I wrote a post a little while ago talking about 3 Ways to Get Involved and Stand Out. One of the ways I mentioned was to use social media to your advantage.
Food photography serves as a visually stunning way to grab people’s attention on social media. Not to mention that it makes for a great nutrition-related creative outlet because it allows you to:
- Express your own personal style. Whether this is done when styling your photos or in the editing process, it’s a great way to share your own personal style.
- Share your food philosophy through recipes that convey your values. For instance, if you value quick and easy recipes that make eating healthy simple, then share those kinds of recipes.
- Share your passion and knowledge by talking about it. For example, are you passionate about gut health? Share a picture of a gut-friendly meal and write up a few quick tips on how to support your gut.
Sounds amazing right? So how do you juggle studying for class, working, internships, a social life and food photography?
How to Find Time for Food Photography + Social Media
- Keep track of all of your creative ideas. Whether it be a recipe idea, food styling concepts or even talking points you really want to drive home; make sure you write them all down. This will help inspire you when you get stuck but still need to create content.
- Make a plan. List out how many social media posts you want to make for the week (or even month) and a brief outline of what each post picture will entail. Are there any recipes you want to develop? Messages you want to share? From here you will develop a “shot list” or a list of photos you want to get for your posts.
- Batch Your Tasks. Batching your tasks can help immensely when trying to efficiently gather content for your social media outlets.
- This can mean meal-prepping your desired recipes at the beginning of the week to not only have pictures for the week but also have healthy food options.
- Or maybe it means practicing “mise en place”, where you gather up the ingredients for each recipe you want to make, measure them out and place them in a bin or container so they are ready to go when you are ready to make your meal and take your desired picture.
Whatever works for you. However, preparing a recipe and taking a photo for your social media post every day you plan to post, will have you worn down fast.
- Use a planning/scheduling app to plan out your posts and write captions. The more you plan ahead, the less work it will take later to execute your beautiful post. Thus, the easier it is to build a consistent social media presence.
- Have backup! Whenever you do a shoot, challenge yourself to get a few extra unplanned photos in. These can serve as your backup content in case you run out of photos before your next shoot. Trust me, you will thank yourself later for this.
- Don’t be afraid to repost a picture from a few weeks ago. Using an old but well-performing picture again can be a lifesaver. Sometimes posts perform better the second time they are posted too. And if you are worried someone will notice, don’t be, because the won’t. And if they do, congratulations you have a very loyal follower.
Food photography is a great way for nutrition and dietetic students to creatively express themselves in the nutrition field. 
It might seem daunting at first, but it can have a strong pay off. If you feel unsure about your current skills just remember no one started out perfect; small steps overtime lead to big change.
