Julie Powell wrote a blog that was transformed into the Julie and Julia movie. This didn’t mean Julie was invited to write the script. That task fell to writer/director Nora Ephron. Similarly the author who writes the recipe is very rarely the cook who cooks it for the photographer. That often goes to a food stylist.

Styling food so that the camera “loves” it requires considerable skill: knowledge of foods, an eye for detail and infinite patience. As with movie making, several “takes” may be needed before the final shot becomes a keeper.

The task of the food stylist is to make the food look irresistible for the cameras—close up or far away. He or she works with photographers to produce ads for magazines, newspapers, and television commercials, and gorgeous-looking meals for Hollywood movies and in-store produce videos. Food stylists are also called in to prepare recipes for cookbook photography and “beauty shots” for television shows.

In this pursuit of perfection, a food stylist may have to slice several pounds of Swiss cheese in order to find one geometrically perfect slice. It is the stylist’s artistry in combination with the photographer’s skill that makes a professional photograph outstanding and arouses the desire of the consumer to get her hands on the food — immediately! She may roast four or more turkeys hoping the photographer will capture the bird while all the hot air beneath the skin is still puffing its “cheeks.” And the stylist is expected to create miracles when the photographer says “go”: to make a soufflé look like a castle in the air – and stop its collapse as it is taken from the oven.

Most importantly, food stylists can fib but they cannot lie. For instance, the only artifice that is permitted is in styling and photographing ice cream. Because it would melt under the hot lights, it is permitted to fabricate ice cream from Crisco, mashed potatoes and food coloring.

(Apparently this rule doesn’t seem to be in force in fast food joints where the real squishy, drippy burger looks nothing like the backlit beauty we see in the photograph!)

Getting Paid

Like photographers, stylists bill their clients by the day. In large cities, these day rates can be significant. Very often stylists and photographers team up to offer clients a complete package that includes the work of a prop (or background) stylist too. These alliances usually are casual partnerships that wax and wane as the job do.

Getting Started

No officially sanctioned licensing is required for becoming a food stylist but having a solid foundation of cooking is important, and a degree from a professional cooking school is invaluable. It is also helpful to keep current with the new technologies, attend art and photography classes. But perhaps the best way to break into the field is to intern with an established stylist to learn what it takes.

Learning From A Pro: Dolores Custer, Food Stylist Extraordinaire

A longtime and well-established food stylist, Dolores Custer’s work is widely admired. Her own experience speaks to the many opportunities that are available in the field. She has a master’s degree in food and nutrition, and she is recognized as the ultimate authority on making food look fabulous for the camera.

Custer has worked with food magazines, advertising agencies and public relations firms in addition to many of the largest companies in the United States. Her talents are in demand for television, feature films, and major food companies.

She says, “The best thing that a beginner can do is to assist good food stylists. Put together a portfolio of your work to promote yourself and apply for an intern or junior assistant position with an established professional.” That’s how she got her start.

“About three months before I graduated from NYUSteinhardt, we were told that a film crew wanted to rent the test kitchens to shoot some shots for the Lamb Council, and they needed someone to help the person who was preparing the food. I volunteered and met my first Food Stylist!

I had been unsure of what I wanted to do with my degree, but when I learned about this career (which I previously knew NOTHING about), I knew it was for me. I worked with three food stylists before I graduated, and when I did graduate, one of them asked me to come work with her full time. What a wonderful opportunity, I later discovered.”

Custer reveals that most stylists must pay their dues. “There is a lot to learn and the best way is to assist someone who is good at it.”

Custer also advises that it’s important to live where the work is and to develop an adaptable freelance personality. “One of the things I like best about the freelance world of food styling is that there are no typical days,” says Custer. “Each day is different from the next. We shoot in every conceivable environment and work with many different foods. One day we may prepare a picnic for a TV commercial and the next day we are spreading the client’s frosting on a single cupcake.“

Delores Custer always seems to be teaching somewhere, so it’s good to follow her teaching schedule online, and for the announcement of her forthcoming book that is sure to be a winner. And The Mississippi University for Women offers a one-week food styling program for college credit. www.muw.edu. There even is the International Conference on Food Styling and Photography that is devoted to the topic.

Some topics call for more than one posting, and this is one such topic. There is too much information to digest in one sitting. This is part one of a two-part discussion. I’ll be talking about food styling for food bloggers next.

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Executive Chef Alfred Portale, Gotham Bar & Grill

There are those who invent clocks and others who tell the time. There are architects who design buildings and folks who paint them. There are artisans who make violins and artists who composers of concertos.

We tend to think of artistic creativity as springing from the minds of dancers and painters and musicians, but plumbers, electricians and vacuum cleaner engineers also invent novel solutions to problems. They are creative geniuses too.

We all know chefs who acquire or are endowed with exceptional ability. Some are intellectual giants. Some are blessed with intuitive talent.

If we tried to make a list of influential chefs, it would reach from Lucullus who drew his last breath in 56 B.C. and trace a glorious gastronomic path through the prism of Apicius who took his first breath in 25 B.C. We’d mention Taillevent 1310 – 1395, and Rabelais who tirelessly described sixty ways to cook an egg.

In his treatise Gargantua, Rabelais wrote, “Drink always and you shall never die,” though unfortunately he did — in 1553.

We’d add to our list, Catherine de’ Medici, who arrived from Italy as a tiny betrothed 14 year-old and became the Queen of France. She changed the culinary landscape by introducing the French court to truffles, Parmesan cheese, artichokes, quenelles, roast duckling with orange sauce and pasta — lots and lots of pasta.

