Food Styling and Photography Class

First off I want to say – Happy 1 year Blog-iversary to ME!!!!!! I plan to celebrate all week long, kinda like my birthday, so feel free to send gifts and love and food my way!

It has officially been 1 year to the day when I first created this blog. When I started I thought it would just be a fun way of storing and sharing my recipes but it has turned into so much more! What’s Gaby Cooking is now my happy place – and I love being able to share my culinary journey with all of you! Each comment I get makes my day and I love having somewhere I can go to share pictures, stories and little fun facts about my life. It is absolutely amazing how many friends I have made through this blog alone… one who is not a blogger might not understand but I have created so many fantastic friendships through What’s Gaby Cooking and the food blog community! I would even go so far to say that some people have become so close to me that I would totally invite them to my wedding… whenever that is! To celebrate my 1 year anniversary I did two things…

1. I got an amazing new blog design that I am in love with.

2. I spent the weekend with some of the most fabulous people including this fellow… Matt from MattBites

Matt as well as Denise and Cindie, both from Food Fanatics, are seriously three of the most amazing people ever! I have spent the last 2 days with them down in Long Beach at Matt’s AH-MAZING studio learning the ins and outs of the food styling and photography world.

Check out the Starlight Lounge in the studio as Denise would call it…

Matt doesn’t know it yet but one day I am just going to move in upstairs to the Starlight Lounge and hang out with all of his fabulous plates, platters and other food props…

You could spend all day just digging through all these timeless pieces – he even has a huge giant board, which I would describe as a cutting board but I am probably wrong… I’m sure it has some awesome name that I don’t know, which is 100 YEARS OLD!!!!

Seriously though – how amazing are all of these plates and bowls and cutting boards!

After running around the studio like a crazy person, snapping pictures of every single prop that I want to find and then buy myself, it was time to sit and focus on Denise and Cindie’s demos! Its pretty much safe to say that these women are experts… they work miracles with food… and seriously everything they make looks down right delicious, fabulous and mouth-watering. One small side note – its definitely NOT all edible! But its all for the sake of a picture right? There is glue and paper and chemicals on lots of the food we see in magazines and print ads. That turkey you see on the cover of all the mags this month… its RAW in the middle! We learned all these fabulous little secrets this weekend and when I got home and told my boyfriend all about them he was like, “well if you start doing all these things then what am I going to eat for dinner?” Selfish I tell you… selfish! (just kidding… kinda!)

Anyways… check out some of the demos…

Is that not the most perfect stack of pancakes ever… and the syrup… and the butter… oh the butter!

How about those grill marks… pretty fancy huh! And the green beans are super bright and shiny… love it!

Pasta is always something that I struggle with when taking my own pics for this blog… but not Cindie… she is a pro!

This pasta looks amazing too – here is a little fun trick – everything for this photo was cooked seperately. Forget time management here people, we are cooking each veggie by itself… no color bleeding on this plate thank you!

And you know those perfect burgers you see on all the billboards and magazines and just about ever which way you turn… well here is another! Bright, shiny and looks totally delicious!

And this is only day 1… wait till you see what I did on day numero dos! Pretty much the best day ever!