Mica: [00:00:00] Welcome. To the 44th episode of The Savory Shot. I'm your host with the most, Mica McCook. I'm a food photographer based out of Austin, Texas. If this is your first time joining us, The Savory Shot is a podcast where we dive deep into the art and soul of food photography and the stories of those who work within it.
First things first, thank you for joining what I like to call the hot mess express. You could have been anywhere doing anything, but you're here with me and that means a lot. So thank you. But y'all, I'mma get right into it. Cuz today's guest is the sweetest, kindest, and most wonderful human being. I present, Emily Fosnocht.
Y'all, Emily is a food and prop stylist with roots in Philadelphia. Her work is as rich and diverse as the city's culinary scene. Emily is a graduate of [00:01:00] Goldsmiths in London. And her journey from textile designer to food and prop styling at Anthropology to freelancing showcases her versatile talent. She champions the art of visual storytelling, whether it's through a delicious cocktail or a beautiful flat lay of a dinner table.
Y'all, this episode will leave you so inspired but before we get into that, y'all grab your coffee or a tea or a cocktail. It's five o'clock somewhere and let's start the show.
[00:02:00]
Mica: I'm just gonna start off by saying, I'm super duper excited that you're here. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show, for sitting in your car and having this wonderful conversation with me.
Emilie: Thank you so much for having me. I am so impressed with podcast, it seems like a huge undertaking. So I'm excited to be here.
Mica: Oh, man, I want to dive right in if you're ready to jump on in. You grew up outside of Philadelphia and it's known for its rich culture. How did this environment influence your entry into the world of food and prop styling?
Emilie: Yeah, I am from about 45 minutes outside of Philly.
Paoli, Malvern area. I grew [00:03:00] up taking the train and starting in high school, like every weekend, if not more for art classes or for punk shows and just to walk around a city. Have lived there full time since 2013. It's a great city. I recommend anyone who hasn't been there to go. Definitely a great city for the food.
How has that influenced my aesthetic? The range of food and aesthetics that you see in Philly has made its way into my subconscious. There's all kinds of food. There's the Italian market. There's Reading Terminal market, which has anything from the Jewish butchers to the Amish bakeries to the dairies.
Mica: It's like taking a trip around the world when you. I got my start in food photography with a visit to Reading Terminal. I imagine like growing up in Philly where you just are exposed to so many different cultures, so many different foods.
You went to Goldsmith College [00:04:00] in London. I want to hear more about that because what inspired that move? You're in Philly, you graduated school, you decided to go to college in London.
Tell me what influenced that decision.
Emilie: I originally went to a really small fine arts school outside of Boston called Montserrat College of Art. So I essentially did like the foundation year and then I did the first two years there and it really, it wasn't the right fit. A professor of mine who I was really close with, had said, Oh,
it's a shame there's this school that your work fits perfectly with. It's in another country, it's called Goldsmiths in London. And I had never heard of it at the time. I looked it up and it was like, oh yeah, that's really cool, but it is a shame it's in another country. Didn't think anything of it.
Anytime I researched an artist that I was into, they have gone to Goldsmiths. And then I applied. Got in, and then I was like, you know what, I feel that I'll regret not going.
So I made it work, [00:05:00] got the visa, went. Best decision I ever made. Loved it. And lived there for three years for school and then stayed an additional two years, worked in an art gallery immediately out of school. So back to Philadelphia after that.
Mica: Back to Philadelphia. How did your family react when you're like, Hey, guess what? I'm going to school in London.
Emilie: That's a good question. My parents are very supportive which is awesome. They weren't stoked about me going so far away, especially I guess at such a young age. But I put together a little presentation of this is where I will live. This is how much money I have to save for my visa and all these things. And I remember after presenting this to my parents, my mom said I guess it just sounds like you're going to do this.
Mica: And I just want to say that it's like the most responsible thing. Like making a presentation, covering the list, this is where I'm going to be living, this is where I'm going to be working, this is where I'm going to be going. That is the most grown up thing [00:06:00] ever.
