Cara Cormack on Commercial Food Photography in an Instagram Age
Cara Cormack isn’t the most ‘followed’ food photographer on the internet, and she’s okay with that. At 24 years old, this Cumbrian native lives in London and does food photography full time, after only 2 years of being in the industry. Something most freelance creatives could only dream of this early on in their careers.
Not to say she’s a nobody. She still has 7,000 followers on an Instagram account she barely posts to, and up until a year ago was also running a successful vegan food blog, the likes of which she still gets DMs about. People asking for her vegan sponge recipe that is no longer searchable because she “couldn’t be bothered” to keep paying for the domain name.
Cormack’s Instagram
In this day and age, food photography and Instagram are often regarded as one and the same. The reality of being a successful photographer without having a successful Instagram is seemingly impossible. However, Cormack would argue that focusing less on Instagram and blogging has allowed her to develop her own personal artistic style as a food photographer, and has therefore allowed her to be more successful. She, rather, does commercial shoots for companies and brands. “It sounds ironic because commercial work is commercial. But if you look at real commercial photographers, it’s so much more artistic than Instagram photographers. And to me, they’re putting out art, whereas Instagram photographers are putting out stuff because they know it’ll get lots of likes.”
There is something to be said about the homogeneity of Instagram. Terms such as “Airspace” have been popping up to describe how cafes and hotels from all over the world look eerily similar, with minimalist aesthetics and exposed brick. As well as accounts like @Insta_repeat who post the seemingly exact same photo from various random accounts on a location tag to highlight the lack of originality in travel photos. Lately, it seems like every scrolling session on Instagram is met with the same “boring” (as Cormack puts it) content, and food photography is no different. “When I was blogging, I just put out a post and all the same people would just comment the exact same things, and hope that you would then go on to their account and comment the same thing on their pictures, to look like they have ‘good engagement’ or whatever. And I just got sick of it. It felt not creative at all because you’re basing all your worth [and content] off people’s interactions with you…I just think it’s strange.”
Cormack’s Instagram
Cormack cites Louise Haggar, Chelsea Kyle, and David Luciano as her favorite names in the industry. All of whom she points out have less than 20k followers on Instagram. “Some of the biggest [food] photographers in the world, have like 15k followers.” Drawing from these artists as inspiration, she likes to “incorporate hard and directional light” in her photography “I think it makes things look more graphic, it makes things look bolder.” She also likes to work with “block complementary colors, and textures that aren’t obvious.” However, she will admit that working commercially doesn’t always allow for the incorporation of personal artistic style within a shoot, particularly as a low to mid-level freelancer. “Until you’re much further on in your career you can’t pick and choose your clients and exactly what they want. If someone’s reaching out to you for some kind of organic product or something. You can’t do a graphic, artificial, bold style, because it doesn’t fit with the product.”
Despite all her hangups, Cormack says she “doesn’t hate Instagram” and says she’s going to try and post more of her photos there in the future. “I see a lot of photographers that I love and I get a lot of inspiration from Instagram. I just think Instagram is the worst place to find real criticism. I see Instagram bloggers that I met 2 years ago, and none of their content has changed, none of them have gotten significantly better.” Cormack’s main goal for the future is to improve her photography and hone her artistic style even more. “I’m still shit compared to other people, there’s a long way to go.”
To see more of Cara Cormack’s work:
Written November 2020