A delicious image of seasoned raw pork chops bathed in natural light on a rustic wood surface. This image was created for Smithfield Foods to support their food service division. 

I love the appetite appeal of the raw meat and their simple forms juxtaposed against the dark tones of the skillet.

We captured this in the Kansas City studio using a Phase One IQ 3 100 back, working with Sarah Hunt as the food stylist and Shelly Migliazo as the prop stylist.

This table scape was created to show off the huge variety of products that Kansas City Steak Company sells beyond steak - you can get rubs, and sauces and chopping boards and grill tools and grills there. Don't get me wrong, the steaks are the 100% highlight, but these other items are fantastic extras to add that final touch to your grilling experience.

Kansas City Steak Company is a relatively new client for us, and it's been fantastic working with their agency to understand their unique brand and to create the perfect images for their print and on-line needs. 

And I have loved taking some product home occassionally to try!

This is a delicious brisket pesto sandwich that we photographed for Smithfield. I know this may sound weird knowing that Smithfield is the number one name in pork, but their awesome Food Service division also offers some exciting new products like this pre-cooked brisket that can be easily delivered hot and fresh to the table. 

For this shot we focused on keeping the props simple and the food very messy and ready to eat. We really played up the flavor cues and the pesto with the side jar and wooden spoon. We went for a really dark backdrop to and highlighted the product to bring your eye forward and create a delicious image.

Another delicious product from the Food Service folks at Smithfield where we created a delicious stuffed pork tenderloin just waiting to go into the oven. This is the detail shot. 

For this we focused on angle and racked natural light across the tenderloin to give it lots of shape. Our food stylist, Sarah Hunt, found the freshest ingredients and perfectly arranged them to make sure everyone knows this is a top quality product. Shelly Migliazzo, our prop stylist, found a fantastic quality cutting board that gave it a lovely rustic and quality feel.

Another delicious product from the Food Service folks at Smithfield where we created a delicious stuffed pork tenderloin just waiting to go into the oven. This is the wide shot. 

For this we focused on angle and racked natural light across the tenderloin to give it lots of shape. Our food stylist, Sarah Hunt, found the freshest ingredients and perfectly arranged them to make sure everyone knows this is a top quality product. Shelly Migliazzo, our prop stylist, found a fantastic quality cutting board that gave it a lovely rustic and quality feel.

In this shot you can see the rub and the cranberries and you can see our super textural surface that we put the cutting board on.

This was a beautiful food photo captured on behalf of Feast Magazine for The Sundry, here in Kansas City. We photographed a range of interior images and food shots, but this product shot was a favorite of theirs and ours. It shows you their meat, bread, spice and fresh product offerings.

They're a wonderful store located in the heart of the crossroads and feature a wide variety of product - with a seasonal cafe , craft draft beer & locally made pantry items. The food is delicious and it's a great lunch spot.

If you get a chance make sure you check them out.

Another great image created for Smithfield. In this case we were working for the Marinated Pork folk. They wanted a fun and sunny morning image with some delicious stuffed burritos screaming "Eat Me!" from the plate. We found some beautiful props to tie the scene together and found some lovely fresh ingredients to play off the delicious pork.

This was a lovely “slice” of one of our larger food scapes where the side was just too delicious to ignore.

As always it’s critical to insure that every part of the food scene looks authentic and mouth watering. So when I was finished photographing the entree I zoomed into this piece of zesty goodness courtesy of Sarah Hunt.

It’s important to make sure that your entire table scape contains delicious elements, so that the hero’s work and the supporting actors can be equally photogenic.

This image is an outtake from a shoot - one of those happy accidents of having the perfect team. It's wonderful to look around the whole table scape and see some of the individual items that make up the scene. 

n this case we had some beautiful whole roasted cloves of garlic that were plated in a fantastic low metal tray with some herbs to garnish them. I had finished photographing the main dish and I saw this opportunity to create this lovely little image that wound up in our portfolio. 

This is simply a delicious and refreshing salad using Smithfield fresh pork - I love the way we tied in the colors and the props to make this delicious scene with the light cascading across it.