Emilie: Yeah.
Mica: That's probably why they were like, I guess you're going to do this. They were like, I have nothing to argue with. Like this is laid out pretty nicely.
Emilie: Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't thought about it in a while, but I guess it was. Thankfully there wasn't too much pushback. Maybe they remember it differently. I don't know.
Mica: I moved to San Angelo which is just like three and a half hours Northwest of Austin, and my mom thought that I was moving to London. Like she really thought I was moving to another country. I'm like, Nah, Ma, there are actual people, like, actually moving out of the country, You can calm down.
What surprised you the most when you moved to London?
Emilie: Almost everything. I literally had never left the country before I had to get my passport. Went to get the visa to move over there. It was definitely like a culture shock.
Mica: I've only been out of the country once, and it was to Madrid, Spain. I was surprised that people did the double kiss thing on the cheek, like that [00:07:00] threw me off. But I was like, that's my personal space, like you need to back up.
I ate so much food and none of it was healthy.
There was a lot of pastry, it's a lot of deliciousness.
So you got your degree in fine art, and you eventually started as a textile designer at Anthropologie. I'm super curious how that connected to the world of food and prop styling.
Emilie: Yeah. Textile design was certainly not for me. I truly just needed a job when I graduated college and moved back to Philly. I did have a skillset that was relevant to textile design. So when I first moved back to Philly I knew someone who had a small textile design studio and they were looking to bring someone on so I originally worked there. For Anthropologie, I was doing textile design for the dresses and skirts team. Lovely, [00:08:00] team of people. A lot of British people on that team, coincidentally, which I did love since I had recently lived in the UK. But I think anything fashion related really wasn't for me. You're in Photoshop all day and I'm not really a tech person. I literally would dream with the Photoshop guides up.
So it wasn't for me. My best friend from high school actually, at the time, was a prop stylist on the Anthropologie home team, and she had said, We're looking for other stylists, I think you would be good at this. It came really naturally to me. You're thinking about all the things you learn with the fine art background, which is like composition light shadows and it's quite sculptural, which I had done decent amount of in school. Like with, in terms of the styling on set.
I loved it and the photo studio was awesome there. So when a full time position opened up, I moved over in there and that was also how I got into food styling because I did not know food styling was a job. And [00:09:00] they need more food than anyone realizes. They sell a ton of dinnerware.
And it needs to get propped out with food. Like I've always been interested in food cooked from a very young age. My dad is the cook in our family. And then his mom, my grandmother learned to cook from them.
And worked in restaurants. through college. So it was really, I was drawn to doing the food there. And then when I found out that you could just be a food stylist, it was like, yes. I always say that I moonlighted as a food stylist for my last two years at Anthro. I was there for five years total. I started assisting a more senior food stylist in Philadelphia, Lisa Russell.
She is awesome. And a great teacher, extremely talented and so generous with her knowledge. So I assisted for her, was still doing as much as possible at Anthro. Then I started taking on jobs of my own, people would reach out to me, so I would take them and I would literally use all my PTO days.
Mica: I was not taking vacation. I was just using my PTO to work [00:10:00] other jobs as a food stylist. You were talking earlier about how you got your, start in prop styling with anthropology and that your friend was like, I think you would be really good at this.
What did she say that was convincing to you that made you go? Okay. Yeah, I think I would be good at this.
Emilie: She had actually tried to get me into that studio like two other times not pressing me super hard, just had been like, Oh, you're back in Philly. Do you want to do this? And it's no, I got this textile job. At a point when I was really unhappy doing the print design, I got coffee with her and a photographer who I still am friends with and I was like, okay, so what is this job?
She was like, it's basically you got to make everything look like a million bucks. That's the job.
They just. were so nice and they made it seem fun. It was that and partially my misery of not being in the right place with the textile design that I was like, I'll try this. I think it isn't a job that you [00:11:00] really understand until you're on a set and you do it.
Mica: You mentioned earlier about how it felt so natural and so easy. When I got into food photography, it just clicked. Like everything just made sense. Was it the same feeling for you when you were getting into prop styling and food styling?
