I love my life. I love my work. And, I love the unique perspective I have on the world through my camera lens. I understand what it is like to be led by passion, every day, and I am incredibly fortunate to have amazing clients equally as passionate about what they do. I would like to introduce you to some of the people who put their trust in me to tell their visual story. This, the third in a series of blogs, spotlights an angel with a passion to educate a generation…
Meet The Food Teacher
The inspirational Katharine Tate: I took this portrait of her (and of each of her team) just before The Food Teacher went to a conference in China to receive the “Gourmand Best in the World Award” for a book she wrote and project managed for a South East London school Charlton Manor in Greenwich: Now We’re Cooking!
Product/service Katharine Tate is a highly qualified nutritional therapist and primary school teacher (she has more letters behind her name than I have lenses) with a driving passion to educate everyone on the power of eating well for good health.
She does this by consulting with schools nationally (developing tailored food education programmes with her team Marie Reynolds, Ellen Tuck, and Jo Norman); as a public speaker (delivering educational workshops and demonstrations), as a writer (she has authored award winning books for schools in the UK and Ireland), as a broadcaster (she presented her own radio show on UK Health Radio), through a series of Young Chef of the Year awards (aimed at inspiring a love of healthy food in communities), not to mention personal consultations at her clinic - which I have attended myself!
Who runs da show? Our Harpenden celebrity Katharine Tate. She has got to be one of the kindest, caring and most humble people I’ve ever met, with such extraordinary efficiency levels I’m sure she could launch a space ship from Harpenden Common if you give her a couple of weeks to plan (just to take healthy food into space of course!).
What I do for The Food Teacher: Food photography. In fact, Katharine was my first-ever assignment for food photography (I remember promising her a money back guarantee if she wasn’t satisfied!) I also photographed two local schools practicing her recipes for the curriculum, took head shots of her amazing support team, the books she has published, photographs for her website including her online shop and gifts, photographed her delivering a workshop to nannies locally, and also a food craft shoot commissioned by Discovery Education as a resource for teachers which was interesting!
Katharine adds an even healthier spin to the traditional favourites. This was one of the photographs used on downloadable pdfs provided as resources for teachers at Christmas by Espresso.
How I see the brand: Caring. Healthy. Fun.
The gallery below shows what most impressed me at the shoot for Charlton Manor Primary School. The children’s relationship with food is full cycle: they make honey, tend hens, grow vegetables and herbs in the school garden, harvest and prepare the food in the teaching kitchen (Katharine’s book contains 28 lesson plans, four for each year group), serve and eat it in the school restaurant/café, there’s even a pupil run school shop, and recycle food waste. All this with parental and community involvement to support the children’s learning. It is quite amazing!
How I style and shoot her images: Katharine is one of the most organised people I know and we work together as brilliantly as poached egg and salmon with wilted spinach on sourdough toast. (A fantastic recipe curated by Katharine of course!) We have a chat, then I turn up on the day and she has everything - down to a choice of garnishes ready - sometimes I’m back home before the kettle has boiled for a cup of tea! The photographs were styled to look as if they were produced in a school environment and made by children: simple, natural light and slightly messy. Just the way food should be enjoyed!
The gallery below shows Katharine’s healthy snacks for children - which can be produced without a kitchen - a must for schools without a teaching kitchen for pupils.
The challenge: Learning on the job. While I did a lot of preparation, study and practice before doing my first food shoot for Katharine, I learned a huge amount photographing her recipes. Things like speed being important: smoothies oxidise, sorbets melt and some foods discolour quickly; the use of light and reflectors; keeping all food presentation as if it were being prepared in a school setting and so on. A great challenge I enjoyed thoroughly!
These delicious traffic light sorbets were tricky to photograph before they melted. I’ve seen children down these so fast you don’t have time to say “spinach”! (The recipe is in Katharine’s Heat-Free & Healthy book).
The wow bit: This is such an important initiative to me. Knowing how to feed our bodies to keep healthy throughout our lives is a life skill and I love that children have the opportunity to learn about food choices and food preparation from a young age. Katharine makes everything such fun - her recipes keep the children fully involved. I still remember her making her “Green Smoothie” recipe for a Year 3 class and suggesting that I photograph one of the children drinking it. My immediate thought was that if these children were anything like my own, they would run screaming from the room… To the contrary, there was a line of enthusiastic children willing to slurp up the spinach and fruit mix! How amazing is that?
Just in case you didn’t believe me! One child slurping up the green smoothie!
What I like most about working for The Food Teacher: Katharine is such a caring and inspirational person. I love hearing about her latest projects and successes when we meet up and she is always willing to help me with titbits of advice for myself or my children, even putting me in touch with her partner companies so I could ask them for donations to my brother’s Atlantic crossing adventure a couple of years ago, and supporting local business Twist Teas by creating a recipe especially for them using one of their green teas! But, mostly, (and please don’t tell Katharine this), I absolutely love eating up all her scrumptious recipes after photographing them. Rather than finishing off with “it’s in the bag!”, I’ve changed it to: “its on my hips!”. Thank you lovely lady. It is always a pleasure.
The breakfast recipe Katharine created using Twist Teas Refresher Green tea to poach the salmon and wilt the spinach for an extra kick of citrus health. She’s a magician!
When I think of Katharine, this is what I see. An angel willing to help anyone and on a mission to educate a generation. I am so fortunate to have clients who teach me so much.
Want to find out more?
To coincide with the launch of Katharine’s latest initiative, the Youngest Chef of the Year Awards, we are collaborating on a social media takeover of each other’s Facebook and Insta platforms on Wednesday 1 July 2020. Follow Katharine on @thefoodteacheruk and @thefoodteacher and pop in for our Facebook live(ly) chat at 1pm @pennybirdandcamera and @thefoodteacheruk. We’d love to see you there!
The vibrant and passionate celebrity chef Patti Sloley (follow her on @pattismenu) filming recipes for the Youngest Chef of the Year Awards - an enthralling programme brought to life with songs and fairytales - launching on Wednesday 1 July.