Breakfast Anyone?

This week we were shooting for Charlotte Magazine again, which always makes for a fun day. Wait, come to think of it, is there such a thing as a day of food photography that isn’t fun. Ha! The images aren’t scheduled to publish for a couple of months so I can’t show you the results. Not yet at least. I’ll just tease you by saying one word … “chili!”

So, in the meantime, I can show you a couple of photos from our Charlotte Magazine food shoot that was a few months ago since it has since been published.

Banana Waffle.

Ham and Green Onion Scone.

As always, a huge credit goes to our food stylists. For these particular images, food styling acrobatics were provided by the talented and culinarily creative Whitney Kemp. You rock Whitney!

Look for more images from our food photography shoots with Charlotte Magazine in the future. Up next … beer. North Carolina beer, that is!

Until then,
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

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