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BEDFORD, N.Y. Jessica Leibowitz has an eye for depicting deliciousness. The Bedford native's blog My Camera Eats Food showcases her photos and videos of mouth-watering meals.
Leibowitz, 24, spends her time shuttling from Brooklyn to Bedford and back, working as a freelance photographer and part-time videographer for clients like food blog Serious Eats and working a few days a week for renowned photographer and family friend Bill Abranowicz.
After graduating from Boston University with a major in film, Leibowitz spent a year honing her skills videotaping weddings in Boston and eventually applied as an intern at Serious Eats, which jumpstarted her food-centric career.
Her basis in photography was interning in Abranowiczs office during high school and college, working as an office assistant and sometimes shadowing him on shoots.
But her interest in food photography came about when she was attending college. While studying abroad in Italy for a semester, Leibowitz, who was taking photojournalism classes back at school, took a lot of pictures. The ones that seemed to get the most attention were the pictures of food, she said.
Back at school, one of her roommates the next year was a nutrition major, who got her started looking at food blogs. A year later, Leibowitz started her own: mycameraeatsfood.com, where she blogs about her work. But this was not her first website as a high school senior she created the site Bedford's Best for a scholarship project, which profiled notable people, places and organizations in town.
Last summer, Leibowitz said, she started doing production work for the Food Network and got the chance to be involved in casting Boston chefs for its show Chopped. Leibowitz even helped develop an iPhone app with another roommates mother, who just so happens to be Food Network luminary Sara Moulton of Cooking Live and Saras Secrets. The app combines recipes from three of her cookbooks.
Its got 60 recipes and I took two photos of each one for horizontal and vertical. We actually did two different compositions and theres 10 instructional videos that I filmed with Sara doing them, she said.
She said one of her favorite parts of her job as a photographer and videographer is going on press trips for Serious Eats, where companies take a group of journalists and fly them out to where they make their product.
Its like this hidden secret, she said of the weeklong trips that have mostly been for alcohol companies. I feel lucky to have discovered it.
She has traveled to Mexico for a Kahlua shoot, London for Beefeater Gin and is going to Scotland for Glenlivet Whiskey.
You can check out more of Leibowitzs photos and videos on her blog My Camera Eats Food and on Serious Eats. You can also visit her on Facebook or Twitter.
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