Behind the scenes

Over the past few months, I've had the pleasure of working with Food Network and Cooking Channel to shoot recipes for their online archives. I know I always enjoy behind the scenes posts from other photographers and stylists, so I gathered some (albeit shitty) iPhone snaps from some of the shoots in hopes it will be fun for you to see what goes on during these.

I've met a number of great food stylists through these shoots - you can see some glimpses of them below. I seriously admire them, because it is no easy task planning out and making 50 recipes in one week and keeping calm through any kitchen malfunctions (in fact, it sounds kind of like my worst nightmare). They also have the daunting responsibility of setting the pace for each day and making sure the shoot is on schedule. We can only go as fast as the food is able to be ready.

This first set was taken at Some Studio, which is a small cozy studio but has pretty nice natural light. In retrospect I should have used the studio stand, because at one point, we precariously put my tripod's legs on apple boxes to get more height!

And these were taken at Highlight Studio, a newer studio that's also quite spacious. I switched to strobes for shoots in this space, as I found the natural light a bit tricky to achieve consistent results with, especially on those cloudy days. I almost always shoot with my Canon 100mm macro for these shots, except for wider overheads, where I switch to my 24-70mm version II.

Huge thanks to all the wonderful stylists (Mariana Velasquez, Cyd McDowell, Micah Morton, Kira Corbin, and Courtney de Wet) and my digital tech/assistant (Josh Dickinson) for making these shoots so smooth and fun. And of course to the Food Network and Cooking Channel online editors who are super chill and feed us well.

Autumn dishes at Gwynnett St.

Beautifully plated dishes are always a pleasure to shoot. If you're in the area and haven't eaten at Gwynnett St. yet, I highly recommend it.

And a few behind the (precarious) scenes snapshots. I had to get on top of the bar with my tripod. Then I ate all the desserts.

Hawaii part i of ???

I only took a few digital pictures in Hawaii but I left it to Jimmy to get a ton of behind the scenes and digital back-up (god forbid the film go awry!). You can click these images for a slightly larger version. I didn't want to size down some of these because there was some nice detail.

The first group of images was taken on Maui, the second on Kauai. Both islands were stunning in their own way. I wish I could have spent more time in the Mokuleia Bay area. Thanks to Jelaine's recommendations, we were able to find this little gem which is totally tucked away from the highway.

I think I took these first three shots (the third was taken from a moving car's window). The rest are all c/o Jimmy and processed by me. Thanks, J!

We took the Road to Hana backwards (we were told this was the better way to go) with our friends Fei and Dom. 28942343 some-odd windy roads and harrowing blind turns later, we finally made it out of there in one piece. We stumbled upon an adorable fruit shack in the mountains. The smoothie machine is powered by the bike! And it wasn't easy! The results were fantastic though. It doesn't get much fresher than what we had there.

Kauai had some striking beaches too. This one piece of driftwood was too photogenic to not go crazy over.

We got to experience the Na Pali coast on a catamaran. It was great fun once my body got used to the rockiness of the sea. The first half-hour was mostly spent wiling myself not to get sea sick and turning my head when others did. But aside from that minor blip, it was a great way to see parts of the island that are inaccessible by car. We saw mountain goats, hikers on the edge of a cliff (made my knees weak just watching them), dolphins flipping about next to our boat, and a magnificent sunset. Pretty magical if you ask me.

Us crazy photographers in SF

The last time I titled a post like that was when Seth and Cindy were visiting NYC in the fall. This time around, Jimmy and I were super lucky to have them show us around the cool areas of SF while avoiding tourist traps. I always have a kickin' good time on these flickr meetups and this time was no exception. It was so wonderful to meet Jackie, Pei, and Chris in person. What a fun gang.

While I am waiting on a few rolls of film to come back (my "real" SF shots) and still waiting to finish half a roll still in the Contax (damn hate when that happens!), I thought I'd share some amusing behind the scenes of the day (many courtesy of Jimmy) and group shots. Please see Jackie's version and Cindy's here!

Oh yeah, please excuse the messy handwriting. I got a little carried away with my Wacom Bamboo pen. I thought it was fitting for the silly-ness of some of these pictures. Back to clean text soon for sure, unless I can improve my chicken-scratch handwriting.

Hehe, I do love this last shot. After two excellent cafe visits, we headed to brunch at Foreign Cinemas, where the light, as Cindy noted, "is divine" and "you can almost just dine on the light itself." So true.

After ice cream at Bi-Rite, we headed to Alamo Square because I wanted to see the Painted Ladies. From there, we went to a "secret" spot to see the Golden Gate Bridge in all its glory. The fog was perfect.

She is a beaut.

Two photo geeks

Another quickie before I run out to dinner... (let me try to not make this a theme!). I'll have a more extensive post on my day with Siebe, but here's a fun behind the scenes that Jimmy captured.