Emilie: Yeah it definitely was the same feeling. I feel really lucky that this team of stylists at Anthropologie is so talented. There was a senior stylist, Andy there who really trained me, like on the first sets I was ever on. And he also came from a fine arts background and a little bit of a teaching background, I believe.
And he was an incredible teacher, just the way that he explained things. He used like the visual sort of like formal arts language that I was really used to talking in from art school.
He would just explain things in a way that was really helpful. And my brain just works that way thinking about composition.
Prop styling, where you're still [00:12:00] thinking about light and composition and camera angle combined with food and everything in that world was like a really natural transition. And just like a very fun challenge. It's not to say that I didn't have to learn things.
There's so much. She'll learn and I am still constantly learning, but it is always a fun challenge. Like I like the challenges that occur in this job. They don't feel unnatural to me,
Mica: You mentioned earlier about when you transitioned into food styling and that was like, the real peanut butter and jelly for you that just connected immediately. Was there a misconception that you had about food styling? And if so, what was that misconception?
Emilie: I don't think there was a misconception because I guess, naively, I didn't really know about the job until I did it. I guess the [00:13:00] biggest misconception would be that you are going to make the food the same way that you would prepare food to eat it.
When I first started doing things, I was just cooking the food exactly the way I would cook it to eat it and then the more you learn you're like no like you're going to do this differently if it's for a photo. I would say longevity on set like it's going to sit on set longer than it's going to sit where if you cooked it and are going to eat it right away.
I got the Food Styling Bible.
Mica: By, uh, Dolores Custer.
Emilie: Dolores Custer.
It's truly the best book.
When I found out about the book, immediately purchased a copy. And I think the weekend I got it, read it cover to cover, which is a little weird because it's like almost an encyclopedia type of book. And I still will go back if I have free time sometimes and just read a section or even some of the little stories that she has from her career in there. If I'm working with a food that I've never worked with before or a situation or even just a food I haven't worked with in a while before [00:14:00] I shoot, I'll go back and reference that and be like, what were the tips she had, for that?
Even though she wrote the book a while ago at this point, the information in it is super relevant.
And there's it's not another resource like it out there.
Mica: I tell people that all the time, like new photographers who are emailing me and they're like, what are your some resources? What are some classes?
You should have this book just to, just for reference.
Emilie: Take me back to the first shoot where you were the lead stylist. What do you remember about that? My first shoot was for Wawa and it was even more PA with a basketball player from the Philly, the 76ers was our team. Wawa does like breakfast sandwiches to go. I don't know how they got my information to be completely honest with you.
But I got this email for the job and I was so excited. The two main things I remember from that shoot was one, it was shot in the house of this basketball player and it was [00:15:00] like, houses like this exist in Philadelphia. This is so nice. And then people were very excited that I steamed the cheese on the sandwich which made me feel like, okay, good.
They don't know that this is my first gig as the lead food stylist, like people think I know what I'm doing. Cause to get like the perfect amount on the breakfast sandwich with those little squares of sliced cheese, had my steamer was ready.
It was a video, which is always. much more chaotic to me anyways than stills. But those are my main memories that I was like, wow, where am I, this, I can't believe I'm in Philadelphia and being happy that people were impressed that I steamed the cheese.
Mica: I want to take it to people who inspire you the most in this industry. You listed, Lisa Russell that you assisted and Dolores Custer, RIP, who wrote the Food Styling Book, who in this industry inspires [00:16:00] you?
Emilie: So many people, it will be impossible. to name all of them. The first person coming to mind is Claire Baker. I'm lucky to call her a friend of mine. She's mostly a prop stylist, but she's full time at Anthropologie. She's a senior stylist there. And she is inspiring because there is nothing she can't do.
She can go on any set and she does a lot of food work for them as well. So she can do props. She can do food. She can do large scale interior. She can do small little things. And she can do videos, she can do stills. Anytime I see her new work, I'm always like, it's just stunning.
