My First Cookbook

Last September I got this crazy idea to do my own small cookbook. The original purpose was to have something unique to leave with the people I met with at the NYCfotoworks Portfolio Review. It was a promotional piece that I was confident would leave an impression. I think it worked, as most of the people seemed genuinely delighted to receive a copy of the book. I printed 30 of them and gave all of them out for self-promotion. I also had a few hardcover versions printed and gave them to family.

It wasn’t a giant cookbook. It had 12 recipes that I had developed and made my own over the years. Many recipes were inspired by things I ate growing up and others were based on food I had eaten at restaurants. Many of them have appeared on this website.

I decided to create an ebook version and set about figuring out how to do that. For various reasons, including formatting, cost and display purposes, I have decided that, initially, I will release it only in the iBook format. As a primarily visual book, the iBook format will allow me to make it look the way I want it to look as well as adding some interactive elements.

Because of the standard formatting of the iBook, I need to break the book up into sections and add additional chapter pages and table of content pages. I am also adding more recipes to make it a little more robust. This meant more photography. I thought about using the images of the food in the chapter for the chapter pages but decided it would be an opportunity to show more of my work.

I came up with ideas that would relate to each chapter using some work I had already done and then planned some additional shoots. One thing I wanted to do was include people in the images. One of the big attractions for me about food photography is the way food brings people together.

I have finished up the last of the photos and just need to write a couple more recipes before putting the final design together. I don’t know how long the approval process is for iBooks but I am hoping to have it available in the iBooks store by the end of February. I’ll keep you posted.