Ok. So September kind of got away from me, photo remake wise. There are some beautiful canning jar shots in the pool that are still awaiting my comments. Despite the current lack of feedback, I hope you all learned a little about shooting transparent but reflective materials. Rather than letting October pass me by as well, I thought I’d jump right on it with the new challenge: Pie.

Pie is one of those things that seems simple, but turns out can be quite a styling and shooting nightmare. A slice standing on it’s own often requires a lot of reconstruction, or you end up with a gappy and sometimes flat mess. Not that that can’t be beautiful too. But that upstanding slice of pie that will soon be gracing magazine covers takes propping, stuffing and all sorts of fiddling.

Similarly, a whole pie, while easy to style and photograph, doesn’t give much of a hint as to what is going on inside. You have to dive in to really tempt the viewer. Take a slice out, and now you start to have something. Of course, then, you also have to start rebuilding the edges.

So, for this month’s remake, let’s see what you can do with a double-crusted fruit pie, shot top-down with a slice taken out. My pie was plum, which gave a lovely red hue, but you can use whatever fruit you’d like for your pie. But, do try to actually remake the

I’m just back home after a weekend spent in San Francisco attending and speaking at BlogHer Food 09. What a wonderful trip! I was so honored to be asked to speak along with so many of my food photography/blogging heros… Heidi Swanson, Matt Armendariz and Todd & Diane, as well as putting faces to names of so many bloggers that I love (too many to name here!)

Matt & I finished up the visual track with a talk on Advanced Photography, which was more about workflow and some thoughts on taking your photos to the next level than f-stops and ISOs. I had an absolute blast!

If you missed the talk, or wanted to revist the slides, I’ve posted them here. The PDF file is a little on the large size, so be prepared for a bit of a slow download.

If you have other questions, as always, feel free to send them my way.

Thanks again to the folks at BlogHer for inviting me to speak!

PS - If you missed BlogHerFood, why not head to Ixtapa in January for the Food Blogger Camp? I’m thinking about heading down myself!

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

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.

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

Sun, Surf & Food Style II: This three-day hands-on workshop will be held in San Diego, California on February 20-22, 2009.

After the first day of group instruction, the stylists and photographers will work in pairs with the food stylists under the guidance of Lisa Golden Schroeder and the photographers with Gregory Bertolini. Each stylist/photographer team will produce a number of images using Gregory Bertolini’s professional equipment (Hasselblad Medium Format and Linhof and Sinar Large Format View Cameras) as well as your own photography equipment. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to consult with Gregory one-on-one. Stylists will work closely with Lisa to style a number of dishes. Everyone will walk away with several images for their portfolios.

On day two, students will receive hands-on experience in creating editorial images (e.g. produce a cover shot for a food magazine), and day three will focus on creating advertising images (e.g produce a packaging image for a frozen pizza box).

For more information, see the Photo Styling Workshop website.

If you can’t make it to San Diego, check out Everyday Food Styling, an online 4-week fully interactive course taught by Lisa Golden Schroeder starting January 27th.

Originally, I had planned to make this month’s challenge all about meat. Meat is a challenging subject. Uncooked, it’s colorful, but can be off-putting. Cooked, it is critical to bring out the texture to avoid a big brown or grey looking blob. And, then you get to slicing… just thinking about having to neatly slice a turkey breast makes me shudder a bit.
Then, I watched this fantastic talk by Mark Bittman about the problems of how we eat. Which largely boil down to too much meat. It’s bad for our health, it’s bad for the environment. It’s not that everyone needs to run out and become a vegetarian… it’s just that we need to think about the impact of our choices on ourselves and our planet. And, with that, I knew I wasn’t going to feel good about making this month’s challenge all about meat.

The good news is that in general, proteins have similar issues. A big block of tofu is hardly mouth-watering without some work. Fish can be just as challenging to make appealing.

So, this month’s challenge will be about complete proteins. Note the word complete there… you can do beans, but they need to have some grains with them! I’m also going to be a stickler about the protein being the subject. If you have a bowl of goopy curry that makes it impossible to tell a carrot from a chunk of lamb, it doesn’t count.

Quickly now before time runs out by the end of day, today… have you checked out the great food photography and styling offerings this year on Menu for Hope 5? All money donated goes to help fight world hunger, and you may be one of the lucky ones that grab the Master Food Styling Class with two of my favorite ladies, Denise & Cindie! Or, how about a pair of Lowel Ego lights from Sam of Becks & Posh. Head over to Matt’s to find the west coast offerings with both of these prizes, or to Pim’s to see a complete list of prizes.

Also, here’s another cool opportunity… head over to White on Rice and enter the drawing for a free online Food Photography class by Ron Goldman and Kathleen Clemons.