Kelsey Windmiller is a stylist who does both food and props, which is, it is a little more common in Philadelphia, I find than anywhere else, just, I think it being a slightly smaller industry, a lot of people are more nimble and go back and forth between the two, which in New York is definitely not a thing I noticed. But Kelsey is super talented. When I first went freelance after leaving [00:17:00] Anthro, she was really supportive as well. Lisa food stylist who is in Philly now, who you have also interviewed on your podcast and who assisted for Dolores, she is so talented, so inspiring.
I loved her episode with you.
Mica: That's a pretty bomb list. Lisa Homa, she's just the sweetest person. So shout out to, to Lisa.
If there's anything that I love about this industry is just, it doesn't matter like where everybody is, you know someone in another city, another state and there's that support, you're like, Oh, I love so and so's work, they're just amazing. So I was looking over your questionnaire and something that you put on here that I'm like, I want to talk about this too now. You mentioned schlepping. And you said, I feel like no one talks about this. I want to hear more about that. what is schlepping?
I think I don't know what schlepping It's not But for not not [00:18:00] for me, I hope I might be the only one who doesn't know what schlepping is But I okay. Let me tell you what I think it means so then you can tell me if i'm right. Okay, so schlepping I think rolling up your sleeves and just getting in there and and getting nitty and gritty with, with whatever you're doing.
Am I right?
Emilie: Like a little bit, I think I. My understanding of the word is that it's like carrying around a bunch of stuff. It's the, yeah, that's like a schlep, like you gotta bring a bunch of stuff with you.
Mica: I remember a while back I had a convo withKristina Wolter, from Girl Gone Grits, and we did a couple of test shoots and the first test shoot we did together, she had like five boxes of stuff that she was bringing in. And I was like, what the hell?
Why do you have all this stuff? What's going on? She used most of everything. How big is your kit?
Emilie: My kit and full, I'm almost never rolling up to a job with every single piece, I repack it for each job, depending on what I'm going to [00:19:00] need. I use a, I think it's called like the T Stack, and it's made by DeWalt, like the tool company, and it's a tool kit, and it's on wheels, and they make different containers that like, stack up.
They stack into each other and they clip in, so
you can bring as many boxes of equipment as you need.
Sometimes it's, you have suitcases, sometimes you have additional bags and boxes because there might not be a kitchen where the photo shoot is and I obviously need to cook. So the kit varies in size. Bare minimum I'm going to bring a small, like a toolbox size kit.
And that's it. It's super minimal. That's if I know I'm going somewhere with a really fully stock kitchen that I have been to before. Even if someone tells me there is a full kitchen, I've learned to not believe what equipment they're going to have there until I've seen it and been there because someone might say full kitchen and that just means they have a fridge and a stove and they don't have a stand mixer, they don't have baking pans. So the kit can vary [00:20:00] in size and then you have to bring a ton of food with you too. I like to bring up schlepping when people reach out to me about becoming a food stylist because I think someone says, Oh, I could be a food stylist. This seems like glamorous in some way because you're making photos for a magazine.
And it's a lot of really hard work. It's a lot of running around. It's a lot of carrying heavy bags in and out, and going through service elevators sometimes to get into places because you have so much equipment and so much stuff.
Mica: For this mentorship that I was a part of recently, Amplify, we were each given a project to produce. I had this huge concept and the food stylist that I've worked with who was also a guest on the podcast, Olivia Caminiti.
She just had so much food that she was bringing in and I was like, Oh,
yeah.
not, it's not that big of a surprise to me [00:21:00] because I've been in it for, a few years like you. But yet, it always still surprises me how much food is involved in, in a shoot. So it's imagine a cookbook shoot.
Whenever a client reaches out to you or a photographer reaches out to you and they tell you the concept and you're planning, are you thinking about, what ingredients are you going to need to gather? Are you forming that in your mind as they're describing it to you? How much information do you usually need to know before you have a full list of what you're going to be getting?
Emilie: I am thinking about those things from the moment I even consider accepting a job. And from any conversation that I have with a client, I'm taking notes and asking questions. I feel like I always have three million questions.
