Day One of #IFBM2014 - The Food Photography sessions: Key takeaways

The day started with participants trickling in, starting quite early, given the unpredictable nature of Bangalore traffic. The Aloft Bengaluru Cessna Business Park took great care to welcome and even escort each one of them personally to the conference hall. People seemed to be in complete awe of the colours and spunky decor of the hotel.

 The day kicked off with our organizer-MC Arundati giving the welcome note to our participants. The GM of the hotel, Faiz Alam Ansari extended a warm welcome to all the IFBM 2014 attendees and went to the extent of saying "Ask for anything and the answer will be yes". That kind of generosity and warmth set a positive tone for a great day. Marketing and Communications manager, Deepika Pillai also announced a few contests that kept the participants tweeting / sharing their observations all day!

Picture courtesy: @mypref

Session 1 - Foodography by Deeba Rajpal
Deeba, who's collection of completely droolworthy photos and antique props are known to every worthwhile foodblogger needed no introduction. Her talk inspired the participants to put that little extra into their food photos. 
Some of her mantras were "Be inspired""enjoy what you do" "find your own style and work on it".
In the era where everything and anything can be inserted or cut out using post-processing, she had a refreshing take "Attention to detail, right from word go. Use post processing as a luxury, not a crutch."

Pic courtesy: Revati

A few takeaways from her session:

• Use fresh ingredients and play around with props to create a new picture each time.
• Pick seasonal and local fresh produce for your cooking and photos. The freshness shows in the photos.
• use what you have and get creative. No need to spend on expensive props.
• Reuse props but not in the consecutive posts, people will wonder if you have only one plate :-)
• Let the food talk. Your eye should focus on the food and not multiple other things. 
• create a Pinterest board & go back regularly. You'll see a lot of changes in it development over time.
• With Indian curries don't try to shoot whole bowls. try small portions.
• Keep a mix of white plates, glass bowls, clear glasses, white baking dishes, small kadais, small saucepans to build a basic collection of props for use.
• Use a tripod. Once you start using it, you cannot do without it.

She also presented a case study of taking pictures of a footlong sandwich which needs toothpicks / skewers to keep the bread propped up and not fall flat on the fillings. 
We learnt that the combination of natural light and shooting in Auto mode, is capable of giving some stunning results as is evident in her photos.

Session 2 - From your kitchen to your blog - Better Food Photography by Aparna Balasubramaniam 

Pic courtesy: Siri P

Aparna's blog is known for its clean, clutter-free photos. She conducts workshops on food photography. It was indeed a great opportunity for the food bloggers to have a session from Aparna at the IFBM 2014. 

The audience had a good laugh, when Aparna started with the no-nonsense basics of "read your camera's manual", something which we all shudder to do. 

Some of the takeaways from her session:

• Know your gadget.
• Shun flash, use natural light.
• Soft backlight works best and is highly recommended. 
• Know the rules, only so you can break them.
• Use toothpaste to remove the shine from glossy surfaces.
• Rupee coins make great tilt correctors.
• Get your composition right and keep crop to a minimum. 
• Focus has to be the sharpest where you want to draw the eye.
• More than anything else, READ THE MANUAL :D 

Beyond Blogging with Kalyan Karmakar

We are happy to announce that Kalyan Karmakar has finally been able to make it to the IFBM2014, as a part of the panel in the Beyond Blogging discussion.

Kalyan Karmakar is a Mumbai based food & travel writer. His blog  is seven years old. He is a food and travel columnist for Femina & Burrp and is a contributor to the BBC Good Food Magazine India, Man’s World and Food and Nightlife magazines and has written for Times of India Crest and liveinstyle.com. He is working on a food travelogue for Hachette India. He conducts the very popular Finely Chopped Food Walks in Mumbai. He has anchored a show on street food for the Travel Channel USA. Kalyan’s blog, Finely Chopped, won in the best travel and food category of the Food Bloggers Association of India Awards 2013. 

His presence will give our audience further insights into other avenues that open up from foodblogging.

We look forward to having you with us, Kalyan!

Twitter: @finelychopped
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Instagram: @finelychoppeds

Masterclass with Chef Sameer Luthra of Aloft Bengaluru Cessna Business Park

Executive Chef Sameer Luthra brings his vast culinary expertise to launched Aloft Bengaluru Cessna Business Park. Sameer is a seasoned chef with over 12 years of experience serving in various hospitality, food and beverage positions around the globe.

Chef Sameer Luthra has planned for us a delightful "Masterclass" where he will showcase some fabulous recipes and give the participants tips on how to get hotel like results with easy to source ingredients and recipes.

He has been passionate about cooking since he was fifteen and holds a prestigious degree from the world’s best culinary school the “Le cordon Bleu” in Paris.

Chef Sameer Luthra started his career in 2001 with the Taj Group of Hotels. Sameer moved onto work with other reputed hospitality brands like Novotel Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Westin Pune Koregaon Park and the Starwood Group of Hotels.

Sameer has gained international experience at the Caribbean where he mastered the art and intricacies of European and Mediterranean cuisine. He also worked at Indigo, one of Mumbai’s most premium fine-dining restaurants, where he sharpened his modern cuisine skills and gained valuable insight into the different aspects and expectations of today’s discerning Indian clientele.

Sameer’s untiring energy, distinctive style and the use of a perfect blend of ingredients and national tastes is what Chef Sameer Luthra brings to the culinary realm of Aloft Bengaluru Cessna Business Park.

An avid reader, Chef Sameer loves to travel and analyze people. He accentuates the fact that ‘A positive mind automatically creates a positive environment’; however he firmly believes that ‘One charts ones future’ ---- Surely food for thought!!

Wine appreciation by Aneesh Bhasin

Image: Nandita Iyer

Food and wine, often go hand in hand. As a foodblogger, it is good to know a few basics about the types of wine, what wines pair well with what kind of food and so on. Of course, bonus wine-snob points if you know how to pronounce some of the French wines like Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier! 

Aneesh Bhasin will be conducting this session on wine appreciation that aims to take the snob factor out of wine tasting and drinking. "If you like food, you will most likely enjoy wines as well since wine is also about flavours and technique, just like cooking," he says. 

Aneesh is award winning photographer and the co founder of Hipcask, India’s first wine focused smart phone app and consumer platform. With over 7 years of experience in lifestyle photography, his love for travel and wines gave him a first hand perspective on wine consumption around the world and the emerging market in India. His keen understanding of the potential for the Indian wine industry and its need to engage with its consumers in a hard liquor dominated market made him realize the potential for a platform such as Hipcask.

Spice Sorcery by Husna Rahaman – A HarperCollins Publication Launch

You would have seen our post where we announced that HarperCollins India are one of our sponsors and will be sending home one of their cookbooks with every food blogger attending the Indian Food Bloggers Meet in Bangalore.

We’re pleased to announce that HarperCollins India will also be launching their latest cookbook “Spice Sorcery” by Husna Rahaman, at the Indian Food Bloggers Meet. Food bloggers, who will be joining us at Bangalore for the Meet, will get an opportunity to meet and interact with the author, Ms Husna Rahaman and get an insight into the story behind her cookbook, and the recipes in it.

 

Spice Sorcery is a cookbook with a difference. It is an intimate and mouth-watering insight into the homes and hearts of the Kutchi Memon community – an idiosyncratic people who put a curiously gigantic premium on the gift of taste. The book is replete with stories blended with spices, love stewed with lentils, scandals folded into the dough.

Spice Sorcery is also the story of Razia, the quintessential Memon girl. She uses food to open doors in her life – waving a magic wand, her favourite wooden ladle. Her recipes are likened to magic spells. An apt enough description if you consider how she wields that ladle to enchant a diverse cast of characters: her food-obsessed uncle Munavvar, her autocratic mother-in-law Shakira and her emotionally strained sister-in-law Rabia. Razia’s bewitching tale is steeped in delectable recipes, and sprinkled with little secrets that will bring the smells and flavour of her Kutchi Memon cooking right into your kitchen.

 

 

Husna Rahaman has included over 50 Kutchi Memon style recipe which recipes for Khatta Saalan, Kheema Khabargah, Khekda Shorba, Shikampur Kebabs, Sheer Khurma, Dum ke Phaal,  Roti ka Meetha, Mutanjan, Tamatar ka Kut, Moong Dal ki Kachchi Biryani, Anday ka Khana and Rote , to mention a few.

Announcing the KitchenAid MasterClass with Chef Jolly

What better way to explore the use of some KitchenAid products and appliances, than to watch them at work? Join us at the KitchenAid MasterClass with Chef Surjan Singh Jolly to do just that.

