St. Louis Mayor Francis G. Slay, photographed in a studio in downtown St. Louis for Feast Magazine.

I’m not going to lie, I was a bit nervous about this assignment, although not because it was to photograph the mayor. I am not a stranger to photographing influential public figures. I have photographed some heavy hitters over the years, including the mayor of another major city: in 2008 I made a portrait of Rudy Giuliani while a staff photographer in New York City. He was running for president at the time and it was quite an experience to be sure. But that was in a hotel conference room, not in my home studio!

In the end, when the Mayor Slay arrived my professional experience kicked in and I managed not to make a fool of myself (I think). In truth it was just like any other shoot, and once I got started I was able to concentrate on getting the shots that I needed for the assignment. Like most public figures, the mayor was used to having his photograph taken, and was a confident and cooperative subject.

This was a great project to work on. I’m a big fan of the mayor, particularly his influence in the ongoing revitalization of downtown St. Louis. And interestingly, this project also tied in with my current focus on food and food culture because my photographs of Mayor Slay were used in Feast magazine as part of a feature called Tastemakers: Entrepreneurs Who Shape the Way You Eat. Great stuff!

Shortly after I first starting shooting professionally, I was invited to attend a critique session with a small group of fellow photographers in New York City. A friend of mine hosted the gathering his apartment – it was a casual affair with some beers and whiskey and laughter. I was feeling very cool to be hanging out with photographers – I’d only been shooting for money for a year or so and was feeling quite proud to consider myself a peer to all of these cool people. Photographers are inherently cool, right? Right?

These cool photographers were all either photo-journalists, art photographers or both. We viewed slide-shows of each of our work – the photographic styles ranged the gamut from truly artsy-fartsy photography and hard-hitting journalism on one end of the scale to my more commercial work on the other.

At one point one of the most successful photojournalists at the event declared that she never crops an image and that a true photographer captures an image in the frame or not at all. “Anyone who crops their photographs is a hack”, she said, “because they don’t really see what they are photographing.”

I remember getting very quiet at that point. Clearly I could not admit that I was cropping nearly 100% of all of my images. I was spending a lot of time on post-production in fact, cropping and tweaking my images until they were perfect. The idea of delivering a no-cropped photograph to a client seemed … well … crazy. Holy crap. What if all these cool people found out I cropped? Would they think I was a hack? Never mind that even to this day, the question of whether I’m a hack or not is an almost daily consideration. I now know that comes with the territory of being a photographer. But did I need to be so hard on myself? For the almighty sin of cropping?

Back then I relied on all of the advice I could get (and still do) from other photographers and hearing a statement like that from a fellow photographer threw me through a loop. It is always tough to be told that you’re doing something wrong, particularly by someone who you have just met and want to impress. The thing is, I wasn’t even sure if it was wrong, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I was too inexperienced to question the seasoned photographer’s opinion. I left that critique feeling like dirt, because despite my ability to produce good images, in my mind they were somehow tainted by my use post-production.

These days I have become a lot more philosophical about the whole issue: the bottom line is that if I need to crop an image to sell it to an editor or client … I’m gonna crop that image. This is the essence of being a commercial photographer: deliver the image that the client has paid you to make, on-time and on-budget. End of story.

When I started thinking about cropping recently, I realized something interesting about my work. Without any real conscious thought about it, I almost never crop. When I do it is usually small tweaks to straighten out an the skyline in a portrait or to clip out an unsightly crumb or piece of flatware that has sneaked into the corner of a food shot. Don’t get me wrong though, I reason I don’t crop isn’t one of artistic purity of thought or some other such nonsense. The simple fact is that over time I have become better at seeing the shot that I want to make without having to go back and crop it later.

The ironic thing is that I think that I got to this point BECAUSE of all of the cropping that I did as a beginner. I taught myself how to see a better image by playing around with the photographs I made, and as time went on, I was able to get closer and closer to framing the image correctly in-camera. I would also go so far as to say that when I do find myself spending a lot of time cropping an image or a series of images it is because I wasn’t as successful capturing the subject as I would have liked to be, and am just trying to make a the proverbial silk purse out of a sow’s ear. When this happens I need to be aware of it and need to spend some time figuring out how to do better the next time around.

