#5 Lauren Caris - Building a Professional Food Photography Business

In today’s episode I am speaking with the wonderful Lauren
Carris. I was so excited for this conversation because I’ve been
following her for a while now and I am completely in love with
her images. Lauren is a great food photographer and educator,
dedicating a lot of her time teaching others about the behind the
scenes of the food photography world. So as you would expect,
there is a long list of interesting tips that Lauren taught me
during our conversation. I can’t wait to share them with you.


We talk about:
- Her road from a job in tax to becoming a food
photographer.
- Balancing educating others and doing the client work
- Building the long-term relationship with the
clients
- The importance of a good website (SEO &
portfolio) in finding the clients
- Having a business coach, which helped Lauren to shape the
vision and put ideas into clear plan and messaging for her
audience. We get more into details her how the coaching helps and
works.
- Pricing. There’s no magic formula, but a lot
of good tips from Lauren how to think about and set your
pricing.
- We talk about the licensing fee, tips on how
to calculate it, and the way to educate the clients about it.
Lauren recommends to use Getty images price calculator & read
the article in Fstoppers about the licensing
- Importance of email marketing not only for
education work but also for the photography clients, which helps
you to keep on the radar and build the long-term
relationships.
- We discuss the upcoming importance of
videography as additional service for food
photography clients.


The book Lauren recommends to read (which I already started
reading and it’s great!): Light Science and Magic by Fil Hunter,
Paul Fuqua, and Steven Biver.


Influencers Lauren recommends to follow for inspiration:


@thebiteshot


@twolovestudio


@thelittleplantation


@we.eat.together_


You can find Lauren’s portfolio here.


What is also super exciting is that Lauren very soon will launch
her teaching platform Food Photography Academy where she will
build a community and constantly release new educational videos
related to food photography & it’s business. Find more
information here.


Follow me @kamilekave to keep up to date about the podcast! I
also share lots of behind the scenes of my work :)