In this exclusive MasterClass, Chef Jolly will give you a live demonstration of the KitchenAid Stand Mixer, Cordless Pro Line Hand Blender and Food Chopper at work, whipping up sharing some of his favourite recipes with us. Gleaning from his travels around the country, Chef will be preparing the following:

1. Tchaman kut
2. Kaer-Sangri roti
3. Lahsoon-mirchi chutney

Meet Chef Surjan Singh Jolly

 Fondly known as Chef Jolly, joined JW Marriott Bengaluru as an Executive Chef and recently taken on total responsibility of food & beverage requirements at the hotel.

With over two decades of experience of being in the hospitality industry, his achievements include being the Guest Chef on the world renowned reality television show on Star Plus, Junior Master Chef India. He also has his own show on Zee Khana Khazana titled “Ab Har Koi Chef” and was chosen as the Head Chef for Paris Hilton when she visited India.

His love and passion for food has increased his knowledge on ingredients and inspires him to travel on endless expeditions to explore the nuances of authentic and traditional cuisine. From travelling and cooking with Sriji Arvind Singh Mewar, of Udaipur Royalty, Nawab Mehboob Alam Khan, the giant of Hyderabadi cuisine, cooked in the bylanes of Lucknow, perfected the Kulchas in Amritsar dhabas to farming in Pampore, outskirts of Kashmir during the saffron harvest, Chef Jolly has an infectious energy, lively persona and passion for food.

He is a proud recipient of the prestigious Global Marriott Hotels & Resorts ‘Chef of the Year Award for Culinary Excellence’ and travels annually to Nova Scotia, Canada as part of the Culinary Tourism Board to spread awareness on adding Indian flavors to their local and seasonal produce.

Chef’s longstanding career started at The Taj Palace, New Delhi as the Chef de Partie and his long and successful career is dotted with colourful and memorable assignments including working with Jiggs Kalra, undertaking several elite engagements organized for A list parties to Bollywood celebrity weddings. He has also organized several high profile dinners such as Ms. Madhuri Dixit's wedding, Hrithik Roshan’s anniversary, Amitabh Bachchan's Birthday Celebration and for several personal events of Anil Ambani.

We’re excited to have Chef Jolly with us, to bring us face to face with the world of KitchenAid's appliances.

Social Media for Food Bloggers with Nandita Iyer

Nandita Iyer has been a food blogger (saffrontrail.com) since 2006, well before 'food-blogging' was a thing in India. She is very active on social media and has a legendary twitter following that benefits from her tweets on food, nutrition and beyond. According to Nandita, several valuable personal and professional associations have been formed via the various social media platforms she is active on. These have translated into many professional engagements and she regularly writes columns and research oriented food and nutrition stories for several magazines and newspapers. Her blog has been featured in several leading publications, Business Today, The Hindu, Mint, Afternoon Despatch and Courier being a few of them. 

Nandita will speak at the IFBMeet on "Social Media for Food Bloggers" The session will attempt to answer questions on why social media is important to food bloggers. She will share with you the best tools you can use to promote your work, how best to use each medium, what platform works most effectively in each of the instances, building a follower base so that what you say is heard by more number of people, etc. 

Why social media? And more importantly, how can social media can fuel your blogging experience are some of the questions that bloggers grapple with. 

As food bloggers, your work needs to be shared and promoted. You are your own PR machinery. Social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram helps bloggers in distributing their content. These platforms are an essential part of a blogger's identity and hence need to be nurtured. 

During her talk, Nandita will share with the audience, the best tools to be used to promote your work. How best to use each medium and what platform works best in varied instances and are some of the questions many food bloggers have which will find answers in this session. 

How do you build a follower base on Facebook and Twitter so what you say is heard by more number of people. This is another useful secret that will be shared. What do food bloggers stand to gain by being a prominent voice on social media? Nandita will explain from her personal experiences and instances about using social media effectively. 

She will also outline for you a basic social media plan for your blog. The session, she promises, will be fun, useful and practical and very hands-on! 

Strike gold by creating your own unique experience on social media. Join us at IFBMeet 2014 in Bangalore this August.

Food Photography with Aparna Balasubramanian

If you've been a food blogger long enough, Aparna's blog -- My Diverse Kitchen -- embellished with her trademark minimalistic, gorgeous food pictures, needs no introduction. And if you've marveled at her photography skills for many years now, this session will particularly interest you.

 Did you know that Aparna’s interest in photography developed only after she started writing a food blog in 2007. Her first set of photographs, taken with an inexpensive point and shoot camera and very little understanding of photography left her deeply dissatisfied with her efforts. A desire to create better photographs had her doing vast amounts of reading and enrolling for a basic photography class to understand the concepts. Realizing the limitations of a point and shoot, she moved to using a dSLR. With a lot of practice and through much trial and error (a lot of error!), she has come far on her journey with photography. And her pictures today, are testimony to this journey of learning.

