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

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

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.