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

Mega Megapixels

In a world of “more is better” I often find myself fighting for the “less is more” concept. (see Mr. Critical’s prior post) But today, I’m here to tell you, that more megapixels IS better … at least when you couple that with a medium format Phase One digital back, a Hasselblad camera and a superior lens.

First, let me say that not all megapixels are created equal. I’ll go into detail in a subsequent post. The main point is that a bigger sensor size makes for happier megapixels.

So, wanna see what comes from a 31.6 megapixel digital back?

Here’s the final image which is cropped close to full frame.

Here are a few images taken from the image at actual (1:1) size.

Can you see what I mean?

Stay tuned for more happy thoughts and opinions about megapixels.

-Kyle

Whisky Business

I couldn’t resist the pun. Forgive me.

Sometimes objects themselves serve as inspiration for me. I’m a sucker for anything old … for the most part … old cheese isn’t top of my list. Anyway, I found this old whisk on a recent outing were I end the day with a car load of photo props I use in my food photography.

So, here is what was in my head the day I purchased said whisk.

Until next time …
- Kyle

Wine Pour – Photography Style

In the commercial photography industry there is a specialty known as a “pour”. This is a test I did yesterday. I think I went through about a dozen or so glasses of wine … shooting, not drinking.

The challenge is stopping motion but at the right time. There are certain equipment limitations which prevail … the most prominent is flash duration. Normally you’d think you can just set your shutter to as fast as you can but flashes to do not sync well when shooting fast than 1/250 of a second … hence the black half of an image … the shutter curtain.

The other factor that plays into this type of photography is the depth of field. The more detail you want to retain aka broader depth of field, the more you have to stop down the aperture, then the more light you need, then the longer the flash duration … leading to more motion blur.

The trick? Many small strobes with very short flash duration. This image is my second test. In my next test, I will be pushing the limits with greater depth of field. Maybe I’ll choose a Riesling next time.

Until then, cheers.

-Kyle