Hehe. :D

A peek of what's to come

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, I did a little casual engagement shoot (my first ever) for some super stylish friends of mine. Seven rolls of film later (I can't tell if this is way too much or not a lot at all!), my wrists were sore but I was content. Now I haven't dropped off the film for developing yet, so I can only hope they turned out okay! I honestly had NO real intention of using the Contax for this shoot, but for some reason, after some last-minute inspiration hunting on the likes of Jose Villa and Ozzy Garcia's blogs, I grabbed all the film I had left and went for it. I was pleasantly surprised that I felt comfortable enough to go film. Woot. :)

A few behind the scenes c/o Jimmy who very diligently did all my film roll changing - good assistant (not that he really had a choice, hah)!

I'll have a few hours of scanning ahead of me this week (just cannot justify the lab charging $10 a roll to scan at not a very high-res and for me to give up control of the scan!), but hopefully I can share some goodies. One thing I would definitely go back and redo if I could is to have taken more shots of the environment and details, so it'd be easier to piece together a story. Gah, aren't these things always so crystal clear in retrospect?

Scenes from the MoMA

This post took much too long to put together because I have been intensely involved in a few Words With Friends games. Major throwback to Yahoo Literati games back in the day. And thus, major productivity fail.

Here are some snapshots from a recent visit to the MoMA. Jimmy and I were really there to check out the Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design exhibit, but we also came across a neat exhibit on kitchen design. Also pictured is the initial sketch of the ubiquitous I <3 NY logo! These were all shot on Portra 400. I'm dying to get my hands on more slide film but alas, Passover means the camera stores won't be open for another week or so.

I loved this hallway but probably could have done much better with a wide lens. The light there was perfect.

And a quick behind the scenes - can you guess which picture this resulted in? :)

P.S. Karleen, I think you were impressed that I wore those red heels all day but you can see here I cheated a little bit. ;) Sometimes you just gotta choose function over fashion.

A real live behind the scenes

As you may have gathered, Jimmy's the one behind the behind the scenes posts I do, and this past weekend, he sneakily took a few videos of me shooting. I had no idea (usually I'm too engrossed in focusing/getting the exposure right)! So here you are getting a totally unstaged (albeit unexciting) and candid peek behind the scenes. I hastily compiled a few clips below in iMovie - do they not have better fonts?? Please excuse the cheesy font choice. If you click to the video page, you can view it in glorious HD.



It's only fair to share a few of the results from this shoot. These two below were the exact ones you hear in the video from the two shutter clicks. I used the lovely Portra 400NC. I was a bit meh about those two but my absolute favorite from that set is available on Etsy at a special price. :) Oh, and one more that would be lovely for your mum. And now I know if I ever need to blow through a roll of film in under five minutes, I just need a pretty bouquet... dammit, gets me every time!

Here is a sampling from the iPhone shots:

Mom, I was very much still paying attention, ok? ;)

I have a lot more film I want to share from this developing round! Stay tuned.

A bit of a teaser

A sneak peek of what's to come... though it's a bit of a teaser even for myself, as I just dropped off the film today! These developing costs are gonna kill me so they had better be worth it. I should learn to shoot less but shoot better.

Yes I am wearing polka dotted socks with my polka dot flats. The flats are really flimsy and uncomfortable and I needed more cushioning. Don't judge. :D

Uneventful

Yech, not much to post from this weekend. I'm feeling swamped with all sorts of work and falling behind on my goals, and it's making it hard to go out and really shoot for fun. I had been hoping to pay the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens a visit this weekend but not in this chilly weather! Below is the only real shooting I did today - this particular bouquet of calla lilies, tulips, hydrangeas, some other delicate pink thing (don't know its name), and ranunculuses is by far the prettiest I have ever seen, and I shot at least a roll and a half of film on it. I hope I'll have some film goods to share soon. In the meantime, here's a bit of a teaser.

Can't believe I had to bring out the winter boots again... I thought we were through with this dammit.

What you don't see

A warning that this collage contains an unnecessarily generous amount of pictures of yours truly, but I thought it'd be fun to show some "behind the scenes" from the Stone Barns Center trip. These are pretty tame actually - no teetering on chairs, hanging off trees, laying on the ground (hey, there was a lot of farm animal poop) or anything like that. Still, this was pretty much the making of the post down there (yeah, that one). At such a photogenic location like this one, it's hard not to have my finger on the shutter and face buried in my camera the entire time. It didn't stop me from enjoying the charm and beauty of it though. In fact, I sometimes think being so camera focused helps me appreciate the place even more, and I can't imagine experiencing it any other way. It's probably frustrating for my photography uninclined friends though, and I really appreciate when they can understand my bolting from place to place or else lingering around one spot for too long.

I just find some of these shots amusing, heh heh.

Thanks to JJ for these pictures. :)