The Food Stylist's Handbook

the appetizer:

The Food Stylist's Handbook by Denise Vivaldo includes excerpts like Basic Food Stylist's Kit; Bacon; Getting Good Grill Marks; and Pizza Cheese.

The Food Stylist's Handbook

by Denise Vivaldo

Click to buy The Food Stylist's Handbook

Throw out the calories and the nutritionals! With The Food Stylist's Handbook by Denise Vivaldo, the only thing that matters is how good the food looks in front of the camera.

Master food stylist Denise Vivaldo shares advice on the business of food styling. Find out how to get started and how to become the professional that everyone wants to work with. Using personal anecdotes that range from humorous to frustrating to triumphal, she provides trade secrets to get your foot in the door.

The Food Stylist's Handbook, a comprehensive guide to the secretive world of food styling, reveals insider knowledge about how to get started, what equipment to buy, and how to find clients and keep them. You will also learn tricks of the trade as well as discover how to make fabulous "heroes" out of raw ingredients. Denise Vivaldo has cooked for presidents and movie stars including George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Svlvester Stallone.

Learn from a food artist who has catered more than 10,000 parties and events including the Acadamy Awards Governor's Ball, and Sunset Magazine's Taste of Sunset. Vivaldo has also styled food for TV shows such as The Ellen Degeneres Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Inside Dish with Rachael Ray.

Introduction: Food Styling as a Career

Today, food styling is a relatively small niche market compared to other jobs in the food industry. But it's a growing market with strong international appeal.

1. The Lowdown on Food Styling

What a successful food stylist does is help produce a photo that sells a dream, brand, product, sandwich, plate, lifestyle, chef, or restaurant.

2. Starting a Food Styling Business

As creative as food styling can be, it is foremost, a business, taking years to establish a substantial client base. To accomplish this you need to have a plan and implement it.

3. Building a Styling Kit

Food stylists build their own kits according to their specific work requirements, their personality, and the tools they are most comfortable with.

4. Marketing Your Food Styling Business

In marketing your food styling business, you are marketing yourself. What experiences make you different from other food stylists in your area? What is unique about your background? You'll find that marketing your business becomes second nature.

5. Money Talk

Always search for new markets for your services. Marketing doesn't always have to be expensive or difficult.

6. Preparing for Magic Time

The actual job of styling any plate of food is the end result of a lot of preparation. Magic time is a term used when the HD video camera starts rolling or the photographer begins shooting.

7. Tricks of the Trade

Now you are ready to do some actual food styling! We alter techniques to suit the particular job at hand and whatever we have available at that moment. Like an artist, only using food products.

About the Author

Denise Vivaldo is a professionally trained chef and has been a food stylist in Los Angeles for twenty-five years. Discovered by television producer Aaron Spelling, she was soon put to work on his television shows creating food presentations for the camera. Her company, Food Fanatics, styles food for cookbooks. packaging, television, and film. She lives in Los Angeles.