Food Photography: Just Food’s new HiLo soups

When I first started out blogging it didn’t even occur to me that I was taking the photographs myself. I just saw food blogging as being blogging and not writing, photos, cooking and styling etc. But the longer I do it the more I realise that by having a hobby like blogging you’re constantly practicing and improving what are technically skills.

Paula is the perfect example of this. She began her gorgeous food blog and it soon became obvious that she has a natural talent and an incredible eye when it comes to photograhy. She’s now in demand for her incredible portraits and attention to detail especially when it comes to food photography and styling.

Donal Skehan is another such talent. His books are such things of beauty and now he’s started a dinner journal; Feast Magazine and is doing all of the incredible photos. He’s also doing photography for other peoples cookbooks like Theodora Fitzgibbon and the soon to be published first solo book by Sharon Hearne Smith.

I’ve done the photos for both of my books and for every article and recipe of mine in newspapers and magazines. It’s one of my favourite aspects of this work. After school I did a year long course in Colaiste Stiofain Naofa. It was a FETAC art, craft and design course. A brilliant way to learn about lots of different creative mediums and a great way to spend the year before knuckling down into a serious four year degree (well a design degree but serious none the less!). I think FETAC courses are brilliant, a really good way of dipping your toe into the water. I did one in Animation too and loved it. Anyway during that time I learned how to use a camera. Not a digital one but an actual camera. We had a dark room and developed photos and hung them up to dry, very old school! It was great though and I hadn’t really thought about all that until I recently began photographing work for other people and began to remember what I’d learnt.

One such client is Just Food. They started out at Midleton Farmers market with just a few products, mostly soup, hummus and granola. Everything is organic and made in small batches. It’s my aunt Deirdre’s company. I know how incredibly hard they work and it’s been amazing to see it grow over the years into the company it is today. Stocked in SuperValu, Dunnes and Tesco all over the country. They’ve just launched a new range of HiLo soups that are high in protein (all made with organic chicken stock) and low in fat. They taste amazing and are super filling too. So I took a few photos for them and got SO MUCH SOUP! The Supergreens one is my favourite. It’s like a green smoothie thats actually delicious with hints of mint and a clean spinach finish, amazing! It’s real clean feel good food and I know I’m probably biased but I love it!

Lilly x