If you feel an image needs to be cropped, go ahead and crop it. There is no shame in trying to publish the best image possible. You will not get kicked out of the photography club for cropping (anyone who tells you that you are doing something “wrong” with photography is not thinking clearly). I personally find that if I can make the image I want to make in-camera it means less time at my computer working on post-production and more time behind the lens.

Just remember that if you are cropping every single image you’re shooting, then perhaps you are using it as a bit of a crutch to get through. Spend some time studying the images you’ve cropped and see if you can figure out how you might make the same photo without cropping the next time. At the very least it will save you some time in post.

The bottom line, however, is that the only thing that matters is that final image, and it doesn’t really matter how you get there.

Photograph by Corey Woodruff

Corey is a talented photographer with a completely different style than my own. In addition to food and music photography, Corey also shoots interesting portraits. His work features strong, rich colors and a quirky sensibility which lends itself to editorial portraiture. He has photographed a number of other photographers for his project and I was flattered to be a part of it.

Corey wanted to rif on the fact that I split my professional work between food photography and corporate photography and had me dress in a suit and tie and the we experimented with several food-related scenarios. Also I think he wanted to see how long he could get me to hold an apple in my mouth.

Photograph by Corey Woodruff

Corey also played off of the concept behind my food blog Shoot to Cook. I started the food blog last year as a way to teach myself how to be a better cook, so Corey took the concept of the bachelor learning how to cook and ran with it. Miller High Life really is the champagne of beers you know.

Photographs by Corey Woodruff

Check out more of Corey’s work at coreywoodruff.com.

I was at my favorite bookstore, Left Bank Books today and much to my surprise I found that the latest issue of COLOR Magazine was already on the shelves (as of this writing they have not updated their website to the current issue). I have been eagerly awaiting the publication of their most recent special issue because I was lucky enough to be chosen for a Bronze award which is featured in this issue! The image that was chosen for the award was from a personal project called Vegetation that I have been working on over the years.

While corporate and commercial photography is the mainstay of my business, I do a lot of personal work on the side (including my food blog Shoot To Cook). While the work that I do on my own is very different from my commercial work, I find that doing personal projects really helps to add depth to the commercial work. Spending time focusing on color and abstraction is a great creative outlet for me as well.

I have always had a fascination with the color and beauty which can be found in vegetation, specifically in the every day flora that we come across every day. One of the plants that I find to be absolutely gorgeous is the every day cabbage. Not only do I like to eat cabbage but the layered leaves and variety of colors are simply amazing. The image that was chosen by COLOR was one of the first cabbage shots I made in my father’s garden in Pennsylvania. It was late in the season and this particular cabbage was one that was left in the garden past the frost.

Below is the image that was awarded the Bronze Award by COLOR Magazine as well as a slideshow of the entire Vegetation Series (which is still a work in progress). In addition to my photograph there is some really amazing work in the issue so I would urge you to stop by your local bookstore and pick up a copy.

COLOR Magazine Bronze Award: Cabbage #2

Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 2008. Photograph by Jonathan Gayman

Uh oh. Just came across PocketBooth, a new app for my iPhone. I love photobooths – the old fashioned coin operated ones not the fancy schmancy ones that print clever sayings on your photos. Nothing is more spontaneous and fun. Now I can do it on my iPhone. Oh the humanity. Now I won’t get anything done all day.

You can get your own copy of PocketBooth at the iTunes store.

In the meantime, here is a shot from the nearly lost corrupt flash card of Minneapolis in the morning…kinda has a sci-fi feel, no?

So on Saturday, rather than sculpt the ambient light into a nice, easy photo, I turned my camera into the sun in the cornfield and started to play with a wide aperture where there is a lot of light, and a lot of contrast. The result was a series of rather ethereal images, verging on abstraction which I’m really liking. Here are three of my favorites from the shoot.

I’m hoping to build on this concept and style, although I’m not entirely sure about where to go next. And of course with the heat that we’ve been experiencing in the last few weeks I don’t want to be outside at all.