Every few weeks I’m invited to speak to the newly arriving students at culinary school. I tell them I teach a class on love affairs.

I am the matchmaker.

I want to know what each student loves (not what he or she likes) to do.

With a little bit of luck, I can suggest ways in which they can marry their hobby or unique skills with their culinary knowledge as they seek a long and fruitful career.

I’m astonished to discover how many budding chefs yearn to own a truck. A truck that serves every kind of food from cupcakes and rice pudding to Korean barbecue.

Today I talked about the calendar. The US Tennis Open is coming up. So is the World Series. A sports fan may want to cook at the private dining room of a sports franchise or become a private chef for an athlete.

Dancing with the Stars employs a personal chef for each competition. Personal chef jobs are on the rise. It is one of the best jobs for an entrepreneur who can start a business without requiring a capital investment.

I spoke about jobs in art and design; photographer, food stylist, kitchen designer, and special event cake designer. Create a wedding cake in oil and acrylic paint to frame and preserve for ever and ever (or as long as the marriage lasts.) become a chef in a museum, create a food exhibit, become a lecturer on the topic of food in fine art? Become a recipe developer for Panera or Starbucks (or Dunkin D’s.)

Tasting is a good and well paying job. Taste ice cream, coffee, tea, olive oil. Chew gum. No kidding. Nestle is one of the companies that employs chewing gum tasters. There are real jobs that require super taster to… well…taste…all day. .

How about becoming an ethicist, a futurist or a trend tracker?

Or work on Wall Street analyzing food companies?

Or work for a food foundation or as a humanitarian or lobbyist or inspector to trace the source of contaminated food.

Here are just a few ideas for working in the food media: investigative journalist, vegetarian columnist, historian, folklorist (why do so many Jews go out for Chinese dinner on Sundays?)  The late Professor Alan Dundes examined this question with his students who also study the allure of violent sports, holiday traditions and even the mystique of the vampire.

Said Dundes: “As a psychoanalytic folklorist, my professional goals are to make sense of nonsense, find a rationale for the irrational and seek to make the unconscious conscious.”

How about taking up a career as a food memoir writer, biographer, commentator, geographer (do you know what a food geographer does?) trade magazine reporter, supermarket observer, radio host, (I’d like this job myself,) essayist, restaurant reviewer, food book reviewer (not only cookbooks but also food books dealing with politics, profiles of food companies etc.), catalog writer, TV star, ingredient shopper for TV star, TV producer, obituary writer for former food celebrities. Preparer of last meals in the federal penitentiary leading to a possible book contract for Meals to Die For.

I had only three minutes to describe my food jobs class so I didn’t have time to even mention careers in education, farming, science and technology or rare, unusual and extraordinary culinary careers so instead, I’ll get around to them in this blog. Please come back soon.

And.

Have a nice day (as they say at the bank!)

Egg Shells ©Donna Turner Ruhlman

There are times when I read an elegant haiku or see a sublime image and I find myself instantly transported.

I remember a friend showing me a two-line ad he had torn out of a magazine and simply couldn’t get over. The words were delicate, the image romantic, “I saw a man. He was dancing with his wife.” Alongside the words a couple danced at the edge of a pier in the distance in the dusk. When that kind of magic intimately captures an intangible moment, I stop and linger.

That’s how I felt when my daughter showed me Donna Turner Ruhlman’s photography on her husband, Michael Ruhlman’s blog. Donna captures the essence, and yes, the joy of Michael cooking. When she recently launched her food photography website, I naturally asked her about her food job:

Q: Donna, I read that you have a news and fine arts background. How did you get started as a food photographer? How did your food job evolve?

Aviation Cocktail ©Donna Turner Ruhlman

A: My background in photography is editorial photojournalism. I was a staff photographer on a daily newspaper and monthly magazine in Florida for five years. My goal for the newspaper was to capture the information in a visually interesting image while not affecting the subject–to be “a fly on the wall.”

Most of that work back then (mid ‘80’s) was all black & white and very different from the studio color work we did for the monthly magazine, which was mostly fashion, food and home interiors. Even when a writer and/or a stylist and I went on location, I always bought studio lights.

I didn’t venture into fine art photography until a few years ago. The kids were older and I was able to complete a series of black and white photos of leaves, photographed in our basement over three years, with studio lights. I had my first show last year at the Cleveland Botanical Garden.

Around that same time Michael’s blog was progressing to the point that he really wanted art for his posts. It was so easy to just snap a quick photo in our kitchen when he was making something he knew he would be blogging about.

Michael was picking up more readers and changed his blog’s design, and I felt I should spend more time on the photos and make them better. (I have my studio lights now in our dinning room and will use them whenever I feel I need to.)

So, if a beautiful, early morning light is pouring through the window—great, a tripod is all I need. But, sometimes available light is ugly, and to get the image right, I use the studio lights. I was happy to be able to contribute to Michael’s work and we have fun . . . most of the time. Afterward, I am often rewarded with a great lunch we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Q: Are there any particular tricks you’ve learned along the way in doing this food assignment?

A: No particular tricks. I don’t shoot any differently for Michael’s blog then for a printed piece. The one difference, if any, is that the internet doesn’t require large format quality where a big coffee table book would if the photo is running large.

