On Assignment
Food Photography Tips: Using Salt and Pepper Shakers as Stand-Ins
If you’re shooting food for a commercial client, before you get to the actual shot you have plenty of time to prepare. You start by building your set and lighting scheme, you get your camera set, and then, using a stand-in dish, you tweak every detail until everything is exactly the way you (and the [...]
Hot Pots!
Once upon a time, I went a birthday dinner of a friend at Grand Sichuan in New York City. There were about ten people in attendance and the meal consisted of a giant pot of simmering broth over a table side propane burner into which we dipped all manner of delicacies both familiar (raw vegetables, [...]
Wes Johnson for Feast Magazine
Last month right before the print deadline, I squeezed in a quick shoot with Chef Wes Johnson for Feast Magazine. I met Wes at his downtown loft for an impromptu portrait session right before he was scheduled to head off on a “barbecue road trip.” I kinda wish I would have had the opportunity to [...]
Bacon, Lettuce and More Bacon
You know, the best things in life come with bacon. Pretty much everyone will tell you that adding bacon to something will make it that much better. Have you ever had a BLT? Well, de.lish Cheesecake Bakery and Cafe has taken that sandwich up a notch by removing the tomato and replacing it with … [...]
St. Louis Taste Makers
I have a fascination with the food culture, which is one of the reasons I jumped at the chance to photograph some of the influential people in the St. Louis food scene for a feature in Feast Magazine. As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the people that I photographed for this project [...]
St. Louis Magazine’s 50 Best Dishes
There is a lot of really excellent food in St. Louis, but with my work schedule I don’t get to eat out as much as I would like. The great thing about being a food photographer though is that you get exposed to all sorts of great food that you might not otherwise simply by [...]
On Assignment: Catherine Neville, Publisher of Feast Magazine
If you’ve been following my blog for the last few months, you will have noticed that I’ve been doing a lot of work for Feast magazine here in St. Louis. Feast is one of two excellent food publications that I work with. As a photographer interested in food and food culture, I am lucky to [...]
Strip Mall Cuisine: Korea House in Creve Coeur
I always seem to start my blog posts these days with some sort of comparison of my old life in New York City versus my current life in St. Louis. The reason this happens, I suppose, is that things really are different in a my two cities and I’m constantly amazed as I discover new [...]
On Assignment: Mayor Francis G. Slay
When people ask me what I like about St. Louis, almost always the first thing that I mention is the awesome loft that Dr. Fiance and I were able to buy here. In New York, we had approximately 450 square feet in the East Village (which was the largest apartment that we’d ever had in [...]
Comfort Food at Dressel’s Public House
Even though it hasn’t been super cold in St. Louis so far this winter, there have been a few chilly days. If you’re looking for some comfort food, take a trip to the Central West End to Dressel’s Public House. It’s a cozy pub (with a fireplace) that has some delicious cold weather food. In [...]
Blood & Sand
Last month I was given an assignment to photograph Blood & Sand for Feast Magazine. Unlike other speakeasy-style bars in St. Louis, you don’t enter this one through a back door in an alley by the dumpsters. Tucked away on a side street off of Washington Avenue in downtown St. Louis is a small set [...]
Salsiccia Pizza with Egg at Mad Tomato in St. Louis
A few days before the Cardinals won the World Series, I was on assignment in Clayton at Mad Tomato photographing (among other things) their fabulous Salsiccia pizza for Sauce magazine. I am a huge pizza fan and have been making it at home for quite some time now. My version of a salsiccia pizza is [...]
Home Wine Kitchen
Last month I photographed Home Wine Kitchen in Maplewood for Sauce Magazine. Nestled in a strip of retail stores and restaurants Home Wine Kitchen has a rustic design (with some beautiful photography on the walls) and some amazing food. Chef Cassandra Vires (who was super cool to work with) changes her menu frequently with a [...]
Feast Magazine Donuts and Coffee Shoot
Back in August I was assigned a coffee and donuts shoot by Feast Magazine. The brief was fairly straight forward: five local donut shots, five local coffee companies, five shots of coffee and donuts. This project turned out to be incredibly fun, both from the standpoint of dreaming up five different breakfast scenes for the [...]
Feast Magazine and The Beauty of the Spork
Over the last few months I have continued to extend my editorial client list which now includes Feast Magazine, another excellent culinary publication here in St. Louis. My first project for Feast was for an article on Porters Fried Chicken for the September issue that hit the newstands a few days ago. Have you had [...]
On Assignment: The Block in Webster Groves
I have been in St. Louis for just over a year now (where did the time go??) and while my navigational skills are getting better, I still have a lot to learn about the various neighborhoods in the area. I have enough trouble getting around these neighborhoods, let alone familiarizing myself with all of the [...]
New Work: The Boat House
In the world of corporate photography, the summer is always the slowest time of the year. In my experience Memorial Day sparks the time of the year when companies face the challenge of dealing with vacations. I think that in a lot of cases, one or more decision makers for any given project are out [...]
Returning to Normality
Airport, by Jonathan Gayman. As you can probably tell from my previous posts and also from the silence around the blog that I’ve been hella-busy for the last month. A number of large projects all hit at roughly the same time and I have been on the road more than I’ve been home. I have [...]
Conservatory Water in Central Park
A friend of mine worked on the project to rehabilitate the Conservatory Water in Central Park and has been wanting some photographs for his portfolio, specifically of the marble that is installed around the perimeter of the water. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to shoot the space, but I felt that to make really [...]
On Being Prepared
There is no such thing as being prepared enough. As evidenced by shoot yesterday, nothing I did in advance could help me when the assignment went off the reservation. On one shoot, no amount of prep prepared me for the fact that the subject showed up with her own backdrop and props. I had not [...]
Fist Model Test
One of my shoots last week was for the current and previous three chairmen of the client company. It was a tough shoot, due to the fact that I was working alone as I frequent am, and the fact that these were very busy and important guys. I was able to get into the space [...]
Minneapolis
It’s been a busy week, and today was the first day back in the office. My last assignment before the long weekend was in Minneapolis, and after some trials and a frightening run in with a corrupt flash card, I’m back. Overall I feel pretty good about the shoots thus far and now I’m getting [...]
Chicago
I am in Chicago for a shoot, then off to Minneapolis this afternoon for another shoot. It’s hectic and I’m tired of traveling alone – the excitement of traveling for photography has worn off. I miss Dr. Girlfriend and I’m ready to come home. The work itself is still exciting. I even got up early [...]
Corporate Event Photography
One of the aspects of my job is to shoot events. It’s one of the things that I am least good at, and although when I look at my work over the years it’s clear that I’m improving, at the end I feel unsatisfied. I am never 100% happy with the work I produce at [...]