After we have a dialed in shot list and concept and our direction and all that, I'll make a list and then I'll go through and work out the quantities.
I [00:22:00] love the notes app on my phone because now that you can check things off. I would say food styling is so much list making. So the biggest math I do is the calculations for how much of each item I'm going to need because the worst thing would be to not have enough food and that be the issue on set.
Have more than enough and people will take home food or it can get donated after if there's extra. But yeah, always thinking about what I'm going to need, how much I'm going to need, where I'm going to buy it, how many days in advance can I buy it, what stores, what market they're going to have the best versions of everything. Huge part of the job.
Mica: Oh man how many days does it usually take of prepping? I guess it depends on the shoot, right?
Emilie: Always depends.
All of them probably would be like one shoot day is one prep day, unless it's a really complicated shot list. Maybe it's more than that. But I would say like a one to one ratio is fairly typical.
I'll have an assistant do the shopping [00:23:00] and then I'll do the cooking prep or they'll do some of the more general shopping and any like beauty ingredients, I might be sourcing those. But about a day for one shoot day.
Mica: So I want to close out this interview with, you mentioned on here that you wanted to talk about the value of assisting and I think that's such a great way to close this interview out. My first question for you in terms of assisting is, why is assisting so important for this industry?
And how long should a food stylist consider assisting before moving on to being a lead?
Emilie: Yeah, I think for me, it's a little more of a gray area question because I had prop styled so long Anthropologie and done lead styling there and not on food specific shoots. So just the understanding of being the [00:24:00] lead stylist on a bigger shoot wasn't a new thing. It was only the food that was new to me.
So yeah, when I got a call for the first food job, I felt like it probably depended on what the shoot was going to be. I learned what the shoot was going to be. It was going to be these breakfast sandwiches. I felt like I had assisted on shoots for similar product. So everything food wise that I would need to be doing, I felt really comfortable with and being on set.
I felt really comfortable with, so that was an easy decision. I was really hesitant to like, make the jump from assisting to being the lead stylist, as a whole, to start turning down assisting jobs anymore. Because it felt like, Oh, is there going to be enough work out there for me?
But it got to the point where it was like, okay, I'm turning down a lot of stuff, there's work out there. Sometimes there are shoots that don't go great, especially early on.
If it's a new thing, you might get in the weeds, but it's all [00:25:00] a learning experience and you do it and it's good.
Mica: And some people find that they enjoy the assisting part more than they enjoy the leading. They're like, I think I can make a living doing that. Like you said before, that it very much is a gray area that I guess it's really based on intuition and knowing within yourself, like asking yourself why am I not taking it? and in your case, you were concerned about, is there enough work out there? And you found pretty quickly that, yeah, there actually is enough work
out there. There's more than enough. If I'm turning jobs down. Yeah. That answered my question right there.
Emilie: I think you try it out if it doesn't go well, I guess you wouldn't know you weren't ready.
Mica: Yeah, I'm gonna go back to assisting. I need a little more time. If I could go back I would have assisted while I was in school.
That would have been the time to do it. By the time I finished school, I was, like, ready to hit the ground running. I was ready to like, be lead. I had no interest in assisting anybody. I was, like, I'm 30 something [00:26:00] years old. I just want to get started with my career. But looking back at it now, I wish that I had taken the opportunity and the time to reach out to, photographers and assist them while I was in school.
I feel like there were so many things that I would have learned then that I had to learn the hard way as a lead photographer. Thank goodness for like mentors that are out there now that I can reach out to. I don't know if it's the same way as a food stylist and prop stylist.
Emilie: Yes. That's a huge part of it. Between assisting and being laid is different a little bit for photographers because you can go to school for so much more of like photography than you do through food styling. The school really is so much assisting with food, but certainly that business side of things is. You definitely learned so much of that from assisting. I always say that the hardest part of this [00:27:00] job is not the food styling itself, like the cooking, the prepping, all of that. It, the hardest part is the things that don't come as naturally, which are like the business side of things and working with clients, and knowing how to navigate that those situations.
