If you have a passion for food, and want to document it through media, then Centennial College can help you blend your interests into a career with our Food Media post-graduate program. It’s meant for students who already have the education and are ready to hunker down and acquire some new skills. During its intensive three-day format, you learn about everything from social media and multimedia to photography, online writing, production, editing and more. Join the program, and get the kind of practical experience you need to get into the field of making dishes as delicious to the eyes and ears as they are to the mouth. Centennial College’s Food Media program ensures you have the skills to acquire any of these careers:
Food Stylist
When you’re flipping through a magazine and see articles or ads with delicious pictures of food, it’s a food stylist that put that together. As Dantastic Food explains, the job of a food stylist is to prepare and photograph food. It's half about arranging that food to be photogenic, and half about the art of photography itself, making it photogenic after the fact. A myth that needs busting, according to Food Bloggers of Canada, is that it’s all fake food that’s being photographed, for example, mashed potatoes made to look like ice cream because it doesn’t melt. The food stylist interviewed in the story talks about how they bring a tool kit with them that has tweezers, blowtorches and heat guns, but that their purpose is to keep the natural food looking good after sitting under hot lights for hours. In fact, they also note that being skilled at cooking is one way to have an advantage in the field, especially if you’re big on presentation.
Food Writer or Blogger
According to Wise Geek, one role of a food writer is to become a critic. They can write about food, or wine, or restaurants for a newspaper, magazine, or more commonly in the modern era, an online publication. That’s not all they can do, though, as food writers can also make content about special food events, new trends, or any other current issues in the food world. To pull it off, you need to know about food itself and have a refined palate, but also have the writing skills to back it up, and knowledge of how the industry works.
Food Segment Producer
Essentially, being a food segment producer means being a specialized version of a television segment producer. A TV segment producer’s job is creating features in “reference book” television, like talk shows, news programs, game shows, or even reality tv. These can be interviews, games, or features. As a food segment producer, you’d be creating segments themed around presenting, cooking or eating food.
By Anthony Geremia