Making a Food Calendar for a Reval Café

Reval Café has a unique cafeteria chain in Tallinn, which has 13 cafes. They were looking for a photographer who takes pictures of their next year's calendar. My job was to take pictures of Reval Café products and show how I can work with them. They wanted 12 pictures of their cakes and cookies. They talked about their ideas and showed pictures of what they think I should do.

My trial work was to take a pictures of strawberry cake. I photographed the cake for three days, until the cake was almost melted. I tried different lights and different compositions.

They liked one of my pictures and I got a deal.

My second job was to get pictures of the cookies. They gave me a box of them and wanted something different. Not just cookies in the jar. So I went home and played around with them. I tried a variety of backgrounds, tablecloths, plates and cutting boards. Finally they chose the most boring and classical ones and wanted to reshoot the ones with a little twist.

The third time I was given Smile cookies and they want me to make pictures of them as a clock.

Next week I have a meeting with the manager who wanted to discuss the opportunities for a longer cooperation.
It seems to me that the more I am shooting, the less I am satisfied with my work, and I still have so much to learn.
I think I took up too much work and was not happy with the outcome. I still could not take pictures with artificial light and there was not enough daylight during the day.

I learned that before getting a job, you should talk more about the customer's expectations, make a written contract and agree on deadlines. Because I took pictures of their products, I got into trouble when and what should I include in the pictures. Once, the confectioner was not ready for the cake in due time, and once again he did not give me any real cake, it was made from plastic. I had to get this picture to be appetizing.

Here is the Father's Day cake from plastic:

The next time I get such a job, I have to be able to take pictures with artificial light. I also need to be able to process RAW files, currently editing in JPG format only. And it would be wise to take pictures with the client sometimes - then I will learn more about their expectations.