We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeff Couch. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeff below.
Jeff, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?
I believe the biggest challenge to profitability in product or food photography is smart phones and the apps created to simplify processing of photos. The target market for professional food photography has shifted and in turn has shrunk. Working with agencies and food product photography remains a stable market but the local eatery website and self advertising photography has shrunk. In addition, because of social media photos tend to be “insta”nt, and clients don’t always plan out their social media shot list, therefore we aren’t the right choice. An example is I was recently contacted by an agency to provide a quote for their client to photograph menu items for social media and website. The response back was the client decided to use their smartphone to shoot the images but the agency will put me on their preferred vendor list for future work.
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 think like a lot of people in foodservice they fell into, took a waiter , dishwasher or cook job at a resturant part-time or while in college, liked it and stayed with it. It’s a great industry because it’s the hospitality industry and there are so many great people in it. I started just that way a part-time job in a hotel which led me to decide I wanted a career as a chef. I did that for a number of years, got married and started to have a family. After that I didn’t want to continue the time away from home working 18 hours a day, 6 days a week and all holidays so I set my sights wanting to work for a manufacturer of restaurant equipment to assist in designing from a Chef’s perspective. I ended up with the largest global manufacturer of foodservice equipment where I worked my way up to VP of Sales and Marketing. A few years later I was offered to buy a foodservice rep business on the west coast, I jumped at the chance. All through this I missed the creativity of cooking, so I took up photography as a creative outlet. To understand photography fully I attended UCLA photography and upon completion I took classes and studied to become a Certified Professional Photographer through Professional Photographers of America. I had experience in corporate, running my own business and culinary so I decided to launch Jeff Couch Food Images, specializing in Food and Beverage photography. All through this I entered photography competitions and received critiques by industry professionals all to become better.
I think what make this company stand out is dedication to the craft through certification, awards and culinary experience.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I wish I started with photo processing apps and products much earlier. In the beginning I believed if it didn’t come out of the camera correctly it was not a usable image. It wasn’t until I went to UCLA and started to look at the masters like Ansel Adams who shot film and used chemicals to dodge and burn the scene to make the image like they saw and the camera failed to capture. This is when I began to understand digital processing is the same thing. Software moves so fast it’s hard to keep up with all the changes of existing apps or the new technology like A I in phot processing.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
In the back of mind I always have the fear of failure, I believe this is my driving force for anything that I have done. I like to learn from others by listening and understanding their inspiration or drive. I want to be the best I can and continuing to learn I feel is the key.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jeffcouchfood.com
- Instagram: @jeffcouchfood
- Facebook: jeffery.couch.336
- Linkedin: Jeff-couch
- Twitter: jeffcouchfood
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/jeff-couch-food-images-palm-desert