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

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!