Reportage Food Photography – Relish Restaurant

Recently I was in Breckenridge, Colorado and spent a few hours with Matt Fackler owner and chef at Relish Restaurant. He and his crew do a really nice job of utilizing local sources to build a menu with everything from fresh greens to buffalo.

It’s always nice being in and around the hustle and bustle of unique restaurant such as Relish. It’s also nice when they insist on feeding me. Gotta love it!

Here are a few images from my time there.

See more Relish images and other reportage here: Reportage / Editorial Food Photography

- Kyle

Cupcakes Gallore

Earlier this month the studio was all about cupcakes from Gigi’s. The smell in the studio has been sa-weet!

After spending a couple of days processing the images, I’m quite pleased with the results. It’s so nice when a shoot goes well. Additionally, having great equipment, super nice client and reasonable schedule makes the food photography formula work, too.

I’ve been shooting with the PhaseOne P40+ digital back and it makes for such nice pixels. Almost 40 megapixels to be exact, almost. In case you don’t know, it’s a medium format camera setup. I’m using the PhaseOne back on a 555 ELD Hasselblad camera body. My lens of choice is usually a 120mm macro.

I thought it be fun to show you a couple details from one of the 31 cupcakes we shot.

This is the full image (scaled down for web resolution) of Gigi’s Chocolate Sundae Cupcake. Processed, color balanced and a little retouching.

This is just a cropped detail of the full image. Doesn’t this look yummy! It might look like ice cream but it’s frosting. Yummy frosting … so I hear.

This is a 1 to 1 detail to show exactly how clean the pixels are at capture.

Confession: While I didn’t eat any food ‘off’ the set (you know my rule), I did find the opportunity to taste a few of the cupcakes that didn’t make it to set. You gotta hate it when one falls over and wrecks it’s appearance and just has to be eaten. Such is the life of a food photographer.

- Kyle

Food Photography – “A Day Of” Video

Back in February we had an editorial shoot and decided to have a little fun capturing it on film.

So, now you can see what an eight hour day here in the studio looks like … condensed down to two minutes.

Special thanks, as always, to our fantastic team …

Rory White ~ first assistant, pancakeologist

Teresa Blackburn ~ food stylist, miracle maker

Nancy Vienneau ~ recipe developer, sunshine

Matt Huesmann ~ video producer, story teller

And me, Kyle Dreier ~ food photographer, mad scientist

This was fun and I’m getting giddy about our next video.

- Kyle

The Making of a Cupcake Photoshoot

I spent two days with Darlene and Gina for Gigi’s Cupcakes. We shot 31 different flavors. What a great team to work with. The cool thing about this food shoot compared to others is that the product was very nice to start with. The folks at Gigi’s did a great job designing these cupcakes. They are beautiful.

When it comes to styling what is a great looking food product to begin with there are certain challenges to arise. The camera sees everything. I mean everything. That’s the advantage (and sometimes disadvantage) of shooting with a 40 megapixel PhaseOne digital back. Shooting at super high resolution provides fantastic image quality and huge files but it also shows any slight oddity that might present itself in the food. One example were some teeny tiny sugar crystal garnishes that hitched a ride on an unsuspecting cupcake during transport.

So, the food styling wasn’t anything too terribly crazy on this shoot, just different than keeping a burger patty looking fresh or making sure pasta didn’t dry out. There’s nothing better than having a beautiful subject, and I can tell you, these cupcakes were outstanding creations … and very cooperative as well.

After we completed the photography I had a little fun dissecting a number of the cupcakes and … well, uh … we had a cupcake ping pong party here at the studio. Thanks to John, Michael, Elvis, Cory and Burk for coming by to share in the left overs from the shoot. The only thing missing was a nice tall cold glass of milk.

-Kyle

Shopping for Props

Since I was a kid I’ve enjoyed rummaging for interesting antiques, neat junk and found objects. In fact, I can remember being down on McKinney Avenue in Dallas in the 70’s with my mom as we went through old houses chock full of miscellaneous things from the past. Back then my fascination was with old felt hats and vintage wood snow skis. These days I sometimes find myself dumpster diving looking for worn boards filled with texture.

A couple weekends ago Amy and I headed out to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds to peruse objects of desire (textures, old kitchen utensils, boxes, etc) at the Flea Market to use in my food photography. Naturally I enjoy doing this with Amy. She’s got a great eye for “stuff” … her art direction background comes in handy when I need an unbiased opinion about how something might look in a photograph.

So, last Friday (because Friday’s are free parking) we made our way to see what vendors the warmer weather would attract and what their wares would be. I landed a cool old whisk, a few neat galvanized boxes and an industrial cart to use as a coffee table in the studio.

At this point, I think I’ll wait a few months before I go again … while parking is free on Friday’s, I have a difficult time restraining my buying urges for things that are visually stimulating.

-Kyle

P.S. The flea market has other random things like socks, shampoo, work gloves. I actually bought some work gloves and pony clamps this trip, too.

Jane, stop this crazy thing!

I suppose there are days on set with me  that might feel a little like an episode of the Jetson’s – crazy contraptions, space-age technology … and me getting a little out of control (in a fun way).

I say all this because looking at this production shot from a recent food shoot looks a bit out of control. Looking at how I lit this vintage hand mixer makes me wonder “Really? Did I really use all these reflectors and flags to get this shot?”

It was worth it – I’m very happy with the final images. Everything cooperated … the mixer suspended precariously in mid-air, the lighting bouncing from every which angle and the hero chocolate holding on for dear life.

This one will be going into the portfolio.

- Kyle