Overview
Food bloggers and food photographers — amateurs and semi-professionals — looking to develop a coherent personal style and transition toward more intentional creative work. Most enrollees are post-college, with existing portfolios and recipe blogs but limited vocabulary for analyzing or refining their own visual approach.
Context
A self-paced email course delivered through ConvertKit, supported by a private companion website (samanthaseeley.com), a downloadable workbook, pre-recorded YouTube video lessons, and a Facebook community for participants. Initially designed and produced as part of my MA in Learning and Emerging Technologies (Spring 2020), then released to the public as a free lead-magnet course supporting my food photography content business.
Student Learning Outcomes
- Research and analyze food images — break down photographs by composition, food styling, props, technical skills, editing, color, and light.
- Critique and self-reflect on their own work — take their findings forward into future shoots.
Learning Design Approach
The course was deliberately built on three layered pedagogical frameworks, each chosen for a specific reason:
Backwards design. I started from the end goal — students who can critically analyze their own and others’ photographs — and worked backward. The signature exercise asks students to use the same five reference photos across all six days, answering different analytical questions about each one. By the end, they’ve examined the same images through six different lenses, and the analytical framework becomes internalized.
Scaffolding. The six days are sequenced to mirror the actual food photography workflow:
Day 1: Self-Reflection & Photographic Research
Day 2: Color & Light
Day 3: Composition
Day 4: Food & Prop Styling
Day 5: Meaning, Mood & Story
Day 6: Technical & Editing Skills
Editing comes last because, in practice, it’s the last step of any shoot. The order is intentional pedagogy.
Constructivism. The audience already has portfolios. Rather than treating them as beginners, the course builds on their prior knowledge — prompting them to articulate what they already see, what they want to see, and what’s missing. The workbook scaffolds this self-reflection daily.
Community of practice. A private Facebook group (with a future plan to add a Slack/Discord channel) was attached to the course so participants could ask questions, share work, and learn from more experienced photographers in the group — turning a one-to-many email course into a peer learning environment.
Delivery Architecture
- Discovery: SEO-optimized blog posts on samanthaseeley.com (e.g. “How to Use and Create Your Own Lightroom Templates,” “5 Ways to Improve Your Restaurant Photography”) drove traffic from Pinterest and Google to an opt-in form.
- Enrollment: ConvertKit opt-in form captured email and triggered a 6-day automated email sequence.
- Lessons: Each day’s email contained a pre-recorded video lesson (hosted on YouTube and embedded on the companion website), a written prompt, and a link to the workbook.
- Community: Welcome email invited participants to the private Facebook group.
- Assessment: Day 6 included a Google Form survey assessing whether students felt they had achieved the two SLOs, with the data feeding back into course iteration.
Assessment & Iteration
The end-of-course Google Form was deliberately designed to evaluate the learning outcomes rather than just satisfaction. Questions surfaced whether students felt confident analyzing food photographs and self-reflecting on their own work, with open-text feedback feeding into subsequent revisions.
Key Outcomes & Impact
Project Deliverables
- 6-day automated email sequence (ConvertKit)
- 6 pre-recorded video lessons (YouTube)
- Companion website pages with embedded videos
- Downloadable workbook
- Private Facebook community
- Day 6 SLO assessment form
Related Skills
- Email Course Design
- Backwards Design
- Constructivist Pedagogy
- Community of Practice
- ConvertKit Automation
- Video Production
- Funnel-Integrated Learning Design