Award-winning recipe developer and photographer Suze Morrison creates captivating and emotive visual stories from her home in the UK. She is wildly talented and infuses her work with hints of the natural world. She shares her stories using natural and artificial light, which are undeniably striking. Her love of home cooking and food comes across all of her photography and videography work. You can see more of her beautiful work here.

This post will be a little different than my last posts as I'm not very technical, but I think it's an essential topic for visual storytelling. And that is the relation between a F-stop and visual storytelling. As you know, an f-stop, such as f 1.4, f 2.8, f 5.6, f 11, etc., indicates the amount of light coming through the aperture. (The f stands for focal length) So, a wider f-stop, meaning the opening of the blades is wide open like a big pupil of our eye, is classified by a smaller number, such as f 1.4 or f 2.8. A wider opening of the aperture means more light can come in, thus a smaller f stop number.

I've received so many nos in my life. No, thank you; we are all set for this calendar year. Thank you kindly for your inquiry, but we source all our photography in-house. We are not looking for any partnerships, but we wish you all the best. Unfortunately, she can not take on another proposal this year. She wishes you the best of luck with your book. Do any of these sound familiar?

Styling in food photography ranges on a broad spectrum. On one end, it can be minimalistic and clean to overly styled, erring on the verge of contrived. I think the right balance is somewhere in the middle, where it feels and looks believable but intentional. A slice of life, if you will. When I first started shooting food photography for clients, my styling was all over the place. Finding my stride and developing my eye to know what looked right took me a while. It boils down to practicing in various scenes, using different elements, props, lighting, and backgrounds. As always, it begins with telling a story.

Creating a compelling portfolio is one of the most important tasks for new photographers. It’s not something that happens overnight; let’s just say that. While you may be so excited to get your work out there, it isn’t just as simple as picking a few favorite photos of yours and uploading them to a gallery or website. A well-rounded portfolio takes time to put together, with a lot of thought and intentionality behind it. Even if you don’t have a large body of work or roster of client work to pull from, there are subtle ways you can begin to carve out your portfolio.

Taking the leap of faith to work as a full-time photographer can be nerve-wracking, to say the least. Security is a fundamental human need. And the creative world can be a bumpy business road to travel. Creatives tend to put so much pressure on themselves and their work. Balancing our creativity while financially being able to support ourselves is something every photographer goes through at some point. I have yet to meet a "successful," published, well-established photographer who didn't have some growing pains and financial struggles. In the early days of my career, I believed that if I wasn't working full-time as a photographer, I hadn't "made it," or I was just a hobbyist.

You have your unique perspective and view as a visual storyteller and photographer. No one has the same eye or history as you. How you capture something may be entirely different from how I see something, which means there is always room for a new eye in the field. I’ve found that these five rules are the foundation of good storytelling in photography.

Maintaining your style while working with brands can be a delicate balance. On the one hand, brands come to you because they value your eye and expertise, but they also have a specific agenda of what they need. When I first started out, I said yes to every opportunity that came my way, and it wasn’t always a good thing. My eagerness to partner with a brand, any brand, left me feeling somewhat untrue to me and how I work. I accepted client work that only wanted straight product shots when in reality, this type of photography is far from what I enjoy and my strengths.