Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Kitchen.
Hi Heather, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My photography origin story is a lot like many photographers’. Back in 2005, I was a mom with 2 young kids doing the wedding/portrait photo business. Wedding photography at the time was just starting to become what it is now and it provided me with the scheduling flexibility I needed.
I am very fortunate to have a wonderful husband who always supported me and encouraged anything I wanted to do with my photography, and in return I always made his career and the needs of the family the priority over my business. So, when his job moved us across the country, I decided I was more interested in photographing musicians and performers. About the same time, we decided to home school our kids, so my focus and drive was definitely more focused on them, but not necessarily on building a business.
I was still shooting… a lot! And the challenge of shooting in live performance settings with crazy lighting and fast moving targets was incredible. I was also producing a podcast and getting to know a lot of the musicians in this region of South Carolina and building those relationships.
Right about the time my kids were old enough I thought I was ready to get the photography business going again, Covid-19 hit. Not a good time for anybody, but especially in the entertainment industry, and photography by extension. And when all that craziness had finally subsided, I took a hard look at the photography industry and realized that everything had completely changed. I researched the areas that might still be viable and stable and settled on food photography.
I signed up with a fabulous company called Pretty Focused and I’ve been training with them this past year. I am currently in talks with a marketing agency to enter the world of commercial food photography. I also love to continue working with musicians and portrait clients as my availability allows.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Photography is one of the most challenging careers I could have chosen. It’s extremely competitive and discriminatory, but not in the ways you might think – in my wedding days, wedding guests would often bring their own cameras and try to compete with me if they thought their camera was better, bigger, or more expensive than mine. I took it in stride.
Stepping into my shot was a constant challenge, of course, and that comes with shooting live performances, certainly. I’m short, so it’s easy to simply not see me, so I’m used to people inadvertently getting in my way and I’ve long since learned to work around it, and it doesn’t bother me.
I have been turned down for projects by potential clients who didn’t think my camera could do the job simply because it is not a Canon or Nikon (I started with Fujifilm, and now I shoot exclusively Pentax/Ricoh). The industry does cater to those brands, and software limitations aside, I actually like being just on the outskirts of mainstream. I’ve never been happy being like everyone else.
Clients want their brands to stand out – so do I.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My work as a food photographer is a combination of chef, food stylist, food photographer, and photo editor – I am disciplined in all 4 areas, which is a unique place to be.
I am particularly pleased that my training has all been with actual food. In other words, my ice cream pictures are not playdough – it’s real ice cream, Lol!
It does make for a challenging photo shoot to work with real food, however. Freshly prepared food looks the best, but can quickly look not photogenic. Cold and frozen food can quickly melt. And hot food can be dangerous to work with, or cause issues with steam getting on equipment, or causing lighting issues – so there are certainly challenges. But the reward for working with real food is that the quality of the images simply can’t be matched. Real food looks delicious – you can almost taste the food just by looking at it.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
My husband is absolutely my biggest cheerleader. He bought me my first camera (and several others, as well as lenses, lighting, backdrops – you name it). Not to mention he is constantly telling me he believes in me. I would not be doing what I love without him.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://heatherkitchen.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heatherkitchen_/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heatherkitchensc/
- Twitter: https://x.com/Heather_in_SC
