes and competitions

Good news for 'Song at Dawn' - Literature Wales has mailed me to say it's eligible for the 'Wales Book of the Year 2011' and has asked for 5 copies of the book for the judges. I am chuffed to bits for three reasons; Wales is my adopted country and if it didn't rain all the time, I would still be living there, so I am proud to be Welsh-enough. Secondly, it is a hot award to be in the running for, and thirdly, I take it as a big compliment when someone invites me to submit my writing for anything. It happens to me now and then with poetry that I get asked if I'll contribute to an anthology, and it's almost like being a real writer when it happens. I've been published every which way except bestselling (yet) but I still hate the process of submission and rejection, whether to publishers/literary agents, or for competitions and awards. However, what you don't enter, you can't win, so if I come across an opportunity for any of my writing, I consider it.

What makes the Wales Book of the Year so hot, in my view? 1) great, varied company on that list of books entered 2) my kind of prize 3) if you're eligible, simple submission

Awards, competitions and prizes are good for publicity and make you feel good if you win this particular lottery but you'd be surprised how often 1,2 and 3 add up to a rip-off or just a predictable waste of your time.

1) Your name on any list of authors is publicity but you do get judged by the company you keep. The Wales Book of the Year  authors are a mix of people I've never heard of, a couple of big names and people who've been to my house for tea or shared a dire performance at a Pembrokeshire pub. It's amazing how many people feel the need to go for a pee when I reach a particularly moving part of a long poem. When we poets go on the road, audience response can reach new lows.

I think my worst performance was on the 3rd day of a festival in a field in mid-Wales. I'd been paid to give a poetry workshop but, it being the third day and all, by the time I tramped across the mud and past the hippy teepees, I was almost high myself from passive smoking. I found the 'creative tent' and when some guy asked if I had some paper, I thought I had a customer, but no, he just wanted to roll his own. As a feeble attempt to earn my pay, I went into the tea tent, stood on a chair and declaimed 'For you I tamed nine tigers.' There was no rapturous applause but at least I wasn't stoned. Everyone else was. I got down from my chair and squelched back to the car, and home.

I like hanging out with authors whose very names fill me with awe. It feels good to say that my poems were published in the same anthology as Margaret Atwood's and there are writers for whom I have just as much respect, on that Literature Wales list. What's more, they're part of my history.

John Barnie, then Editor of Planet, rejected the first poem I sent him and wrote screeds of constructive criticism on his rejection reply, with the invitation to send more. Going the extra mile makes him a special editor and he did publish some of my poems. I met Ifor Thomas at one of those Pembroke pub performances and I've never forgotten what he suggested to do with clingfilm, nor the fact that his toilet was too depressed to clean itself after his girlfriend left. Herbert Williams and I did school workshops together and compared notes on the 14year old thug who wrote his heart out for us strangers. It was Herbert who won the Cinnamon Press Novella Award the year one of my manuscripts, 'Crystal Balls',  was shortlisted. And if you want a big name, try Gwyneth Lewis, Wales' first national poet, just as well know for her autobiographical 'Sunbathing in the Rain: a cheerful book about depression'

I miss the writing scene in Wales. It is alive and inspiring, for both readers and writers, in English and in Welsh. So it is important to me to be Welsh-enough to join that list. Being there is already an Award. Although actually my name isn't there yet and I've checked 53 times today so far.

2) The Wales Book of the Year prize is big money (and a trophy). I would like to win lots of money (trophy optional) because money would give my writing status and big prize money attracts good competition (See 1) Also because I don't have enough money not to enjoy having more.

You'd be surprised how many competitions have prizes I'd pay not to win. I'm sure there are people who want to win 4 months writing retreat in a Benedictine monastery but I am not one of them.

