I know last month’s challenge was tough, particularly in the midst of a busy summer. But I definitely got a kick out of your results.

This month’s remake introduces it’s own difficulties, but there is a good chance many of you are already involved in the cooking aspect already. This month, our remake is about canning. Photos of veggies or fruits in vintage glass jars can be so beautiful… but managing the reflections so you can still see the contents of the jar takes some work.

photo by Becky Luigart-Stayner

Sometimes, as a food photographer, you have to make really ugly food look beautiful. There are many people who are true masters of this. I wouldn’t call myself one of them. But, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve. And the main one is distraction. The thing about ugly food is quite often, it actually is really delicious. Hummus is a big beige blob, but if you swirl it around, dress it with a little oil and finishing salt and put it in a nice bowl, maybe with a chip taking a little dive in, suddenly, it becomes the appealing dip that it actually is.

Last month’s photo remake was all about taking a dish of something that is probably not all the beautiful, and making it into something that looks like you may actually want to eat it. I had a recent photo shoot that included a recipe for a molded salmon pate. I was worried about the shot going in… it sounded like it might be fairly Fluffy Mackerel Puddingesque. My worries were justified… when I unmolded the pate, it wasn’t anything you’d want to take a photo of. (Of course, I did anyway) And then, I proceeded to style it to make it look like something you’d actually want to eat (because despite its looks, it was tasty).

before styling

When you buy a lot of props, you end up with a lot of tissue paper. I like to put mine to use rather that just recycling it. Sometimes, I use tissue to look like parchment paper or wrapping around treats. Sometimes it’s a background, or an interesting surface texture. But most commonly, I use to to modify light. Although my windows in my studio are usually covered with vellum, sometimes it’s still not enough to tone down the light and minimize hot spots. For small hot spots, I like to use glass bottles to diffuse and refract the light… but if there is an overall problem, a sheet of tissue paper can work wonders… even just sort of tucked in. Because it comes in different thicknesses, there’s almost always just the right piece.

That’s what I did today when I was working on the cover shot for a cocktail book I’ve been shooting this week. Thought you might enjoy some of the setup shots and one of the (unedited) outtakes. Not exactly high-tech!

I knew at some point for these remakes, I’d resort to this. Remaking the 1974 Weight Watcher’s recipe card photos. How can you not love something called Rosy Perfection Salad? or Frankfurter Spectacular? or Mackerelly?!? But of course, my all time favorite has got to be the Fluffy Mackerel Pudding. I mean, come on.. it’s fluffy, it’s pudding and it’s fish, mackerel no less (what is it with these cards and mackerel?)!
Anyway… yes, this month’s challenge is all about creating these masterpieces of the 70s. Pick whichever card you want, and remake it in the spirit of that card. You can go one of two ways with it this month: you can remake the photo so it looks like the original or you can remake the recipe in a more modern and, well, aesthetically pleasing way. Since you won’t have the original recipes, you will have to get a bit creative. I’m not exactly sure what is in Snappy Mackerel Casserole myself, but I bet I can have fun making it up.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of July.

Before I start to talk about the International Conference on Food Styling & Photography’s Monday “Master” workshop with Francine Zaslow & Deborah Jones, let me first put this thought in your head. What kind of a saint would you be to let 30 people with cameras in tow crowd around you and watch you work all day? And on top of that, be willing to talk through, step-by-step, what you are doing?

These two women (as well as their fantastic assistants and stylists) are some kind of angels for not only sharing their time and knowledge but doing it in such an elegant, patient and down right entertaining way. The folks that were able to attend this session were incredibly lucky to be hosted by such a wonderful team (and I’m pretty sure everyone felt that way).

Secondly, Francine & Deborah were throwing out so many ideas and tips and tricks during the day that it’s impossible to remember them all. This post will probably be more photos than anything because I had a camera clicking away in my hands “taking notes” rather than pen & paper. The ideas will probably come to me now and then over the next month or so, and I’ll post them as they come. Just realize that any tips listed here are really the tip of the iceberg and that next time, get yourself to the conference so you don’t miss them!

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Sorry about this folks, but part two of my wrap-up will be postponed a few days due to a hard drive failure. The good news is that everything is backed up. The bad news is that it is slowing everything down for me today.

Use this as a reminder to back up your hard drive if you haven’t in a while! After going about 20 years (yes, can you believe it?) without ever having a hard drive fail on me, all of a sudden I’ve had two blow out on me this year.

If you don’t have drive space to backup, consider using a service like Mozy which gives you unlimited backup for a fixed monthly or yearly rate. It’s up in the cloud, so it even provides greater protection in case the unthinkable happens and something bad happens to your house or office. It can take a while to get your first backup done, but from then on it keeps things in sync and is pretty quick.

Also, while you are at it, check out these other great wrap-ups!

I’m just back in town after the 2009 International Conference on Food Styling & Photography at Boston University, and my head is still so full, I’m not sure exactly how to begin to share a little of the weekend with you all.

Although turnout was a little lower than the previous conference in 2007, the speakers were fantastic. Photographers included Christopher Hirsheimer, Francine Zaslow, Deborah Jones, Steve Adams, Beatrice Peltre (yea Bea!), Lou Manna, Jim Scherer, Teri Campbell, Mette Nielsen, Pornchai Mittongtare, Greg Bertolini, Stef Culberson, and James Tse. Stylists included Clare Ferguson, Melissa Hamilton, Lisa Golden Schroeder, John Carafoli, Marcela Sorondo, Delores Custer,

Well, either people just don’t like pasta as much as Nutella, or last month’s challenge to remake Chris Chen’s table top shot was quite intimidating to many of you. That’s ok. It was a tricky challenge… I’m really impressed with the photos that were submitted. There were some lovely variations and some beautiful photos.

This month, we’ll go a bit more macro again, with one of my shots. This is a variation of a shot that I took for a client for a cookbook proposal. In some ways it may seem less intimidating because it’s a much tighter shot… you’ll have to work with ice cream which can be quite a trial of it’s own right.

Although she didn’t choose this particular variation, and it’s really far from a perfect shot, it was probably one of my favorite from the whole shoot and it would be a good fit for my stock library. I just loved playing around with the ice cream in the emptied out lemon peel, and letting it start to slowly drip down.

Don’t feel like you need to stick with the lemon peel for your remake, but there should be some combination of fruit & ice cream (and ideally, as in this shot, the fruit will communicate the flavor of the ice cream as well).

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules