- Hi, friends, it's Sam, and today I'm gonna do something
a little bit different.
I'm gonna show you what a day in the life
of a food blogger is like,
or at least what my life is like in a day, in a life.
What am I even saying?
I've gotten several requests to make this video,
so I hope you enjoy it,
and if you do, be sure to hit that like button
to let me know so I will know to make more videos like this.
So I started my blog, itdoesn'ttastelikechicken.com
five and a half years ago,
and I've been doing it for about three years full-time,
and in that time, I've also written my first cook-book,
Fuss-Free Vegan,
so yes this is my real career,
I do make a living at it, and it is my love,
my passion, my dream, my favorite thing to do.
Now as much as I feel very lucky and fortunate
to have the career of my dreams,
I wanna say that this did not come easily.
I worked so incredibly hard to get to where I am.
A 40 hour work week, I have no idea what that's even like.
I work long hours each and every single day,
and weekends, and I don't take that many days off
to be honest, and I've been doing that
for five and a half years.
Yeah, one day, one day I hope to have
kind of a more normal schedule,
but I don't know, I can't see that happening any time soon.
But what can I say?
When you wanna make your dream a career,
you have to work really hard to get there.
So each and every day, I do different things
depending on what's needed for my blog,
but I'm gonna film everything I do today
and share that with you,
so that you can see kind of what a standard day
is kind of like, so let's get to it, let's start my day.
Every day I start my day by waking up.
I know, shocker, but I'm lucky enough
because I do work from home and work on my own schedule,
that I rarely set an alarm, so I wake up when I want,
which is usually about 8:00 in the morning.
I come downstairs, and the very first thing I always do
is make the world's best cup of coffee,
'cause that's how every day should start.
I'm currently obsessed with this
Silk Almond Hazelnut creamer, so delicious,
highly recommend it,
and then I head straight to my desk and start working.
I love my job, so I'm always eager to start the day.
I usually start by answering comments, and e-mails,
and that kind of thing.
There is always an endless list of tasks I can do
so what I usually do to make sure
I complete the things I need to,
is I will choose three or four main tasks
I wanna complete in the day, and I will write them down
to remind myself, and then that is my goal
to finish those tasks for the day.
Time for a little breakfast.
I'm just having this like toasted round bread thingy
with some natural peanut butter,
and this vegan honey alternative,
it's made from apples, and I put it in the fridge,
which I don't think you're supposed to do
'cause it made it super sticky,
and it like wouldn't come off the knife,
and it was kind of a mess, but it tasted really good,
so oh well.
Hey, buddy, are you having a good morning?
Yeah, sleeping in a little?
Nice dog, so cute.
(laughs)
Now that I've got my day kind of organized and ready,
I've gotten dressed for the day,
and I put on my fancy red lipstick
'cause I actually have a video conference call later today.
And it is a Wednesday, and I launch
a brand new YouTube video every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m,
so I am just preparing to launch that video.
My latest video is going live now.
I always share my video launches on Instagram stories
so be sure to follow me on Instagram
@itdoesnttastelikechicken.
I just finished my phone, my video phone call
with a client, which I didn't record,
and now I'm just gonna set up,
I'm having a dance party apparently,
but I'm just setting up for some food
I'm gonna be cooking.
I already tested this stuffing recipe,
so I know how to make it perfectly,
so now I just have to prepare it for food photography.
I'm very much a multi-tasker,
and I'm always interested in learning more
so while I am cooking this recipe,
I put on a podcast so that I could learn a little bit more.
I was listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast,
which if you are a blogger of any kind,
fantastic, highly recommend checking it out.
Now of course, because I am a food blogger,
I spend a lot of time in my kitchen,
so I'm always cooking something,
whether I'm recipe testing, or photographing,
or experimenting.
Just setting up for food photography.
I shoot all of my food photography here on the floor
on this white board, and giving it a good clean
since I am putting food on it,
making sure no dust and spots and stuff is one there,
and then these are my lights.
These are food photography lights,
well photography lights,
and I have t-shirts on them
which I know looks kind of goofy,
but it helps diffuse the light.
I like to include step by step photos of my recipes
on my blog, so that it makes cooking easy for everyone
so I'm just doing a couple shots
of these toasted bread cubes to include in my post.
I always do several angles,
and try to arrange things so they look a little different
so that I have a few options at the end
when I go to edit my photos, to choose from.