My favourite prize to go after used to be 'publication' but now I'm self-publishing I no longer want to have my baby published as a pamphlet by a 19th century printing press in Newcastle (no offence to Geordies - I've seen equal historically accurate and unsaleable publications in Yorkshire)

3) Eligibility. It took me a while to realise that 99.99% of awards and competitions for writers have regulations specifically drawn up to exclude me. I am either too old or too young; the wrong race, nationality or religion (lacking any); resident of the wrong country; self-published, or having a publisher in the wrong country. When I do fit the criteria, it usually turns out that was for the year before and they've been changed to make sure I can't enter. As self-publishing becomes a choice for more and more authors, rather than a last desperate attempt to get your Mum to read your book, I think awards and prizes will change but many Awards require publisher nomination.

The daft thing about this is that anyone can set up as a publisher, and many have, and happily bring out his/her own books. One writer even posed as her own Literary Agent to add gravitas to her book, which became a bestseller (after she spent 10,000 pounds sterling on marketing and, in a year off paid work, visited bookshops all over the UK claiming she was a local author to get her book onto the shelves - this was in the days when there were still bookshops).

If you are eligible, you then check out the submission requirements. I'm happy to send a book or five, if they're going to be read as part of a serious award or competition, but it does cost money, Small publishers do not check awards and competitions but will enter books for you if you pay. This does cost money. Some of the biggest prizes in the writing business demand not only books but cash upfront from publishers. This can cost very very big money. At one stage there was a prize which guaranteed big sales from the major publicity and bookshop commitment (= future money) in return for something like 12,000 pounds. I tried to find the details on this but I think it's a prize that was discontinued and I can't check up the facts now.

Small presses keep going by charging entry for competitions; are you willing to pay 20 pounds to get someone to even read your manuscript? Your choice. Big prizes often charge big money so that only big publishers (or rich writers) can afford to submit books.

This is why I like the Wales Book of the Year Award. If you are eligible, you submit 5 books and 3 judges choose the best. The mystery remains as to what happens to the extra 2 books. Is this in case 2 get eaten by the dog/run through the washing-machine?

Finally, if you've submitted work for an award or competition, CHECK THE PRIZE-GIVING DATE! Do NOT book a holiday in Venice for exactly the same date on which you win two prizes in the same damn international writing competition otherwise, because you wish to stay married, you will be mooching along the Grand Canal instead of wearing a strapless dress and tearfully thanking your parents, said husband and the dog, in front of London's finest.

Of course you're not going to win. It's a lottery. But sometimes you do. I won the prize for children's writing and the prize for journalism in the London Writers' inc annual competition one year and missed the ceremony. On the other hand, the prize money wouldn't have paid for the journey, or even the posh dress, and I did get to be in an anthology with very good company.

I'll just check whether my name has gone onto that Literature Wales list yet.

Writing my new novel

Me at work

I am not Amanda Hocking. She is 27 years old and a self-published kindle millionaire (book sales, not money), the epitome of success in the new publishing world. I am none of these things but neither am I troubled by these aspects of her life and career as a writer. What sent me into traumatic self-doubt was reading an article about her stating that she writes a book in 2-4 weeks. Is this one of the new 'short books' in vogue? Not according to amazon data. The two of her books I looked up kicked in at over 300 pages in print version.

I reckon this makes her 6-100 times more productive than I am, depending on whether she keeps writing at this pace, one book after another. If you want to make money, it is definitely better to write like Amanda Hocking than the way I do, and the only advice I can give you is to go and read Amanda Hocking's blog. But there are many different reasons for writing and many different ways to write, without even starting a debate about quality, so I'll let you in on my secret life over the next year.

After Christmas, I'm going to start writing my next novel, and I expect to finish it by the end of 2012 and revise it in 2013. Why don't I just start, rather than set a rough starting date? Because once I start, I become immersed in the world of my novel, obsessive, protective of the 3 hours a day (roughly) that I dedicate to my writing, obsessive, irritated by interruption, contemptous of any trivial concerns relating to the 21st century, obsessive. You get the idea. Of all this, the only really bad thing about writing a book is that it stops me writing a different book.

Let's assume I will live and write for another 26 years (An online quiz told me that my life expectancy was 82 so it seems reasonable to base calculations around that). On average, I take a year to write a book and a year in between books for research/brain food/revision/publication/marketing; longer for a historical novel because the research is a bigger job. This means I will probably only write 13 more books, and that's assuming I don't get the dreaded writer's block. I have hundreds of ideas for books written on scruffy scraps - bits of envelope, shopping lists, minutes of educational meetings, hotel bills - all stuffed in a drawer of my desk. When I start writing a book, it is a bigger commitment than marriage. All right, perhaps not quite as big a commitment as marriage, but it cuts out so many other emotional adventures you could have had. At least for me it does.

Three years ago, I was ready to start writing a novel but I could only narrow my favourite ideas down to five and it hurt to choose. I outlined the plots to my husband and said 'Which do you fancy?' He said 'The one about the troubadour girl with the big white dog.' And so 'Song at Dawn' started. The idea for that book was sparked by my reading for pleasure an American book on women troubadours, which stated in the introduction, 'It was rumoured that a female troubadour toured the south of France with a large white dog.' How could I not want to write that story, given my relationship with Pyreneans! Another quote that stuck in my mind was 'Troubadours were the rock stars of the middle ages.' And so I imagined Dragonetz and of course fell in love with him myself.

I have thought again about the claims of all those neglected ideas in my desk but Dragonetz' hold is too strong and I need to go back to the 12th century. I have another story to tell.

My TOP TEN Writing Tips,  for Myself (because everyone is different)
1. Know what you're writing about.
That's not the same as 'write about what you know'. I'm writing about the 12th century and I knew little about this period before I researched 'Song at Dawn'. I also like to know the places where my story is set and if I haven't been there, I look up maps, read travel books, bring the place to life in my head. I have no idea why it matters to me to be as realistic as possible but it does.

2. Know what it is you're writing.
If you're writing a full novel, it helps to know that it's likely to be 80,000 words or more and to have some idea of how the story in your head will play out in that number of words. If you're writing a minisaga of under 500 words for a competition, it's a little different. When I have an idea I just know whether it's going to be a poem, a play, a short story or a novel - I've written and published all of them. Experience helps, as does reading widely and learning your craft. Writers' groups are good, whether online or down the local bookshop once a month (like we do). Make the crucial decisions of a) Point of view (1st or 3rd person, or even (rarely) 2nd?); whose viewpoint to start with and are you going to switch viewpoint? b) Tense (past or the increasingly popular present tense? c) Structure (chronological, flashbacks,dual time-line?) - so many choices. Now you're ready to begin, or rather to spend hours on the beginning, because everyone knows the beginning is crucial.

3. Know when to plan and when not to.
I often have a whole scene in my head but a sketchy idea of before and after. Sometimes that scene has changed by the time the plot gets there, sometimes I cut it but often, magically, the scene works. I jot down brief reminders of such scenes, or parts of plot, or character background and keep a whole jumble of notes in a Word file,  that I use and edit as I work. Stories simmer in my head, sometimes for years, and then suddenly take on the structure needed. If everything is planned before you write, your story is dead. If nothing is planned, there's no suspense and you don't get a 'page-turner.'

4. Let the characters live and breathe.
One of the elements that creates a real story is when your characters insist on behaving in ways you hadn't planned. You don't write dialogue; your characters really speak. Those unexpected turns are part of the pleasure of writing not just part of the pleasure in reading. And that goes for all your characters. You have to get into the skin of vile people as well as attractive ones and it can be a very disturbing experience.

5. Don't judge it or revise it; write it until it's finished.
One day you'll think it's crap, the next day you'll think it's brilliant. It's neither. An old piece of advice that I took to heart was 'Don't get it right, get it written.' I know that I get into the flow of writing and my right brain takes over so I'm not even conscious of writing or of time - I'm living my story. Judging and revising need your left brain and that interrupts the flow. One thing I find awkward writing a historical novel is being stuck on a period detail while I'm really into the story. Sometimes I'll look it up online at the time but often I'll just underline that bit and go back to it later to add/delete/change whatever I wasn't sure about.

6. Don't show what you're writing to anyone until it's finished. 
I used to make my poor husband read each chapter hot off the press. The pressure on both of us was horrible. I knew from his face when he didn't like something even if he learned how touchy I was about criticism while I was in mid-creation. Usually, he reads a book in about 6 hours so reading one over a year, a chapter every few weeks, was impossible, even without being expected to make wonderful comments and be constructive in any criticism. It's a miracle we're still together but now I do have the self-discipline to wait a year for my first reader - and my first reader is still the same one, who's been with me from my first published poem, 26 years ago.

7. Don't submit other books to publishers while you're in mid-creation. 
Of course I can take rejection! I have drawers full of them! I use them constructively to improve my work, to motivate me when I know an editor wrote a personal comment, and I target publishers to try again! Yeah, right.  Not only do I hate them but they stop me writing, sometimes for a week or two. They wasted my creative time to make all those stupidly complicated submission details, tailored to that particular publisher, and it's usually obvious that no-one even looked at what I sent. A friend of mine hand-delivered his MS (which is a great book!) to a London literary agent and received it back by post in the self-addressed, stamped envelope the afternoon of the same day.

8. Pace yourself and avoid brain-drain activities 
This is one reason I love photography. I can write and then shoot. They are different activities. Shooting is so much of the present moment, instant results, instant feedback. I can go out walking the dog (with or without camera) and it doesn't stop me writing. But reviewing books, running and preparing my writers' group, marketing my published books, and probably blogging - we'll see! - are activities that drain my writing energy. So I put my book first and catch up on other things in the in-between-books year. I am a morning person and I prefer to write for about three hours in the morning, after breakfast and dog-walking, every day of the week I can.

9. Stop writing when you know what is going to happen next. This is my favourite tip because it makes me happy when I write and I'm sure it prevents writer's block. I stop writing for the day at a point when I know exactly what I'm going to write next. Sometimes I write a note to myself about the next passage. I really look forward to writing what I already have in my head and the next day I can't wait to get going. If I get stuck, I work something out before I stop writing for the day, always.

10. Enjoy it. Laugh at your own jokes. As my husband and son tell me, someone has to. Be proud of what you've achieved in writing it at all. If it's any good, that's a bonus. Half the bestselling books published are crap in my view so who's to say what's good and what isn't?

11. Revise it. I know, I said 10 tips, but the 11th is the essential that no-one ever wants to do. You can pay as many pro editors as you like but only one person knows what your book should be like and that's you, so stop moaning and get back to work. It is much better to leave some time before revising your writing, whether it's a poem, a play or a novel. You will love your baby one day, hate it the next and you need distance to use your left brain and really work on it. Not just the spelling and punctuation - you can pay someone to do that. No, the pain is where you find inconsistencies of plot, character or just detail. Then there are awkwardly written passages that could be better.

Do your best and then let your baby go out into the world, to have its own adventures.

I never read books on how to write in case I find out I don't know how to write. However, while I was playing the authonomy game, I met the Impeccable Editor. Her advice is excellent and as long as her book is posted on authonomy, the opening chapters are here for free. I'm guessing Impeccable is a woman but that might just be my innate prejudice. I know for sure that Impeccable would be able to improve this Post because she is that rare being, an Editor

while I'm a writer and this is hot off the press so it is full of mistakes and I think it's great.

A hero olive cheeseball and friends

The cheeseballs really are rolling - all 6 variations that I uploaded were accepted by the inspectors. Which would you choose to go beside the recipe in a magazine? Feel free to choose or critique in a comment on the post. The answer will be on my Blog as soon after the 16th December as the buyer chooses. You can check out the competition here


Note that the bottom two have my hero olive cheeseball, neatly cut in two to show the olive and pepper stuffing. I didn't realise when I was shooting but unfortunately the two halves look like mad glass eyes on a lumpy brown monster so some of my images would be great for Hallowe'en or a children's party but not for a serious magazine. If I'd had more time or energy, I'd have exaggerated the effect and shot some crazy ones too. Instead I have some that are just bad.

The close-up I posted last time was accepted too so that's number 6

1.

2.

3. Eye level with hero olive cheeseball

4. tall person view with hero olive cheeseball

5.

The deadline for the shoot isn't until 16th December so there is bound to be some competition by then. There's a lot of cameraderie amongst the food shooters who meet up in the Forums to respond to recipe requests so I usually play nice and post images early if I've had them accepted. This can backfire, like the time I posted before inspection and had straight rejections. Ouch! And obviously you're showing your hand so any little genius idea you've added might spark a better idea to trump yours.

I did shoot the pork stew too, for the same buyer, so I'll post those but I won't share the olive balls until nearer the deadline. I'm hoping no-one else will pick up on the New Year party favours idea so why make it easy for them? Of course if the competition read my blog, they're well ahead, and they can always check out my portfolio (Sort by Age to see the most recent). The truth is, the other food shooters are all so good they don't need my help but a little paranoia is good for business. Sometimes, the first images posted are just so good that everyone else wonders why they should bother but it's always interesting to compare takes on the same recipe.

There are 30,000 photographers selling over 8 million photos on istockphoto.com
so competition isn't just fierce, it's life-threatening for those who make stock their livelihood. I'm glad I'm not one of them.

Designer Spotlight kudos for my book jacket

BUY book here

Woke up to some amazing news. I've been awarded 5 free credits to spend on photos and a new icon to go beside my silver canister on istock. My jacket design for 'Song at Dawn'  has made it to istock's Design Spotlight as the design of the week for other artists to view, rate and comment. That part is a bit scary but my shoulders are broad enough and I can certainly learn from constructive criticism. I love designing book jackets and this one was a real labour of love.

To make the design, I bought 6 images from istockphoto and used 1 of my own. The separate images and photographers can be seen on the Design Spotlight. Many thanks to
PetrMalyshev
VikaValter
kkgas
big-dan
matejmm
tunart
 for their superb images.

I cropped, isolated and combined the images, each one in a different layer in Photoshop. The key moment in composition was when I flipped the girl and all of a sudden, it all worked. I loved the magnetic gaze of the Tuareg from the moment I saw the photo and I can see the characters in my novel coming alive on this jacket, giving the combination of romance, adventure and medieval ambience that I was after. It's amazing how many photos of people in medieval costume just look like photos of people posing in medieval costume but the people I chose all seemed to me to have real presence. I realise that the Tuareg was not intended as a medieval persona but such traditional costume is timeless. My problem with the Tuareg was that the top of his head was cropped and I had to reconstruct his headgear. I also had to take the warrior tattoos off the knight's face - too Celtic for my place and period.

The last touch on the artwork was to change the colour completely from the original images - the cameo of the guard was in blue, the girl was in blue. Colorizing not only gave the ambience I wanted, it also integrated the different elements to make them part of the same story.

I used lulu's cover wizard to upload front and back covers, omitting the spine, sized from a previous book jacket of the same size. This left the spine as plain colour. The ISBN was automatically added to the back cover and I then downloaded the correctly sized pdf of the full jacket and, using masks and layers with my original design, I revealed the spine area and adapted its size a tad to make a homogeneous design. I then uploaded this to lulu as an advanced all-in-one design.

lulu does give exact measurements to create an all-in-one design but I was concerned about the exact requirement for the size of the ISBN. Working in this manner I was guaranteed the correct size of cover and ISBN.

First draft of the design, from the free comps you can download from istock, before I chose a different girl, flipped her round and changed all the colours

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Olive balls ready to roll

Basic olive balls, straight from the oven and straight from camera

The olive balls are cooked, they look good to me and actually they taste good (that's one less for the shoot). Great party food. I have all the props ready to play with, minus the extra stuffed olives, which I was going to use as background ingredients but I forgot and ate them.

Technical detail
The buyer likes a vertical and a horizontal version of the shot, doesn't usually like close-ups such as my image above, but prefers the angle that you'd get if you were a tall person looking at your dinner plate. As I'm not a tall person, I am imagining this. However, another food shooter I admire, and a competitor on the Recipe Requests, jonathansloane, took a great bird's eye shot for October requests and that was the squash casserole shot chosen, so what's usual isn't always what's best, and rules are there to be broken.

However, I've made mistakes in the past that I try to avoid:-

1) Too shallow a depth of field, especially when it gives alien blobs in the foreground or the cut edge of e.g. cheese or cake with only a tiny area in focus. As I often shoot hand-held, this is one of my big faults in order to get a fast shutter-speed and consequent sharpness. For the 'on the plate in front of you, tall person' angle, I usually start at f5.6 these days and when I find a composition I really like, I use the tripod for a few last shots.

2) Trailing off into dark background. Food likes backlighting and istock shots don't get rejected by the Inspectors for being high-key. I need to keep backgrounds bright - or have a reason for not doing so.

3) Dog hairs. You don't have a dog? Believe me, even if you don't have a dog, even if you've cleaned the life out of every item in your kitchen, some imperfection will be visible on your precious food when you view it at 200%. I've spent hours Photo-shopping brown dimples out of aubergines and tomatoes, wrinkled leaves on lettuce, or burnt corners on meat in casseroles. The truth is that real food rarely looks perfect and raw food straight form the garden that tastes wonderful usually looks a lot worse than out-of-season, supermarket produce that might as well be water for all the taste it has. For a food shot, only visually perfect is good enough.

Lens
Lenses are very personal choices. I shoot Nikon and my favourite for food shots is my 60mm f2.8 macro. It's a sharp, fast prime and there's no such thing as too close. Okay, it can be a bit temperamental on focus, and my eyesight isn't good enough for manual focus, but we've been buddies for three years now and we know each other. this was my first slr lens - crazy choice! Very me.

Sometimes I use my 70mm-200mm f2.8 as was suggested to me ages ago by yet another food shooter whose work I love, and who's also a qualified Chef with a restaurant in Ireland, foodandwinephotography A long lens gives lovely depth of field but there's the extra weight to consider = tripod

Image quality
I shoot RAW with basic jpeg so I can see results straight away but have the raw material to process in Photoshop, rather than in-camera additions.

After the shoot
I've taken 110 shots and I'm happy with them. I now need to choose about 6 to process and upload, to ensure I get one vertical, one horizontal to offer the buyer. My images will have to go through the istock inspection process and no-one can guarantee acceptance. The process will take a week or so before my images are up for sale and when they are, IF any of them get through inspection, I'll post a new blog so you can choose the one you like the best of mine, and see whether you prefer mine to the other takes on the recipe offered to the buyer. If you're one of my competitors, good luck, and may the photographer with the prettiest balls win.

Never trust the recipe

Measuring a cup of flour in a bra

You spotted the deliberate mistake in the recipe, right? Take another look.

Olive Balls
Serves 8–10 as appetizer


1 cup cheddar cheese, grated
¼ cup butter, softened
¼ teaspoon paprika
dash Tabasco or other hot sauce
¾ cup all-purpose flour
36–40 tiny pimento stuffed olives


Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl, mix together cheese, butter, paprika and hot sauce. Blend in flour. Shape dough into 1½-inch circles. Place olives in center and fold dough around olives to form balls. Refrigerate 10 minutes. Bake on lipped baking sheet for 20 minutes. Serve warm.

So, you spotted the deliberate mistake? No, me neither, at least not till I was happily whizzing cheese, butter and breadcrumbs, and recognized what my subconscious had told me from the start -  these ingredients make a crumb topping not a dough. So, the choice is whether to roll the olives in crumbs (nice idea - note to self, try it another time) or, as the rest of the recipe clearly requires, turn crumbs to dough.

I'm trying to keep to the recipe, as it's for a magazine, so I've added water, squidged the dough (which I consider to be pastry rather than dough but what would I know), and put it to chill.

American cup measures

Mistakes in recipes happen, especially at the pre-publication stage, when you can get typos, printing mistakes or - worst of all - recipes that just don't work.

International differences in measurements drive me crazy and ** Americans look away now and don't read this ** I hate the stupid idea of cup measurements. The attempt to rationalise an inexact measurement based on 19th century crockery, by standardising it in relation to real mathematical units, is like saying a donkey is equivalent to 120kg and then measuring in donkeys. Take a quarter cup of butter; I have actual cup measurements (as opposed to the ones in the top photo) so my cups are in fact standardised, but how much butter I fit into a quarter cup depends on how much I squidge it. If I squidge it lots, I can fit in twice as much. And don't start me on the difference between volume and weight.

You can also get outcomes that taste horrible but as taste is so personal, I just assume that someone will like it, and my job is to make it look appetising. I love to imagine all these people at home looking at my photo and saying, 'Oh my, that looks good! I'm surely going to make that!' And then I imagine it tasting really horrible, and them feeling cheated and never trusting anything or anyone ever again in their life. Maybe there ought to be a stop button on my imagination. Rewind. Back to the 'appetising food photo' bit. Stop.

Rolling stuffed olives in little circles of dough is very therapeutic and reminds me of being 6 years old and discovering playdough. I used to make little playdough cakes and sell them in my pretend shop so I guess I haven't changed. I don't actually have time to make little cheeseballs and I should be doing all kinds of chorse. Sometimes, when you don't have the time, is when it's very important to take time out for making cheeseballs.

Props for the shoot

Amazingly the dough quantities have worked quite well and I have 32 cheeseballs, now in the oven. None of them looks like a 'hero cheeseball', the technical term for an upfront perfect image (at least that's how I understand it). On the other hand, I don't think they'll all have to be out of focus. A food shooter I really admire is TheCrimsonMonkey, whose every food item is a hero, but his images are rocket science and mine are Everycook shots. There is room for many different styles of food shot.I want every human being to think 'That looks good. I can make that.'

Olive balls are in the oven and I'd already set up camera, lights and props. I bought some new tableware for this image and I don't know for sure what will suit. I imagine I'm going to have little brownish balls to shoot, I really liked the green in the tortilla shot and Fernando has that tableware so I looked for something on those lines. Also there's a New Year theme to the magazine so I found some 'papillottes' with no logos on. Papillottes are French chocolates,pralines or sometimes nougat sweets sold for Christmas and New Year, that have jokes, 'dictons' (traditional sayings) or quiz questions in them, a bit like Christmas crackers in the UK. They sometimes have 'crackers' that go bang, but more often not.

Bugger. I forgot and ate the garnish by mistake. Time to check how the cooking's going.

Before a food shoot

Spanish tortilla

'Let's shoot a tortilla', said my photographer friend Fernando when we were staying with him in Madrid. The beauty of this plan from my viewpoint was that he was going to do all the cooking and set up the lights. As is the way in Spain, the suggestion came at 9.00pm when, at home in France, I would usually be watching TV and winding down, not planning the evening meal.

We then went shopping, bought the green place mat, a brown one to go underneath, and lettuce, parsley and green peppers for garnish and to add more green, complementing the yellowish tortilla. Back home, we chose a white plate from Fernando's cupboard, he set up two speedlights, one for back light, one at 90 degrees to bring out texture and then all he had to do was cook.

The perfect tortilla straight from the pan

The tortilla went from frying pan to plate and photo in about 3 minutes and I think the freshness shows. I do know some of the tricks  - salt in beer to keep a head on it, polyurethane varnish on roast chicken - but I prefer to cook, shoot and eat, so I rarely use anything other than a flick of olive oil to improve the appearance of food in my shots.

One advantage of being cook, stylist and photographer - or of course working with Fernando - is that you have control over all aspects of the shoot, including timing.

As I couldn't use Fernando's lights, I wasn't going to bother taking a shot but he nagged me, I set up one speedlight and gave it a try. Moral: if you don't have the perfect set-up, shoot anyway! I like my tortilla shot and of course it has the memories of eating afterwards, nearing midnight, with a beautiful glass of Spanish red - I think it was rioja that time, my favourite.

Before a shoot
1. I list ingredients for the recipe and start the shopping list for what I need to buy.
2. I picture what the food will look like - colour, texture, firmness, shape, quantity are all important but I don't analyse. I know that I can't have a spoonful of tortilla  or a slice of tapenade. If I'm cooking something I can't visualise, I google it to get an idea of what it's supposed to turn out like.
3. I dress up the food different ways in my imagination, often at 3am when I can't sleep. Some people buy a new dress for a special occasion; the shoot is the special occasion for the food, and I want colours and a setting that make it food the star of the show.
4. Go shopping and buy not only the ingredients you need, but any extra props; table linen, crockery, glassware, food extras for show. Photographers often put raw ingredients in the shot with the finished dish, so you need to buy the extras, in perfect condition. I used apples from our orchard in my apple crumble (see previous blog) but I bought three perfect ones as props. They didn't taste as nice.
5. I decide where and when I'm going to shoot, so I can plan the cooking and know what lighting I'll need.
6. Try out the set-up with your props before you prepare the food. Sometimes the colours don't work together as you wanted. Sometimes props like a plate, a baguette or a glass of wine look gigantic and disproportionate when you see what the camera sees. Most food shots are vertical orientation. There's something to do with composition and perspective that just works better, but some buyers like copyspace or room to crop as they choose. I try to take different versions.

Painters come to Provence for the light so I take food outdoors to shoot whenever I can. This has led to salad garnish dancing off into the Mistral, umbrellas keeling over and the mystery of the black, shiny lump in the frame. This was of course the dog's nose. When I shoot food, the dog becomes very interested. She has figured out that the more absorbed I become in looking through the black box, the more chance she has of sneaking up on the goodies and giving a surreptitious lick. So another part of preparation is

7. the anti-dog barricade. Or I make her do a very long downstay. Nowadays she usually just lies down and watches, of her own accord.

Where I shoot
Indoors

harvest basket of fruit and veg, isolated on white

You can make a shoot corner in your kitchen so it's easy to move from cooking to shooting. I use a wheelie trolley with a granite top, backlit by the window, with two speedlights, two umbrellas and a reflector chiming in as necessary.

I'm lucky and have an attic that's been turned into a photography playroom - studio is too grand a word and the ceiling is too low for convenience - so if I'm isolating food on white, I go upstairs into the attic, where I use a skylight plus speedlights and umbrellas, and a glass-topped table.

Spinach salad with orange

Outdoors
I love outdoor light and have three different places with outdoor tables where I can have garden background and natural light, using speedlight and umbrella for fill as required. I sometimes use a shoot-through umbrella to diffuse bright sunlight.

I shot the spinach salad with orange outdoors and I like the out of focus garden, house, summer ambience I get when everything works i.e. when I don't have pouring rain/harsh shadows/flies on the food. This one was for a cookbook request.

I'm not a chef, am self-taught as a cook and I just can't hack it with those perfect food shots where everything is white on white, high key, and precision presentation, so I've made a virtue out of necessity and my style is more country kitchen than restaurant. I devour French gourmet magazines and I love Mediterranean cuisine and style - and colour.


Suppose you want an image of a particular recipe for your website, blog or a cookbook? Nowadays you don't have to commission a food photographer if you don't mind other people using the same image. Just post a Request on istockphoto and a food shooter will respond, often food shooters, plural. You get the exact photo you want for the same price as any stock photo. Why do we sell our work so cheaply? This is the world of stock photography and if you sell the same photo 500 times you make more than for one big commission - well, I can dream, can't I?!

Now you're ready to join me in the Challenge


This is the recipe I've chosen to shoot for a buyer's request. I aim to shoot during the next week, not before Wednesday, and I'll post each stage I go through. If you were shooting this, what would you be thinking and doing to prepare?

The recipe
Olive Balls
Serves 8–10 as appetizer


1 cup cheddar cheese, grated
¼ cup butter, softened
¼ teaspoon paprika
dash Tabasco or other hot sauce
¾ cup all-purpose flour
36–40 tiny pimento stuffed olives


Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl, mix together cheese, butter, paprika and hot sauce. Blend in flour. Shape dough into 1½-inch circles. Place olives in center and fold dough around olives to form balls. Refrigerate 10 minutes. Bake on lipped baking sheet for 20 minutes. Serve warm.