Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Heather Willensky. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Heather, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

My son was born right before the pandemic started, and around that time I knew I needed a career change. I got really into fermentation when he was small – I started an instagram page devoted to sourdough baking, pickling and preserving, and while I loved connecting with the online food community, I quickly realized that I preferred taking photos of food to preparing it. I had studied photography years earlier as an undergraduate, and decided to take the plunge into food photography. I spent a summer studying lighting techniques and beginning to build my portfolio while my then two year old went through a brutal sleep regression, and then found several wonderful mentors to shadow. Once I began reaching out to restaurants, and more importantly, when they started calling me back to take more photos, I knew that if I persisted I could succeed with my business.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I studied photography when I was a teenager and as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College, and although I had intended to become a professional photographer, I ended up moving to London with my then boyfriend/now husband to complete an MA in Art History. My interests in my early 20s evolved and I ended up studying audio engineering and working in the music industry for over a decade. When my son was born I took some time off and realized I wanted a career change, and eventually settled on becoming a professional food photographer.

I had learned a lot about documentary photography as an undergraduate, but I’d never learned how to beautifully light rigatoni, so before I could get started I knew I had a lot to learn. I was fortunate to have two wonderful mentors – the food photographer Brent Herrig and the portrait photographer Justine Cooper who both took me under their wings, taught me about lighting and gave me the confidence to pursue my new career.

Building my portfolio was initially challenging to balance alongside motherhood – I’d wake up with him at 3AM, get him to school, construct an image, photograph and edit it and then pick him up at the end of his day. But thankfully I was able to put together a body of work to present to prospective clients.

While I think style evolves as our careers progress, I’m proud of the fact that I’m able to work with my clients to establish unique visual voices for their projects.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

When I was younger I always believed that there was an absolute right and a wrong way to do everything – that there was a right and a wrong way to produce music, to be a parent, to take a photograph. Now that I’m a little older I’ve learned that no field – be it professional or personal, is quite so black and white.

When I started working as a professional photographer I made assumptions about what it meant to be a “real” photographer – what lights I would need to use, what a shoot should look like, exactly how my finished images should look. Now that I’ve been practicing for a while I know that every photographer is different – we each assemble our toolkits based on what we’re trying to achieve creatively, and there’s no real right or wrong as long as we’re making images that look the way we want them to look. Likewise, no two clients are the same, so we’re constantly adapting to their needs and aesthetics as well. Once I started seeing all of those moving parts at play it became a little easier to let go of some of my earlier rigidity.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My son was born at the end of 2019, and my mom died two days before his first birthday. Vividly experiencing the start and the end of life in such a short period of time made it very important for me to figure out what was going to make me feel like I was living a meaningful life creatively and professionally.

I believe that life is long enough that we’re going to do a lot of things within it, but it’s also short enough that if there’s something we want to do, we need to do it with urgency. Taking photos and working in the food space has been gratifying on so many levels, and the process of creating work that satisfies my clients as well as advances my own craft has been extremely motivating.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.heatherwillensky.com
• Instagram: @heatherwillensky
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherwillensky/

Image Credits

All images by Heather Willensky