Burning Marshmallow Peeps

Nothing says springtime like the smell of flowers … er, uh … burning marshmallow Peeps.

I couldn’t resist when Harry Frankenfeld offered up the notion after my recent adventure in burning regular ol’ plain boring marshmallows. (See my March 8th post.)

Well, you see, what you don’t likely know is that Harry and I worked together for almost 10 years, and during that time there sat a small package of Peeps Brand marshmallow chicks on his desk, untouched and unchanged the entire time.

So, in honor of the abnormally long shelf life of the marshmallow Peep, I present to you my photo experiment … burning a marshmallow Peep.

There you have it. All my curiosity is satisfied … at least about what a burning Peep looks like.

What next? Any ideas? Harry?

- Kyle

Food Styling – Visual Fodder

I’m so drawn to the kitchen whether it be at home helping my wife get dinner ready for the boys or when I’m on set and my food stylist is prepping for the next shot.

What draws me to the kitchen? I think it’s a little like a mad scientist being drawn to his own laboratory. There’s a thing happening with all the senses … visual, smell, touch … and there’s also an element of “ooo, what are we going to build today?” Enter mad scientist laugh … “muu-ha-ha.”

For fun, I grabbed my DSLR and snapped a few photos of some interesting color and shape as it was happening in preparation for the real shot on set involving kitchen products/utensils. This is what I was seeing as it happened in the kitchen.

It’s fun to just capture what is happening naturally compared to spending one to two hours on a single dish. (Honestly, I enjoy the tedium of highly controlled shots as well as the spontaneity of these “as they happen” shots.)

So, here are a couple fast un-styled food related shots from our studio kitchen.

There you have it. Now you see what I saw.

- Kyle

New Series – To Be Continued

I’ve started a new series of images based on a concept that came to me the later part of last year (Fall 2009). What’s exciting to me is as I’m now only three images into the series, the legs on the concept continue grow … I’ve got thumbnails for about a couple of dozen photographs of the concept or variations there of.

Photographing this concept is definitely going to be much of my focus (no pun intended) for my personal work this year and likely leading into next year. I get excited by the main idea, the individual photos and their execution … in fact, I’m guilty of doing the victory dance when an image comes together just as I’ve envisioned. (side note: the victory dance is only seen on set and shall not be performed for the simple pleasure of observers.)

One thing I truly enjoy is ‘getting it right’ in camera. So often photographers (I’m guilty) will brush off some aspect of the shoot to fix later in Photoshop. Sure, maybe it can be fixed later by why not fix it now? Why not spend two or three minutes to get the lighting just right instead of ten or more minutes in front of a computer to ‘get it right’ after the fact? (I’ll save my rant on this topic for a later post.)

So, because I can’t yet reveal the details of my project, I thought I’d tease you with some behind the scenes shots. Pardon the quality of these images, they are hand-held, 1600 ISO with my DSLR and literally no consideration for production value or public consumption outside of this blog entry.

There. Is that enough disclaimer?

Sorry, I had to blur out some incriminating evidence. The food’s anonymity is vital to this project. Not really, I just like keeping things under wraps until I’m ready to reveal the series. What I can tell you about this particular shoot was it involved sushi and sake. There, I’ve probably already told you too much.

- Kyle

ps. We have added two of the images from this series in my physical book (AKA food portfolio), so if you really want to see you can. Call Mollie.

Burning Marshmallow

I don’t know any guy who doesn’t enjoy setting things on fire. I’m no exception. I love watching things burn. Mix this with my affinity for food, photography and well … things that are sugary … and this is what you get.

Additionally, while there may be a debate about the optimal roasting of a marshmallow, I prefer my burnt.

What I enjoyed finding in the stills was the puffs of smoke that burst out like little smoke rings. Air, sugar and fire. What a fun combination with very interesting results.

This video is a series of stills from my experiment. Each marshmallow burn was about 15-30 seconds. I was grabbing an image/frame about every second.

So, next time you’re at a campfire roasting marshmallows, think of all the little things happening that we usually don’t see with the naked eye.

Hmmm … what to burn next? Any suggestions?

-Kyle

Nashville Arts ~ Valentine Food

The February issue of Nashville Arts Magazine just hit the stands this week. The creative team lead by Paul Polucarpou and Katie Sulkowski make for a fun group to work with.

This particular feature was driven by poetry from Alimentum: The Literature of Food and written by Paulette Licitra.

On the photography side of things our A-team lineup in the studio was fabulous food stylist Teresa Blackburn, innovative recipe developer Nancy Vienneau, and trusted first-assistant Rory White.

There’s probably a lot that could be said for chocolate truffles, berry cobbler, lemon cake, kiwi tart, chocolate banana parfait and tiramisu, but I’d prefer to let the images do the talking.

Berry Cobbler

Tiramisu

Tiramisu (outtake)

Chocolate Banana Parfait (outtake)

Chocolate Truffls

Chocolate Banana Parfait (outtake)

Lemon Cake with Lemon Liquor

Kiwi Tart

This was a fun assignment. Thanks to everyone involved.

- Kyle
“Yum … that was good!”

Food from across the pond

Following are images from an editorial gig for Home Life magazine which is a title produced by Life Way in Nashville. A fun project. Always a pleasure to work with my assistant Rory and food stylist Teresa. And, the art director was great to work with. Thanks Susan for an all around a fun assignment.

Feature Opener - British Food

Chicken Pasties

Bangers and Mash

Potato Wedges

Pudding Cake

There you have it … or as they’d say in the UK … “Bob’s your uncle!”

-Kyle