This is the sixth part of a series of features on bloggers and chefs from the East Coast. See the entire series at SaltWire.com/holidays.
Jess Emin pulls out her digital camera and starts angling around to get the best shot of a freshly baked chocolate orange coconut cream cake.
It was about seven years ago that Emin took the plunge. That's when she quit her part-time job and decided to make her two passions, photography and food, the focus of her career.
Now, the Moncton-born photographer, food stylist, recipe developer and writer does most of her work from the comfort of her downtown Halifax studio.
She’s built up a following base of over 10,000 followers on Instagram, taken on big brand deals and next year, she’ll even host a TV cooking show.
Emin says it can sometimes take her days to nail the perfect recipe and shot. And all she wants is for people to try out her creations at home.
The Chronicle Herald visited Emin’s home kitchen where she shared details about how she’s used social media to her advantage, tips about how to make food look delicious in photos and
What is it exactly that you do?
When people ask, I usually say that I’m a photographer because that’s what I really started with and I specialize in food and drink photography. I also do food styling, so when people don’t know what food styling is, I explain to them, when you’re at the grocery store and you see a big poster with food on it or you see the front of a really pretty food magazine, someone made that food and zhuzhed it up to make it look pretty, so I do that part. And then I also do the photography part. Sometimes those are two different jobs that two people do, but I do both.
I also do writing and I sometimes host video, so I’ve been doing some recipe videos online for Loblaws and I’m going to be hosting a TV show next year.
I feel really, really lucky to have found something that I love so much that I get to do everyday.
How did this all get started?
When I was in my undergraduate degree, I worked at the newspaper and whenever I was procrastinating writing a paper or doing other work, I would be cooking and baking and hosting and having people over and creating theme nights and I was just really excited about food and one of my editors said, “Well, why don’t you write a cooking column?” And I thought to myself, “I have no accreditation, I have no training, why would anyone wanna read that?” But I just started a cooking column and I wrote it every week and I would create little recipes and give people tips and that really sparked a love of that. And I was already doing photography at that point, so it was a continuation of that.
The moment that I really knew that I loved it, I was sitting at a banquet for something at university and a few people down, I heard someone say, “Hey, did you make Jessie’s beef mango burrito this week?” and the person said, “Oh, I didn’t, but those looked so good,” and the the other person said, “I made them, they were amazing, you should try them out,” and they didn’t know who I was, but I was sitting just down the table and I think I got really jazzed and addicted to that. I thought, I want people to make food that I make or see something that I made and think, “That’s inspirational and I want to make something like that.” That was 12 years ago and it’s been rolling ever since.
How do you make food look so great?
It’s being very, very detail-oriented, but you have to start with really good food and good recipes because the photo’s never going to look good if the food doesn’t look good. And that’s a lot about texture and colour and using ingredients that look really nice together. It’s a whole kind of recipe, if you will, of getting things together that look really nice.
Also, lighting is super important. Whether it’s using natural light in my studio or using a few different flashes and reflectors and things, just creating the perfect environment where someone looks at a picture and says, “I really, really want to eat that,” because that’s the kind of photography I want to give to restaurants and to my clients, so that people go out and create those things for themselves and hopefully get it as close as they can to what they see in the photo.
What made you take your background in food writing and photography and bring it to social media?
When Instagram came out, I felt like it was a really great way to simply communicate recipes or when it wasn’t recipes, even just an idea. I find the way that I consume food or when I decide that I’m going to make something, I’m not necessarily always taking a recipe right off Instagram, but if I see something and I think, “Oh, I want to make a pizza like that with honey and jalapenos and whatnot,” sometimes it’s just enough to see a photo and then you kind of go search for more on the Internet.
The way that things have come together is people find my work on Instagram and I’m really thankful for that platform in that way because it kind of gives me like a working portfolio that clients, restaurants and food brands can find and will think, “I want something like this, too,” and whether it’s more influencer style posts or just finding me and saying, “We want you to do photography for us.” So it’s been hugely helpful in my career.
Do you have any East Coast specific recipes?
I definitely have a few East Coast recipes, but I usually try to add a little something to them. I think that probably one of my favourites is a lobster roll recipe that I did for Taste of Nova Scotia. What I added in there that sometimes East Coast recipes don’t have, with a little bit of mayonnaise, diced onions and celery, I added chopped up tarragon, some lemon juice and some grainy mustard. That really gives it some zip and some freshness. And I always use toasted, buttery sub buns or hotdog buns, because that’s classic, and big pieces of lobster. It looks very East Coast.
Do you have any recipes that you’re cooking up for this holiday season?
I always do shortbread cookies, very classic, like a very thick, buttery shortbread. And I’ve recently fallen in love with amaretti, so the classic Italian cookie that is all almond flour, egg whites and either orange liqueur or almond extract, so they’re a very, very almondy, fragrant cookie and they’re just tiny so they’re the perfect thing to eat with coffee in the morning.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
