Hello! My name is Maelynn Le, and I am a food photographer, writer, and hopeful future travel food blogger on Instagram. I was raised in Fremont but now I live in San Francisco, CA. I have been doing photography for 2 years and I turned a hobby that I liked doing into an actual profession I see myself doing along with social media marketing.
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I started my food page on Instagram because I am a foodie and this was just something I wanted to do for fun just because. I started doing food photography on my phone and have been posting food photos ever since. Since my photos became more attractive to people, restaurants and businesses started to reach out to me stating they would like to collaborate with me. When I started to get more offers, I wanted to take my photos to the next level. On July of 2019, I invested and bought myself a camera, and ever since I did that, my photo quality was so different in a good way. I partner up with restaurants that are mainly mom and pop shops and I've worked with fine dining restaurants and Michelin Star restaurants as well. I have also been invited to cover for press like the 626 Night Market, Foodieland, and the SF Coffee Festival. I have also done media events like grand openings and hotel coverage as well.
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My goal as a food photographer and writer is to impress restaurants and businesses with my photo skills and my honest reviews. I believe each photo I take is my best and I believe with my attractive photos, people would want to come to check out these places I photograph and write about. You eat with your eyes first so first impressions are always important to customers. My future goal is to travel to different states and countries to learn, blog, photograph, and taste different cuisines around the United States and country. I really want to do more hotel collaborations and collaborate with more food businesses out of state. So far, I worked with hotels in California and Texas so far but am going to Oregon and Colorado to collaborate with hotels as well. I've worked with restaurants and businesses in Seattle, WA, Los Angeles and San Diego, CA, Chicago, IL, and Dallas, TX. and I hope to continue to travel to expand my business.
What is a Flexitarian and why am I one?
A flexitarian is someone mainly on a vegetarian diet but incorporates meat in meals at times. It is up to you to decide how often you want to eat meat but not everyday. A flexitarian diet is a style of dieting and eating that encourages people to eat more plant based foods while allowing some days to eat meat instead of every day. That is what my account is.
When I was younger, I remembered eating meat every single day. My parents and doctors have always told me eating meat is good for you because it gives you protein. When I was in college taking a philosophy class, one of the topics we talked about was having morals and killing animals for food. According to Faunalytics (a website that empowers animal advocacy) they have conducted research that worldwide, more than 70 billion land animals are killed every year for food according to my professor. The statistics were based on the United Nations data and showed how many of each animal get killed per year because we need to eat them. After hearing those statics, I was really shocked to hear and to hear how people butcher these animals and make them food so we can eat them is brutal. I felt killing a lot of these animals including sea creatures are wrong because we are essentially eating a dead animal that was innocent. It made me feel disappointed because I do really love animals and I want to see them survive. Soon, they have the potential of becoming extinct and I think animals are beautiful in life.
On January of 2021, I made a resolution to myself is to reduce the amount of meat I eat to save these animals and eat more plant based foods. I still eat meat because it's very hard for me as a person who grew up eating meat to stop eating it completely. This flexitarian diet has given me the flexibility to choose to eat meat whenever I want. Now, I
only eat meat once or every other week to save more animals; plus it's healthier to eat plant based foods versus meat all the time. That is why I am the flexitarian aholic because my page is mainly plant based foods with meat in some of my photos. Please respect my decision and my life choices I made for myself and I encourage pretty much everyone to be on this diet. Not everyone wants to be flexitarian nor vegan so I think a flexitarian diet is great if you want to start eating plant based foods reguarly while still eat meat at times.