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The Art of Making Coffee
Let me get straight to the point: my name is Jonathan and I am addicted to coffee. Like a lot of people I start each day with a giant mug of the stuff. Thanks to a great travel mug that my dad got me last year, my coffee stays nice and warm all morning. I [...]
St. Louis Tastemakers
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 [...]
Food Gift Ideas for Self Promotion
2011 was a really spectacular year for me as a photographer. It was my first full year working as freelance photographer in St. Louis, and with the purchase of a downtown loft over the summer it was the first year time in my career that I have had dedicated studio space. In addition, I was [...]
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 [...]
To Crop or Not to Crop
Cropping in photography is an important tool that can be used to change the meaning of a photograph, by drawing the viewer’s attention to a different part of the image than in the un-cropped version. Digital photography has made cropping easy as pie. Heck, these days, you can even crop your photos on your cell [...]
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 [...]
The Other Side of the Camera
As a professional photog, it is a rare occasion when you are the subject rather than the photographer, and it can be a bit disconcerting to be on the other side of the camera. Last week, my friend and fellow photographer Corey Woodruff lugged his gear over to my studio to photograph me as part [...]
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 [...]
Dvin for Sauce Magazine
I recently had the pleasure of photographing Dvin restaurant in Webster Groves, St. Louis. Dvin is a tiny family restaurant run by the mother/daughter team: mom cooks and daughter serves. The interior really feels like you’re having dinner in a Ukranian grandmother’s living room filled with Eastern European tsotchkes and knick-knacks. The exterior windows are [...]
Website Refresh and PhotoShelter Integration
I usually try to update my website every year or so to adapt for the way that my career and life has evolved. Last year when I updated jonathangayman.com I was more focused on marketing towards my corporate clients, but in the past year my work has started to slide more towards the food and [...]
Sauce Magazine – July 2011
As I mentioned in my previous post, I did some work for Sauce Magazine, a culinary magazine here in St. Louis. While the majority of my work these days is corporate, I have been exploring food culture and photography over at my blog Shoot To Cook, and it is always exciting to get food assignments. [...]
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 [...]
Fourth of July
Celebrating our second Independence Day in St. Louis was even more fun than last year’s. This year we threw a little barbecue in our new (and still mostly empty) loft studio then walked down to the Arch to watch the fireworks. Last year we stayed outside the crowd and watched from the north side of [...]
I Won’t … I Won’t … I Won’t … Love.
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iPhone Weekend
I’ve been utilizing my iPhone more and more these days for my “always with me camera”. Here are some of the images I shot over the weekend running around town with a borrowed poodle and some house-guests. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it [...]
Going Farther
There is nothing more satisfying than making a photograph that you are really excited about. When I make a shot that really inspires me, I usually make a hardcopy print, and keep going back to it over and over again to relive the excitement. Sometimes I even put the hardcopy on my bed side table [...]