It has been observed there wouldn’t have been a Renaissance without pasta, because hungry men growl, and with rumbling tummies, foment revolutions whereas the well-fed sing happy songs and bequeath everlasting beauty. With a bellyful of spaghetti, a person can contemplate creation itself.

It was Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher who lived from 341 B.C. to 270 B.C. who wisely declared, “The beginning and root of all good is to make the stomach happy; wisdom and learning are founded on that.”

By Gum! If only those old Greeks still ruled the world we would all be living in Paradise instead of dwelling in perpetual poverty.

Do you remember the dictum of King Henri IV, patron of that venerable inn, La Tour d’Argent? He pronounced his monarchy philosophy thusly, “If God allows me to live, and I will see that there is not a single laborer in my kingdom who does not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.” And that pronouncement was made in the mid-1500s before the Colonel fried his very first KFC.

As we march through the menus of time we stumble across Colbert, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the Minister of Finance who served the Sun King, Louis, 14th. He approved France’s purchase of Quebec and Louisiana even though according to writer Daniel Rogov, author of Rogues, Writers & Whores, Dining with the Rich & Famous, “he could see no way to convince the savages that inhabit those lands to buy our fashionable frocks.” However, Colbert did see the colonies as a source for enriching the French larder, (though the future presence of McDonald’s in the Musée du Louvre was surely not what he had in mind).

Parmentier was the person who persuaded Parisians to set aside their fear of potatoes. This feat of conversion from fear of crisp spuds prompted Chef Curnonsky’s description of French fries as being among “the most spiritual creations of Parisian genius.” The original French fries are thought to have been first consumed beneath the bridges of Paris during the French Revolution and were known as Pommes Pont-Neuf.

Thus we stride through the first stirrings of culinary creationism and evolve from Sauce Béarnaise to Green Goddess Dressing, from Poulet Demi Deuil with a fine Bordeaux to Chicken Nuggets with Diet Coke. We have traveled far and with increasing width from Sachertorte to Twinkies.

Each stage in the devolution of our culinary journey takes us to new heights: from the 17th century’s influence of La Varenne, we stride through gastronomy to honor: Brillat-Savarin, Marcel Boulestin, Antonin Carême, Choron, Dugléré, Nicolas Appert, (who invented canning), to Auguste Escoffier; Alain Chapel; Alain Ducasse and Alain Senderens to  Ferdinand Point; Guy Savoy and Gordon Ramsay; Chef Boyardee and Rachael Ray’s discovery of 365 ways to use leftover hot dogs.

We can all agree that Alfred Portale, a former jewelry designer and top of his class graduate of the CIA, is among the most inventive and highly acclaimed chefs of our time. As too are Ferran Adria, Grant Achatz, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and a host of others who have ascended into the exalted pantheon of kitchen deities.

What distinguishes these creamers of crops is their ability to think creatively: so not salt and predictable pepper but salt on caramel. Not those four seasons but twelve seasons in a year.

It is said: “No one is born with taste. Taste must be acquired not only by tasting but by learning and reading in dozens of disciplines and by experimenting and perfecting and making choices; choices about the right ingredients are of no greater or less importance than choosing the right words to describe your purpose.”

It is one thing to name an item on the menu fish eggs and astonishingly more profitable to whisper the word caviar. To say liver of a fat duck is less enticing than Fat Duck’s Foie (gras).  Or pâté rather than cold  meat loaf. Pommes frites go better with steak than Freedom Fries, a dish of revenge best served cold.

Robert F. Kennedy wrote, “Some dream of things that are and ask, Why? Others dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?” Nonconformists and risk takers possess the ability to paint toothache in fondant or describe the seductive smell of sizzling onions.

Creativity is a skill that can be developed. It is based on the fundamentals of technical knowledge and soaring imagination. Leonardo da Vinci had to understand the elements of anatomy in order to paint the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper; Picasso had to understand the fundamentals of art before creating his own cubistic artistry.

Every great chef starts to climb the ladder of stardom only after fully understanding the pure ecstasy of a well-constructed consommé. It is this grasp of complex simplicity that separates the sous from the celeb.

It takes a certain kind of intellect to think of serving a beefsteak tomato with a steak knife. To say “I love!” in a different way.

To invent a new dish is to pay homage to all who cooked before us and all the consumers who declared the chef to be an artist.

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Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes, 1963 Courtesy www.nga.gov/education/classroom/counting_on_art

A writer from FOOD ARTS magazine told me a very sad story. I’m so glad it has the following happy ending that, indeed, is to be continued…

I trained to be a professional pastry chef. That’s all I had ever wanted to do. Yet a medical problem made it too difficult for me to stand and work the long hours in a restaurant. I had to do something. In a moment of misery, I took myself off to the museum, and there I saw an extraordinary retrospective of Wayne Thiebaud’s works.

Suddenly I knew what I would do. I realized I simply had to adjust my thinking and reorient my passion for creating memorable experiences. I decided to change my pastry brush to a paint brush – and inspired by Thiebaud, I would, and could, paint a picture of the most delectable cakes and delicacies I once made standing up.

I started my own business, recreating wedding and other special cakes as paintings. I used photographs of the cake as the model. I’d remove one slice, so you could see the layers and fillings, and I drew upon my old skills to reproduce the cascades of flowers and other decorative elements in acrylic paints so that the memories of the big event could be kept forever.

I found my clients by contacting event planners and caterers. I also made friends with hotel banquet managers who would tell me about upcoming parties. I sent my catalog to brides who announced their engagements in the newspaper.

I posted photos of my work on a web site and was amazed at how quickly the orders came in. Word of mouth is my best advertising though an article in the local newspaper also helped a lot.

I’m planning to add another element to my work. I’m thinking about making a specialty of edible menus using chocolate and gold leaf.

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