Aparna is predominantly a food photographer but also loves taking pictures of people and life on the streets and just about anything that catches her interest. She particularly enjoys black and white photography in food and life for the variety of textures it reveals through shadow play. She has done a large number of interior shoots for homestays, been a food stylist for Prasad Pankar and has also conducted workshops on photography. She has also exhibited her work, won an award and sells her images.

If there is anything written about food these days, it is almost always accompanied by a photograph. The truth is that before we actually eat our food, we have already “tasted” it with our eyes. Our visual perception of food and the way it is presented, has largely changed the way we look at our food. As food bloggers, we are acutely aware of this fact, and are constantly working on bettering our food photography in order to enhance the experience our readers have when they hop over to our blogs. Once you've got a hold on Food Styling, you can take things up a notch by bettering your Food Photographs as well. 

Aparna will talk about what is important in the making of a good food photograph. If you want to know what makes a good food photograph, learn some basic tricks and tips, and embark on a similar journey, this session will be of immense value. We're extremely grateful that apart from lending her time and effort in organising this meet, Aparna will also be speaking at IFBMeet 2014!

Secrets of SEO with Ashish Verma

The reticent Ashish Verma is passionate about start-ups and scaling them fast. His extensive experience and understanding of the marketing need of start-ups and small and mid size business enterprises is a channel for this passion. Ashish is always open to new ideas and is keen on exploring how learning from one industry can be applied to other industry.

It is with this spirit that he was excited to share his insights on SEO and how to use it in blog building at the IFBMeet 2014. 

Ashish is digital strategist & consultant by profession. E commerce, Strategic business development,Online advertising/monetization, Social Media, Brand management, Media planning & buying are his specialties. His expertise is in Digital Marketing and Sales. His success stories include the much recognised Indian start-ups such as Myntra & Olacabs.  Currently he leads digital Media strategy at Ogilvy in Bangalore. 

For all those who have grappled with SEO and other technical stuff that makes blogs more effective with their audiences, Ashish will demystify and simplify the concepts. He has successfully applied innovative strategies to drive online channels such as SEM, SEO, Affiliate, E-Mail & Mobile marketing. Data driven behaviour and understanding the customer need are some of the areas that he cover which will help make blogs more reachable. He will also address how consistent brand imaging & positioning among the internet audience is important. 

Ashish has MBA in Marketing & Strategy from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.When taking break from work, he loves to travel. 

Blogging and beyond with Harini Prakash

Known in some circles as 'Sunshinemom', Harini Prakash is a full time government employee and mother to two teenagers. Her love for photography has had her moonlighting as a photographer and blogger in her spare time. She hopes to get into professional food photography very soon.

One of Harini's childhood dreams was to learn magic. She feels the closest  she has come to being a magician is when she creates recipes and captures the taste and feel in her camera . Harini is vegan and her website Tongueticklers features allergy friendly and healthy alternatives of traditional lacto-ovo vegetarian foods for a plant based diet. 

Harini has a beautiful blog and her recipes and food photographs have been featured in many online and print magazines.. Her website has received the recommendation of Chef Sanjeev Kapoor.  

We are delighted to have Harini share this passion of hers at IFBM. She will be on the panel sharing her experience of developing a passion towards an alternative future career and about the opportunities that can develop out of it. If you too hope to someday develop your photography skills into a full time career Harini's experience will definitely inspire you! Register yourself to attend IFBM and catch this session.

How to Self-Publish your Cookbook with Aparna Jain

Most of you would know Aparna Jain as the author of The Sood Family Cookbook. But how many of you know that it was initially self-published before it got picked by Harper Collins?

We’re excited to have Aparna share the ins and outs of How to Self-Publish Your Cookbook at IFBMeet 2014! Food-writers and aspiring authors, this one is going to be particularly exciting for you.

Aparna Jain is the Country Manager for Partridge Publishing India - a self publishing company (A Division of Penguin Random House). She has a postgraduate degree in hospitality but decided after a year of working in the industry that the world of pasted smiles wasn’t for her. She moved to technology and worked in the Internet, tech and telecom space for ten years in the madness of Silicon Valley before moving to media. As marketing head for Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, she was immersed in the lifestyle space. She then joined Tehelka and was part of the core team that launched THiNK.

