Photoshoots

What and how

Words are not enough.

Even excellent words are not enough.

If your book is to fly, so much has to work. The design has to be spot on, the choice of cover finish, the type of paper, the tiny details like the colour of end papers too: a satisfying book is really an agglomeration of the care that goes into the details.

Photography might just be the single most important element: it communicates your food directly to the reader before they have chance to read your words, and in those few seconds the reader will either be drawn to it or not, moved to buy your book or pop it back on the shelf.

I thought it might be useful to talk about my experience of photoshoots: even if you are just writing a food book, you have a crucial role to play in the images representing you and your food.