My good friend Mark Meyer allowed us to do a photo shoot of a picnic at his farm near Lake Carlyle, Illinois in May, and the issue is out now. Click the photo for a slide show.
Farm Picnic
Boston Report
The International Conference on Food Styling and Photography in Boston was an inspiring and challenging weekend. Inspiring to be with photographers and stylists from all over the world, some of whom showed their work and shared insights. Challenging for me since I participated in two presentations. On Friday I was on a panel with Jim Scherer, Heath Robbins, and Teri Campbell. Each of us presented a project that presented some technical or aesthetic difficulty, and talked about how we met the challenge. It was interesting to see how we each approached similar problems in different ways. Without consulting each other ahead of time, it ended up that we all showed some sort of splash. Sunday was a presentation with food stylists Delores Custer and Lorna Rhodes on the topic of Growing Your Visual Awareness. Each of us talked about the same topic from completely different perspectives.
Harold McGee was the keynote speaker, and it is always a treat to hear him speak. He has the rare ability to communicate scientific information in a way that lay people can understand.
Off to Boston
We are off to the International Conference on Food Styling and Photography, held in Boston every other year. It will be 4 days of workshops and seminars on food photography. I will be on two panels: How Did They DO That?: Case Studies of Photographic Creative Problem Solving, on Friday, and Growing Your Visual Awareness, on Sunday. Saturday should be a breather.
That’s my pear photo above.
Chiles Rellenos
During our visit to Walt and Marcia’s condo in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, we took part in a cooking class with Monica Perez.
It took place on the patio where she cooks for her restaurant, and included besides Walt and Marcia, our friend Jeff Bell. We learned how to make chiles rellenos 5 ways – which is 5 more than I knew before. Monica is a very good teacher who speaks perfect English, and we had a great time. Click on Monica for a slide show.
How to do it
I will be participating on a panel discussion at the International Conference on Food Styling and Photography in Boston next month, and the topic is “How Did They DO that?” This shot from last week might be worthy of that discussion. I haven’t shot beer and ice for a while, so when this job for Logan’s Roadhouse came up, I thought I’d try real ice instead of fake.
It was a bit of a challenge to keep the bottles from moving around too much, but it was worthwhile to have the effect of real cold rather than artificial.
Omelets
As Jeeves said to Bertie Wooster in “Jeeves makes an Omelet”, you have to break an egg to make an omelette. You know, tear down before building up again. We’ve been doing a fair bit of that lately, both at home and studio. We hired some landscapers to redo the garden around around the pool, which required them to dig out things that we wanted to keep, till in some compost, get rid of all the weeds, and start fresh. At the studio we demolished the front entry on Friday, and yesterday the flooring guys installed a new bamboo floor. Looking forward to a couple of omelets!
G and T
It’s Gin and Tonic season again. I’m not much of a liquor drinker, but an occasional gin and tonic with lime is a warm weather treat. We have some ancient glasses that are perfect for the drink. My favorite gin at the moment is Plymouth, which I discovered at a gin tasting in Chicago a couple of years ago. It is only made in the town of Plymouth, England. Barb and I enjoyed a visit to the distillery when we were in Devon in ‘07. Cheers!
Spirea
This has been a particularly nice spring for flowering trees and shrubs, and our spirea at the studio is in full bloom right now. 
Wheels
After years of indecision and disagreement on what to do, the wheels are finally in motion to remodel our studio entry and client seating area. Woo-hoo! We are changing the floor in the entry from carpet to bamboo, and it will have a more open look like a gallery. The client area will have more comfortable seating with tablets for laptops, and new carpet and paint. Barb and our designer, Lori Olsen, are hard at work chosing the fabric and paint colors. Barb thinks the post title from yesterday should have been used on this one…
Photogenic Buns
We photographed a hamburger for a St. Louis Magazine cover this morning, and the stylist picked up the buns from Companion Baking, a local baker. I loved the sign they put on the box, so thought I’d share it. 