She is also India’s only Integral Master Coach and runs her own marketing consultancy and Integral-based coaching practice called Zebraa Works. Her leadership coaching practice, she says, is like good food. It allows for meaningful connections and helps navigate through most problems.  Because she is an insomniac, she also manages to fit in a love of reading, very basic cello lessons (Think Twinkle Twinkle)  and the occasional cooking up of fancy meals into her days.

Join us, listen to Aparna's story and be inspired -- who knows, maybe you have a cookbook writer in you! Register yourself for IFBMeet 2014 today.

What to expect at IFBM 2014

When we planned to organise the Indian Food Bloggers Meet, we wanted it to be an exciting event that gave bloggers the opportunity to share their passion for all things food, exchange ideas and listen to inspiring talks. We wanted it to be an event that would go beyond meeting and eating :) Apart from being the first ever national gathering of food bloggers, we wanted it to be a meaningful and insightful experience that would hopefully add a generous helping of inspiration and loads of value for every blogger who is attending it.

We reached out to friends from within and outside the food blogger community — people who we have known as inspiring, accomplished bloggers, to come share their stories in different capacities — and we have been extremely fortuntate to have virtually every one of them respond favourably. 

We’re delighted to share the entire lineup at IFBM 2014 with you today. Here’s a sneak peek at what the agenda for 1st and 2nd August 2014 looks like.

Food Styling

The best blogs that lure us back time and again are usually the ones with food that looks stunning. And to tell you how to make your food look good, styled to the T and eye-catching, Deeba Rajpal will be sharing her tips and tricks about food styling. Talking about her own distinct style of impeccable beautiful set-ups and a penchant for food props, Deeba will tell us what inspires her and what you too can do to achieve great results with just a little effort and attention. 

Food Photography

When you’re a food blogger, just making your food look good isn’t enough. You have to make your food photograph well too. Aparna Balasubramanian is a food photographer par excellence, and all of us who frequent her blog will agree that her pictures form an important part of the story her blog tells. Aparna will be joining us to share some basic and simple principles of food photography and how to shoot better looking pictures.

Food Writing

Good food writing is what makes some blogs more memorable than others. If you’re the kind of blogger that bookmarks a post as much for the story it tells, as the recipe it shares, then you will enjoy this session by Rushina M Ghildiyal. After the successful release of her first cookbook, A Pinch of This, A Handful of That, Rushina will be talking to us about how to make every blog post compelling and the kind that will be memorable in your reader’s minds.

Cookbook Publishing

Many of us secretly nurture a dream to write a cookbook, to write out a food story that’s waiting to be told and share our words and thoughts about food. But the thought of putting it out there, finding a publisher and carving out an audience, is intimidating and holds many of us back. Aparna Jain, author of the recently-published book, The Sood Family Cookbook, will be joining us to share her journey from self-published author to cookbook writer, telling you how you can make it happen too.

SEO and Social Media Marketing

Most of us and our blogs are nothing without the heaps of love and attention we get online, via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and the like. Nandita Iyer well known food blogger, columnist and culinary trainer, along with SEO Expert Ashish Verma will share with you the best social media tools out there, how you can use them and harness their potential to take your food blog to the next level.

Beyond blogging

This session is a panel discussion that brings a host of bloggers from various backgrounds to one common table. Each of these bloggers have successfully taken their passion for food and blogging to the next level by branching out into a unique and niche field. Whether it is commercial photography, food styling for food/culinary brands, or culinary training, cultural food walks or cookbookwriting — this discussion will give you a glimpse into the stories of some of these bloggers we know and applaud for steering their careers to new directions.

Apart from these sessions, the Indian Bloggers Meet will also include the following:

Wine Appreciation — Aneesh Bhasin from Hipcask will give you a flavour of the various kinds of wine there are to be had, a gist about pairing and techniques — minus the snob value usually associated with wine!

Exclusive Book Launch — Harper Collins will be joining us to launch their new cookbook Spice Sorcery, by Husna Rahman, with a chance to talk to the author and grab your very own copy!

KitchenAid Masterclass — More than just stand-mixers, KitchenAid will be joining us in an exclusive MasterClass that will display three of their leading appliances, and the marvelous ways in which you can use them in your kitchen to transform your goodies!

Food Writing with Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal

Rushina Munshaw-Ghildiyal is a well known face in the blogging world. She is a corporate food consultant, food writer, food stylist and author with more than 10 years of experience in the Indian food industry. Most recently, her first cookbook, A Pinch of This, A Handful of That, was published in December 2013 to much acclaim.

