Genuine Networking: How Rebecca Peloquin Landed Her First Cookbook Gig

Networking, if done incorrectly, can become a cynical chore. It’s all about who you know — actually, it’s more about who knows you, but I digress — and in order to “know” people, you have to get to know them. This means that instead of robotically emailing contacts on a monthly basis as a way of getting your name out there, you can take the Rebecca Peloquin route and cultivate meaningful relationships within the professional sphere. It’s that attitude that helped the veteran food photographer land her first cookbook shoot. The book, Instant Pot Desserts, came out this summer.

As far as how I got this gig, I’d say this cookbook project was the result of genuine networking in the food community and being friendly with folks involved in food without expecting a job. A food historian on the other side of the country who I had been talking with about fermentation thought of me when a colleague of hers needed a photographer in Los Angeles. She put us in touch, and we clicked right away.

That colleague was the book’s author, Laurel Randolph. Like with most cookbooks, this shoot did not have a large budget. That said, because the entire shoot was conducted in Rebecca’s home studio, the workflow wasn’t hampered by a lack of funds.

There wasn’t a big budget for this project and I’d never shot a cookbook before so a lot of this was shot just being as resourceful as we could with prop sourcing and styling while also exploring the process. Since we weren’t sure how many dishes we could get through in a day, for flexibility we shot this whole book at my home studio.

It really shows with all the create in place stuff happening now, you can really do a lot outside of the traditional studio!

Since this was a new endeavor for Rebecca, she needed to take as many preparative steps as possible. Cooking, baking especially, can require a large number of niche props, so the onus was on the Angeleno to ensure any and all necessary equipment was on hand for a shoot that took about three days to complete.

The biggest challenge for me on this project was the unknown. I had been shooting food for a while and editorial portraits for years before that, but this was the first cookbook project I was approached with. I wanted to make sure we could deliver what we promised with no hiccups, so I could take that knowledge and scale it for bigger projects. 

In place of renting surfaces which were out of budget, I made all of the surfaces that we shot on with paint and peel/stick wallpaper on ply. The props were thrifted by myself or the author and came from sale sections or from my private prop collection, most of which is now available on my website to browse for create in place shoots.

We had to use what we had on hand primarily or find any odds and ends cheaply. It taught me a lot about working with what you have and trying to make things dynamic by using texture and light.

Once everything was in place, Rebecca could truly appreciate the benefits of a working outside of a traditional studio. Keep in mind that, though the book was released this summer, the work was completed last summer, so COVID wasn’t anywhere near the global lexicon at the time. While it wasn’t imperative that Rebecca work from home, it certainly allowed her to see the possibilities that lie within this setup.  

[Shooting outside of a traditional studio] saves on load-in time, that’s for sure, but it also creates a different, calmer atmosphere. I’ve found I’m actually working faster on my home studio shoots because there isn’t the same pressure to overshoot. Aside from some space limitations or location qualities, I’m finding I can do just about all of my shoots remotely.

Of course, what would a food shoot be without a little sampling at the end? Rebecca rewarded herself with some tasty morsels — and there were plenty available after the shoot was wrapped up.

One of my favorite shots from this book is the ginger-grapefruit curd shot because it just came out so colorful and the shapes played well together.

The hardest thing to shoot was the flan because it didn’t want to turn out of the ramekins. We had to take a lot of deep breaths to try and get some salvageable subjects, and they required a fair bit of post to touch up.

My favorite subject to eat was the matcha creme brulee though — we had barely wrapped and I was reaching for it!

See more of Rebecca’s work at rebeccapeloquin.com.

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