Shortly before I left for WPPI, I was chit chatting with some students and one of my girls asked me, with all seriousness, where raisins were from. Laughing off my disbelief that she didn’t know that these yummy little wrinkled balls of sugar come from grapes, I thought to myself, I need to do something about this. Even though I teach photography, I decided to show Food, Inc. while I was at WPPI. You might be thinking what does a movie about the American food industry and all it’s corruption have to do with photography? In my class, I teach much more than photography as I allow my students into my crazy little life and fill them with all sorts of knowledge of how to eat healthy and be fit for life. And it is a perfect transition to the unit of Food Photography, which is almost dirty as our food industry.

On the first day of class, I told my kids that I am gluten intolerant, so that means that I can’t eat anything with rye, wheat or barley. So that pretty much doesn’t allow me to participate in the traditional American diet and thus eat healthy. I put the wrath of fear into them if they dare bring anything with ingredients I am sensitive to, so they pretty much know that they can only eat food that grows on a tree or comes from the ground while in my classroom. To tie their ever growing skills in photography to a movie that made most of my kids want to be vegetarians, I had them take pictures of everything they ate for three days. I wanted them to see what they really eat, flaming hot cheetos and all. Since this was the first time I did food photography with my kids, I thought that I should do their assignment too. So in a Project 365 sort of way, I took pictures of everything I ate for a few days.  And I have to tell you that my husband made most of these delicious meals; he is quite the chef! Here are some of my favorites.