Mica: The business side is definitely something that I've had to grow into.
What has helped you get more comfortable, being in the leads and having that conversation of the business side?
Emilie: Experience and talking with other people in the industry, because a big part of it for me early on was one experience and knowing what does this take? How long is it going to take? What are the costs involved with all of that? Knowing like industry standards being like this is what I want to charge.
Is that crazy or not? And sometimes you'll talk to another stylist and they'll be like, that's too low. That's going to be so much more work than you think it's going to be when you [00:28:00] know, or they'll say, this is average, things like that. But experience firsthand with all those things has made me feel much more comfortable with it.
Like I feel really confident when I look at a shot list and say, that's too many shots. We can't do that in a day. If you're looking for the level of quality that I would like to provide, I don't ever think it's worth sacrificing the quality to get through more shots in a day. I just don't.
Mica: About two months ago, I was approached by an ice cream brand and they're like, we want you to photograph our entire, lineup of ice creams and we were thinking, it can be done in a four hour shoot.
Thank God for my theater training because in my heart I was like dying of laughter, but I was very transparent with them and I was like look that's just not gonna happen. You sent me these like really high concept images of what you want your product, what you want your shoots to look like. and, I'm going to tell you that that's not going to happen in four hours. Like [00:29:00] you have over, I think they had like 20 ice cream flavors and they wanted like different seasons.
They wanted to do like the whole year of, Christmas, Halloween, whatever holiday you can think of, they wanted to get photos of.
Emilie: Were they a newer brand, can I ask?
Mica: They were very like newer, like very small brand. They said to me we've worked with the same photographer for about five years and they could do it.
And I was like, feeling bad for the photographer. I was like, cause the photographers screwed in this situation.
But I told them, it's you want these very high concept images of like drips and you want, powder, like powdered sugar, all these things. And you have 20 flavors. It's not going to happen in four hours.
Emilie: You're a hundred percent right. It's a lot of education for the client sometimes. It can be a lot to explain and sometimes hard to [00:30:00] convince people.
And sometimes it doesn't work out if they aren't willing to do all these things. But it's important to know what questions to ask and everything that you're saying, like how many set changes are we doing? What's the backdrops? Shot count, super important. And it is much harder when the client. doesn't know about those things if they haven't done many photo shoots or any photo shoots with a professional before. Better to have those questions beforehand than find out on set. So
Mica: Yes. Then find out on set and go. Mm girl. We are not gonna do that. I wanna finish off by thanking you so much for being on the show.
What do you hope that people learn from today's episode?
Emilie: Thank you for having me and what do I hope that people learn? I guess in terms of if you aren't a food stylist or you're just more generally interested about the field, the takeaway could be, knowing that the food on camera is [00:31:00] not prepared probably the same exact way as you eat it and there's a lot just so much goes into it behind the scenes. And some of the best career advice I've ever gotten was like a stylist who I learned, assisted for, for a long time when I was younger would always say, be like water, which is a Bruce Lee quote, I think weirdly enough.
That early on, I was always kind of just like, okay, like this is just this thing that he always says. But now having gained so much more experience, I'm like, that's really good advice. Don't get set in a certain mindset, be flexible onset. And with all of your work, it's a lot of creative problem solving this job.
And I think it's good to have goals and work towards them. So you're not just being aimless. I try and assess my work and be critical of it after the shoot and think, what could I do differently for next time? And I think always just be like [00:32:00] really rigorous on yourself. I think that's important.
Mica: I love that, the be like water, that's perfect, Where can the listeners find you, follow you, stalk you love all your work?
Emilie: Yeah. My Instagram is Emily Foz. It's Emily with an ie. And my last name is Fosnocht, but so long. So just FOZ.
Mica: Yeah. Yeah. And, and if you're in the Philly area and you're thinking about assisting, she's a wonderful person to reach out to for advice.
Emilie: Yeah. Hit me up.
Mica: Thank you so much for being on the show. You're just the sweetest, kindest person ever.
Emilie: Thank you so much for having me.
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