Hey there! I hope everyone had fun celebrating the 4th!

We took a day trip to Napa to drink a little sparkling wine before relaxing with an afternoon picnic and an incredible view.

We had a great time and I plan to do a dedicated post on that soon but I wanted to take a minute to have a little blog talk today.

To be more specific, I want to talk about lines. The ones that separate us from being a food blogger or a healthy living blogger.

Before I started my blog, I imagined I would fit in somewhere in the middle. I knew next to nothing about food photography and thought as long as I invested in a nice camera, I would eventually figure things out.

Although I wanted to start a blog for several years, I decided to wait until after we moved to California, in August of 2012, so that I could establish myself at a new job and start working a few extra weekend shifts to save up money to buy myself a lower end DSLR. I tried to learn a few things about food photography to make my pictures look presentable but I never thought about taking it much farther than that.

However, as I fell deeper into the blogosphere, I couldn’t help but compare myself to other food blogs and notice the stark difference from my weeknight dinner shots to their perfectly styled photographs taken only in natural lighting.

I decided I wanted my food to look as good as it tastes and made a commitment to myself to start dedicating time on the weekend to creating a few recipes that I could shoot strictly in natural lighting.

Soon thereafter, I started to submit a few of my favorites, such as my Baked Blueberry Lemon Yogurt Donuts, to food porn sites like Foodgawker and Tastespotting to see if they would get accepted.

Well, I was quickly denied, with a capital D.

I’d be lying if I said my ego didn’t get bruised every time I got an email stating that my submission had been denied due to “tight composition” or “lighting issues”.  It left me feeling both depressed and utterly clueless.

Between being told my photos weren’t up to par and dealing with recipe failures that consumed my precious time on my weekends off from work, I was ready to throw in the towel on becoming a food blogger.

But as I dabbled in the idea of focusing more on the healthy living side of things with daily eats and personal check-ins, it seemed ill fit for my personality.

I’m somewhat of an introvert and I don’t enjoy being the center of attention. And I’m pretty sure no one wants to see awkward selfies of me and Coco everyday.

Anyway, I guess I’ve been having an internal blog-identity crisis for a while. I love creating healthy recipes that taste good and it feels amazing when the pictures turn out good too.

On the other hand, I love talking about health, fitness, and other randomness that connects me to so many other people out there who share similar interests. Sometimes, I just want to make friends and have fun with blogging.

But the more time has gone by, the more it seems as though there is a divide between healthy living bloggers and food bloggers. In fact, some blogs that I have read for a while originally began as healthy living blogs and are now mainly food blogs. It’s almost as if you have to choose one direction or the other.

Ultimately, I plan to keep doing a little bit of both because that’s what makes me happy but I worry that being in “the grey” might confuse people on the direction of my blog.

My main reason in addressing this topic is to hear your thoughts. I want to know if you think there is a divide too.

Do you think combining both makes for boring the food lovers on one day and boring the healthy living lovers the next? Do you think you have to choose one or other?

Either way, I would love to hear what you have to say, blogger or not, so please (if you have time, of course) let me know what you think!

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Okay, now I want to back track a little and talk more about the food photography aspect of things.

Even though my ego was bruised after Foodgawker denied my pictures, I was not about to stop there. I was determined to get more of my recipes accepted and I decided to start researching more about food photography and what this “tight composition business” meant. Along my journey, one extremely helpful blog that I came across was Sally’s Baking Addiction.

Sally is not only incredibly sweet, but someone I really look up to as a blogger. She is super creative with her recipes and her photography is truly amazing. In a section of her blog that is dedicated to tips for bloggers, she recommends a book called Tasty Food Photography by Lindsay at PinchofYum. After reading how helpful Sally it found it to be, I decided to check it out myself.

I have to say, I completely agree with Sally. Tasty Food Photography really is a huge help to someone who wants to step up their game in food photography. It starts out with all of the basics to get you acclimated to the fundamentals of photography and works it way from there with lots of great tips and tutorials.

While I still have so much to learn, I feel this book has helped me immensely and I know I will continue to refer to it for different tips and tricks in the future.

So…Lindsay just released an updated version of Tasty Food Photography and she was sweet enough to offer her affiliate sites (notice the flashing icon on my side bar) a free copy of her book to giveaway to a lucky reader!

In addition, she is also running a limited time discount code (newversion30) which expires on July 8th. Yes, that’s one day from now.

To enter the giveaway, log in to the Rafflecopter with your email or Facebook account and follow the directions for multiple entries and more chances to win. After the giveaway closes on Sunday, July 14th , I will notify the winner via email and send your information to Lindsay, who will then send you the link to download the book!