First Night’s best ice sculpture was a food piece!
Jan 2
First Night is a New Year’s Eve celebration we have here in Boston. That night my wife and I took a walk around to look at all the festivities, and the ice sculptures that artists had built around downtown. My absolute favorite was this one on Tremont Street next to the Common:
Here’s a detail of the various things that were embedded into the blocks of ice:
Something different: my shoot for the Epiphany School
Oct 8
Earlier this summer I did a pro bono project for the Epiphany School, an independent Christian school for disadvantaged kids in Dorchester. They’re close to the studio, and we’ve been donating excess food from our shoots to them for some time. I spent four days with them and worked with Alicia Pritt of Theory One Design. Here’s the cover of their annual report, and a sample spread.
Getting back to on-the-go hand-held people photography, a genre where I began my career, was refreshing. More than this, I felt a huge amount of excitement and respect for what was going on in these classrooms. You could see these kids were learning how to be successful!
How many people does it take to …. ?
Sep 29
Earlier this week we did some exploratory shooting for our friends at Dunkin’ Donuts, trying out some new things for future campaigns. Art director Darren Bult took this amusing shot with his camera phone. Please excuse my grimace!
How I’m processing 9/11
Sep 10
Hi. Tomorrow will be a difficult anniversary for many of us. Everyone will have their own way to deal (or not deal) with their memories of that day, and as I thought about how I might want to spend my time, I decided it should be doing something concrete and life-affirming. So tomorrow I’m participating in a stationary-bike ride to raise money to help the poorest women, many of them widowed, in Afghanistan. I’m raising money for “Beyond the Bike” – a foundation started by two Boston women who lost their husbands on 9/11.
Here’s a short video about Beyond the Bike.
In a very short time my generous friends have helped me raise almost $1,400 for this cause, but I still have a bit to go to reach my goal of $2,000. If you feel moved, please take a look at my donation page and consider helping in this effort. Thank you.
Contact improv, meditation, and games in Maine
Aug 8
Last week I finished taking part in a week-long workshop with Sean Kernan up at the Maine Media Workshops. No, the class wasn’t about learning some new photoshop technique or lighting style. It was about finding new ways to access your internal creative juices. You might wonder what our activities had to do with photography… maybe nothing, on the face of it. But everything turned out to be relevant, and we spent most afternoons shooting. Here’s Sean in our “class.”
Cooling down at Angelato in Belmont
Jul 18
Last weekend we stopped in at Angelato and sampled their gelato flavors. Mmmm!
Fall’s coming: shooting in our apple orchard for Dunkin’
Jul 13
We’re doing a few days of shooting for Fall here in the studio. Can’t show you the finished shots yet, but with the help of our stylists Verne Cordova and George Simons, the shots are looking fantastic.
The apples and tree branches are real. And it’s amazing what you can do with fake grass when it’s out of focus!
Polygrip?
Mar 14
Finally, I’m back with the next post on the subject of food photography. I thought it’d be interesting to talk about what happens in the kitchen, some of the more unusual pieces of equipment, and odd things I’ve seen used by food stylists, including Poligrip. What’s in a food stylist’s kit? Here’s a look at one stylist’s set of tools:
And here is a different stylist, and how they get set up in the kitchen:
You can see that both of these people are very neat and organized! When you realize that unlike us photographers, the stylist is always working on location and likely to work in a different studio from one day to the next, it’s good to be ready to go with whatever you need.
Each stylist has their own way to do things, but there are a few tools we keep here in the studio for them which I like. First is this hand-held steamer. We cover the nozzle to reduce the steam flow and hold back any sputtering. It’s great for gently softening a slice of cheese on a burger, for example, because it gives a warm and moist heat, without blowing or scorching. You can get this from Amazon or places like Target, in the cleaning department. They tell me this is for cleaning bathtubs.
Here’s another gadget, this time from Williams Sonoma and similar suppliers. It’s a tiny chef’s torch, super useful for adding bits of browning to edges of things like toast, bacon, and tops of crème brûlée of course. This is a much different effect than the steam above.
So finally I’ll mention some of the odd things I’ve seen used. Can you guess what they’re used for? Polygrip, Corn Husker’s Lotion, Bag Balm, Armor All, Wildroot Cream Oil, Vaseline. Then there’s an amazing product called Zap-a-Gap (made by the Super Glue people). It can stick greasy or wet things together, and fill gaps at the same time. And finally, for now, there are stylist’s staples like Kitchen Bouquet and Karo Syrup.
For those of you who want the real encyclopedic “last word” Bible of food styling, you’ll want to take a look at Delores Custer’s book called Food Styling. She’s the master, and having this book is a must for those who are emerging food stylists, as well as for a lot of us photographers!