This is a stove-top recipe, I'll leave the recipe down below
if you're interested in making it,
but I'm gonna do some photography on the stove,
so I bring my light over so that I have
a nice source of light for photography.
And once I got some food cooking in there,
I take some more step by step photos
to show you what the food should look like,
and a little action shot.
Doing these action shots with my hands in the photos
are always a little bit goofy to take photos of
but I like the end result.
My veggies are sauteed, so I'm adding the bread cubes,
and doing some photography of that.
And now I'm taking a pour shot of pouring this broth in.
You can see it's kind of complicated to take photos
and do these things all yourself,
but I've gotten used to it over the years
so now it's no big deal for me.
While my recipe is just finishing cooking up,
I'm going to set up for the final food photography,
just grabbing some props, a couple dish towels,
some spoons, and some fresh herbs.
I always just play around with stuff
to try to see what I think might look nice,
and then it's time to bring over the finished dish,
and I'll kind of mess around with it,
trying to get it to look exactly the way I want,
adjusting the lighting a little bit as needed.
Just looking through my camera,
and seeing what looks nice,
I'm gonna try this red dish towel instead
to see what I think of that,
always looking through the camera.
And I don't like that, so I'm gonna try the blue one,
and yeah I don't like that.
I'm going back to the white,
I like the fresh vibe for this photo.
And then I'm just gonna place it just so,
so it looks, I don't know, cute in the photo.
(laughs)
My personal style is that I like to use a lot of white
in my photos to make the food the real star of the photo.
A lot of people ask me if I do any kind of like
weird fake tricks of food photography,
and I don't, I always just use the real food
that I'm cooking with, and I just kind of like fluff it up,
or you know, jush it up a little bit in different ways,
but it's always the real food,
I don't use any fake food or anything like that,
and I always eat it after shooting.
I'm decorating with just a little bit of fresh thyme.
I used thyme in the recipe so that fits right along,
and I'm gonna try some sage as well,
which I also used in the recipe.
Finding the most perfect leaf and where I should put it,
but after messing around with the sage for a little bit,
I decide I don't like the look of it,
so yeah, I decide not to use it.
A little fresh pepper and salt to finish it off.
I just find adding these little touches on top
really just take the photos from bland
to having a little bit of life and personality.
I've never taken a class in food photography
or any kind of photography for that matter.
I taught myself how to do it,
so these techniques are my own,
they're just kind of what I've messed around with
over the years, and figured out,
so that's how I do it,
but yeah everyone has their own techniques
and little things that they do.
So now I'm just taking my final photo.
I added in a reflector here, just to get even more light.
Like I said, I like my photos really white
so I try to put a lot of light on them
to make them very bright and happy and scrumptious looking.
As soon as I finish my shot,
Chickpea knows that that's her cue,
and she's allowed to go in and clean up any little crumbs.
Now I'm just picking up the stuffing,
just eating a little couple bites for lunch,
pretty lazy I know.
After food photography, I like to take a little break
and take Chickpea dog for a walk.
She has access to my backyard all throughout the day,
but I like to take her for one long walk
where she can kind of explore the world a bit,
and run around a lot, and run in to other dogs,
and have a good time.
(upbeat music)
After the walk, it was back to work,
so I grabbed myself some soft frosted sugar cookies,
I have this recipe on my blog if you want it,
there are amazing, and I had a bit of mint tea as well.
Back to my office, and after petting Chickpea
and telling her that she's a very good girl,
I get to photo editing so I load the photos that I just took
and I edit them, which just means that I crop them,
and adjust the lighting and colors a little bit,
maybe remove any little specks of dust that I don't like,
or any little details like that.
More snacking, I love snacking,
and I have some carrots and red pepper hummus.
And I seriously don't know where all the hours go,
because it is already about 6:30, so I'm about to stop
and make a little dinner.
For dinner I decide to have a staple
of just a simple pasta with olives and hot sauce,
yes, one of my faves.
And then because I spend all day working by myself,
I always try to do something slightly social,
so I meet my friend Trish for a drink, yay, wine.
And that's pretty much it.
I hope you enjoyed this video,
and if you did, be sure to leave a like.
Don't forget to subscribe for a brand shiny new video
every single Wednesday.
If you have other ideas of videos
you would like to see along this lines,
let me know down in the comments,
and I'll see you next week.
Bon Appetegan!
(chicken clucking)