We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Suzanne Clements a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Suzanne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Stay curious and always look for ways to learn new things. A great way to do this is to make time for personal/test shoots. These shoots will fill out your portfolio with innovative new work.

The key is to treat your personal work as seriously as you would client work. Give it the time and space it deserves in your schedule just like bidding/invoicing, marketing, and taxes. I like to aim for 2-4 test shoots a year. Sometimes I get really busy and I get so wrapped up in client work that I forget to feed my own creativity. The test shoots help replenish my own creative wellbeing, they give me fresh imagery I can use in my marketing, AND they add to the skills and techniques I can bring to paid projects.

Test shoots can explore concepts and techniques you’re curious to try out, or can cover the type of work you’d like to market, but may be lacking in your portfolio. Get inspiration from trending aesthetics, lighting, propping, etc. and don’t copy what you see, but rather try to incorporate elements of those trends in your own style.

Plan out your project like you would a client shoot, finding inspiration, creating sketches/shot lists, and when possible teaming up with like-minded creatives like prop stylists, food stylists, gaffers, etc. This can give you a chance to try out new crew to see how you work together, or to team up with some of your favorites, identify an industry or client you’d like to go after and create work specifically for that purpose.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve always been creative. I graduated with my BFA in Illustration and went into graphic design, working in the industry for many years freelancing as an award winning designer/art director. For a good slice of that career, I offered a hybrid of services as a designer/art director and photographer over the years before going into photography full time.

Now, I’m capturing products, lifestyle, and food for major brands and clients all over the US. My day-to-day work on set varies quite a bit and is tailored to each client’s aesthetic, usage needs, and creative brief.

It’s my job is to create valuable images that stand out in a company’s branding. The work I do isn’t fast and cheap. It’s custom-tailored and comes together thanks to a team of creatives who each bring their years of experience and skills to the studio in set design, propping, food styling, and more. The work we create becomes part of a purposeful campaign, a brand launch, catalog, or similar high-profile marketing effort.

You can identify my work by it’s vibrant colors, poppy lighting, and clever rigging… the images have a sense of movement and flow to them that I believe comes from my years in design and as an exhibiting artist.

Besides stills I also offer my services in sequential and non-sequential animations/cinemagraphs which add movement and a bit of magic to my projects. You can do a lot with a few frames to create something clever and eye-catching.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I came into photography through a bit of a back door. I was playing several roles on set at the same time. If it was a food shoot, I was shopping the ingredients, preparing the food, styling the food, creating the set and sourcing the props as well as lighting and photographing the series of shots… ALL SOLO. Food bloggers do this a lot as well. It’s a great way to learn a lot, but it’s also very easy to get overwhelmed.

Two things I’ve learned from my earlier days with photography:

1. Do not undervalue your time and the roles you play.
If you’re doing all those jobs, you should be paid for that time and your skills. No one should have to work for free. Educate your clients on the cost of sourcing the best, freshest ingredients, the time it takes to test and prepare a recipe on set (and just how many duplicates it takes to find that “hero” and have a back-up “hero” or four.). Not to mention the tools, equipment, and skill that food styling and prop styling require.

Small clients especially don’t realize all the time that goes into taking a “simple” photo, so let them know and CHARGE FOR THE SERVICES. If you’re more than a photographer, you should always be billing accordingly.

2. Don’t go it alone!
It took my having hand surgery for me to finally reach out for help. I teamed up with a number of area food stylists and it was a major game changer. Many hands make light work, this is true, but also having another person on set to problem solve and provide input along the way is invaluable. Food styling, prop styling, rigging, lighting… these are all adjacent to your job as a photographer and every single crew member is invaluable with their own expertise and skills.

These days, if you hire me to produce a shoot, I am absolutely not going it alone. We’re going to be hiring the right people for the job so we can work efficiently AND create truly beautiful images while shooting for the stars.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Right now things are looking ready for a major shift. I believe there will always be a need for food photography thanks to the FTC’s Truth in Advertising laws, but things are definitely changing. With AI coming out with bold and exciting innovations, those of us who create imagery by hand may start to feel the squeeze. The industry in general is already in a race to the lowest price, making hiring crew or collecting appropriate usage license fees tricky. Add the idea that AI could “do my job” soon, it’ll be more complicated to educate clients on the value of what I offer. So… these days I’m thinking it may be time to find ways to diversify or shift my creative workflow to keep up, adapt, or creep into a different mode of creation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.suzanneclements.com/
• Instagram: suzannecgd
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sclements/