Rushina began her food career in 2004, as one of India’s first food bloggers, at a time when the genre was relatively unknown. Her blog became one of the most popular food blogs in India, and grew into A Perfect Bite® Consulting, a premier food consulting firm she began in 2009. In 2012, Rushina launched India’s first home cooking studio – the APB Cook Studio® with the aim of inspiring food-lovers to explore and expand their worldview of food through various initiatives. 

Rushina is passionate about Indian cuisine and has explored it through customised cooking workshops and food tours that focus on and celebrate Indian food in all its complexity. She also runs kids cooking classes in a bid to teach children the importance of eating healthy and the joy of cooking. Rushina is committed to inspiring people about food through her food endeavours and adventures. She also conducts sought after workshops exclusively on food writing.

We are excited to have Rushina join us at IFBM, conducting a session on Food Writing which promises to enable us to make our food stories better, compelling and definitely more memorable. She will also join the panel discussion to share her experiences and insights on how her blog opened up a whole new area of opportunity. To hear this and more from her, join us at IFBM 2014. Register today!

Blogging and beyond with Sanjeeta KK

Sanjeeta KK began her online journey with a strong passion for food, a few recipes, a pocket size camera and a tiny URL: Lite Bite was launched in 2009 and since then Sanjeeta has found this platform to be the perfect place to string the beads of happiness together and keep her passion alive. 

In her words, "Working on my blog has taught me pick up new skill sets - digital food photography and food styling, to name a few. From managing my food blog, I gradually moved on to do commercial food styling assignments in Chennai. I have successfully completed projects for many popular restaurants, brands and television commercials over the last couple of years." 

While Sanjeeta's career in food styling has taken off on a successful path, her Lite Bite continues to thrive, featuring vegetarian recipes. Her quest for egg free baking and healthy cooking is extensively shared though all her recipes, most of which are easy and accessible. She likes to share stories behind the origin of her recipes, and speaking about homemade, unprocessed and healthy food is what she strives for each day.

She defines food as nostalgic, comforting and an important factor to connect with people and make community. We're delighted to have Sanjeeta on our panel who will be discussing how they took their blogs to new heights by venturing into new territory and embracing career changes. If you have wanted to switch streams and want to hear of others who did the same, you don't want to miss this session. Join us at IFBM 2014, register yourself today!

Blogging and beyond with The Tadka Girls

Ranjini & Ruchira, also known as the Tadka Girls, first met in the United States about a decade ago as neighbors, and discovered they had many things in common, of which the love for good food and good books stood out substantially. They started their food blog, Tadka Pasta, much later on a lark, really, in 2011, and their friendship has since transformed into a powerful working partnership, to which their two best-selling books stand testimony. 

Mango Masala: 60 Indian Recipes From Your Local Supermarket was launched as an eBook in the American market, in collaboration with the publishing company, eBooks2go in 2012, and has fared remarkably well on iTunes and Amazon. Around The World With The Tadka Girls, by Westland-Tranquebar Press, was out in bookstores in December 2013, and is riding the waves steadily in both brick-mortar and online bookshops. 

If you have ever nurtured the dream of taking your blog beyond the virtual world and into print, this session at IFBM 2014 will be of interest to you. Ranjini and Ruchira will be part of a special panel discussion of bloggers who have turned their blogs into successful ventures -- everything from cookbooks to photography, teaching, writing and several other interesting food-related businesses. Hear their story on day 2 at IFBM 2014. Register yourself today! 

Food-o-graphy with Deeba Rajpal

Deeba Rajpal ~ Food writer, stylist and recipe developer blogs at www.passionateaboutbaking.com and literally needs no introduction. We're glad to have her conduct a session on Food Styling titled Food-o-graphy at IFBM 2014!

Deeba describes herself as an obsessed baker and cook, a 'locavore' by design, who enjoys getting food to the table with seasonal ingredients and local produce. 

Give her an ingredient, offer her an idea ... that's enough for the magic to begin! Thoughts flow, the lens focuses and she begins to dream!

Deeba has been writing her food blog since Aug 2007 made her move from just baking, to baking and taking pictures. Then came the abundant inspiration from the magical internet. Styling the food for the lens became second nature and stuff her dreams are made up of.

In her own words "I want to tell my story, and most of the time it is through pictures with some words to tie the post together! I am seldom lost for inspiration as seasons, colours, ingredients, people all inspire me. When I hit a road block, you will probably find me at Pinterest."

Those of you who have seen and admired Deeba's beautiful blog and her stunning pictures make sure you're joining us at IFBM 2014, to get some tips, tricks and some ideas about styling and photography with Deeba. Register yourself today!