The most important factor in food photography, and in any photography, is light. No matter how beautiful and delicious something may look, if it doesn’t have great light on it, it can’t look gorgeous. When we knew Michael’s book, Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking would be published with B&W photos, I knew this was something I’d like to do. I love and prefer shooting in B&W —even if it’s for food.

Gougere, from Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking ©Donna Turner Ruhlman

I do shoot differently when I know it will run in B&W—you have to. I look at the subjects textures, tones and contrast in their shades whereas in color photography, the color is so important to the composition. Sometimes I will also change my camera settings to get more grain in a B&W, reminiscent of high speed B&W film.

Some food shots require a lot of patience, time and manipulation to set up. Others need to be fast; to get it right in an instant. But even action shots need to be set up. I always test for light and exposure.

Food photography also follows trends. Right now, keeping things simple, shooting close-up with short depth of fields seems to be what you see a lot of.

Q: What do you find most rewarding or satisfying about this “food job”?

A: Michael and I have been blessed with knowing what we wanted to do for our work at young ages. I think Michael was in the 5th grade when he knew he would be a writer. I was in 11th grade when I knew I wanted to be a photographer and went to RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) to study. This enabled us to work our way faster to being self employed.

It was important to us both when we decided to live our lives together, that we would try to have our work be our passions. So, being able to work at home with each other or alone is huge. I don’t think either one of us could conceive of working for anyone other then ourselves. You get used to working in your pajamas.

Q: Is there a downside of being self-employed?

A: I can’t think of a downside of being self employed—it’s the working at home that can be difficult in that it’s hard to get away from your work. It’s always there—like the dishes that keep piling up in the kitchen.

Q: Has your “food job” become a full-time occupation?

A: Having recently created my page, “Photo info” on Michael’s blog, and handling the web site, “RuhlmanPhotography.com,” you bet I am working full-time. Responding to viewers’ questions and requests for photos has added to my other photography work. So far, it’s a fun challenge. I won’t want to do it if it ever becomes a drag.

I know I’ll be watching and reading the culinary chemistry of Michael and Donna forever.

May I introduce you to Cameron? She is a career changer who

Cameron Crowder, Culinary Student

personifies the courageous people I meet at culinary school who decide to to take the plunge and embark on a new life in the food world. This doesn’t for a minute mean that they plan to spend the next several years working in a restaurant. On the contrary there are literally hundreds of other job opportunities that await them when they finish their studies in culinary school. Here is Cameron’s story:

I grew up fully expecting to become a writer. My parents, teachers and anyone else who read something I wrote would always say, “Cameron, you’re a born writer,” with the kind of authority in their tone that seemed to add “and you’ll be wasting your life if you try to do anything else.”

So, after dabbling in other directions ranging from drama to architecture, I earned a BA in comparative literature from the University of Virginia (UVA). I even won a prize for my thesis. Anyone who knew me at the time assumed that graduate school and a glorious career in academia, teaching and writing books on obscure French novels was to be my lot in life. I thought so too.

A few months after graduating, I visited the home of my former advisor, the head of UVA’s comparative literature department, to talk with her about graduate programs I might apply to. Her home’s walls were full of built-in bookshelves stuffed with not just with literature, but cookbooks too.

As we sat on her front porch sipping tea and talking about school, I felt a little guilty about the fact that all I wanted to do was curl up with a stack of her cookbooks and read or bake something in her lovely, well-equipped kitchen. I recall that when she realized how interested I was in her cookbook collection, she remarked rather prophetically, “If I hadn’t become a scholar, I would have been a baker.”

It didn’t seem like a life changing moment at the time. But, those words did something to me—they gave me permission to do what I wanted rather than just doing what I knew I was good at. If this professor, who was as brilliant as anyone I had ever met, considered baking a legitimate career choice, then so could I.

About six months later, having chosen not to apply to grad school, I was on the verge of losing my job and my home. My parents, with whom I was still living, and the company I worked for were both moving across the country. Every part of my life was up in the air, just a few weeks away from changing drastically for better or for worse.

Miserable and panicked, I finally asked myself this question: If you had all the money and security and recognition you could ever want, if the only person you had to please was yourself—what would you do? Several answers came to mind (my interests have always been too numerous to be convenient), but the one answer that stood out was becoming a pastry chef.

Wisteria at CIA Entrance, Courtesy of Cameron Crowder

Once I found the CIA’s (Culinary Institute of America) website, it took me all of about 30 minutes to decide that going there was the right path for me. I honestly never looked back.

I sensed from the beginning that any obstacles and doubts I might encounter would be temporary and well worth the effort to overcome. I quit my job almost immediately.

I began working as a baker for a coffeehouse, waking up before dawn to make muffins, scones, cookies—anything that goes well with coffee. Eleven months later, I arrived at the CIA and still can’t believe how bold a turn my life has taken; how fortunate I am to be here, how lucky I am to be certain of what I want to do at a relatively young age.

I concede I may end up a writer after all, but not of literary criticism.

Desserts at CIA Courtesy of Cameron Crowder

Food writing (and food photography) is much more to my taste.

* You can follow Cameron on her culinary journey. If you scroll through the archives of this blog, you’ll find other culinary career changer profiles.*