We always want to make sure that we create scenes that appear approachable and natural as well as simple beautiful and delicious. I know those are some fancy words, but the key to us is making a scene that shows food at it's freshest. 

A huge thanks to Sarah and Shelly for the food styling on this.

So I had no idea how to spell or even pronounce Bibimbap, but I definitely knew how to photograph it. Bibimbap is a Korean dish that we created beautifully here in our Kansas City photography studio. It's served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste), soy sauce, or doenjang (a fermented soybean paste). And we made sure to include a fried egg and delicious shredded pork courtesy of our awesome friends at Food Service with Smithfield. The hot dish is stirred together thoroughly just before eating.

Luckily it was Sarah and Shelly who did ALL the research on this one and I just clicked the button!

This was a super fun test photoshoot - one of those one day shoots where we just grab some photos and see what we can create, In this case we had Shelly Migliazzo picking out the props and standing in as our food stylist for the day. I love what we made.

The super shallow depth of field and the simple props and the attention to symmetry help to make a lovely simple scene.

The Kauffman Performing Arts Center is one of the best symphony and opera halls in the world. Designed by Moshe Safdie and finished in 2011 it has been a focal point of the city and is simply a wonderful evening of entertainment in so many ways. I had the privilege of photographing the entire center for an architectural book and during several days of shoots we had the opportunity to capture images of their new dining experience - a unique restaurant in the foyer that you can dine at before performances.

During that shoot we captured some beautiful images including this shot of a fantastic fresh salad.

Bacon...baaaaaaaaaaaacon...baaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccooooooooonnnnnn! Yeah, I'm hooked, I love bacon. So I was definitely ready to jump in and capture this beautifully simple image for Smithfield. It's definitely a lovely scene for bacon in the morning.

More Smithfield magic - this image capture a delicious appetizer. It's their amazing bacon wrapping the brats they make in conjunction with Boulevard Brewery, with a delicious drizzle of sauce. 
 

I must make an admission - I did try these and they were awesome. If you want to give them a crack the recipe is right here.

I love the way Shelly created this whimsical group setting with the app plates and the serving dish and the beer (Boulevard obviously). And Sarah did an awesome job of styling as always.

Brats again...or as I like to call them sausages! In this case it's more Smithfield work for the Food Service folk. 

In this image Sarah and Shelly created a fantastic healthy and fresh looking brat option for a spring time BBQ. I love the watermelon in the backgroud and really chunky slaw.

Another great test shoot working with the lovely Shelly Mig. This time we wanted a rustic cheese board with some accoutrements, which I believe is fancy word for other stuff. Just a lovely low angle with some soft focus and soft light. 

Another great shot for Smithfield and the Food Service folks. This time they didn't select this image as they wanted the wider shot of the whole sandwich. After we captured that we decided to go in nice and tight and capture the beautiful texture of the bacon. 

Thanks to Sarah for some beautiful food to photography.

This is one of my favorite Smithfield BBQ images, and we have so many to choose from! This was part of their partnership with Tabasco, and I love the simple way we managed to feature both products in a casual and beautiful image. 

This shoot was captured in studio, but we worked with Shelly to create a comprehensive background with plants and a grill to give it a beautiful back yard feel. We also captured a wider three quarter and an overhead of the set so that Smithfield would have every angle covered.

Another classic prop outtake from a wonderful scene. We love making our tablescapes as authentic as possible, so that all the rich colors and textures are there for people to enjoy in the images.

I love the way this scene mimics the egg image from a couple of images earlier - a super low angle, perfectly centered hero and a shallow depth of field. In this shot we're a little less dramatic in the lighting, but still lots of fun to shoot.

This is how you do a mac and cheese and ham toasted sandwich! Seriously. This. Is. Delicious. Especially when paired with the tots - see them poking in on the left hand side?

Another Smithfield recipe we even got to capture this in a video shoot, check out the entire build here in a lovely Tasty style video. And if you want to you can see the highlights from that video here on our site.

This is one of the images from Lisa and I's collaboration on Pea's Love and Yorkshire Pudding's. Lisa is my beautiful, awesome wife that knows how to style and knows how to cook, so we started creating images together. We've been using those images to win new business and create new looks beyond our main portfolio and just a great way to hang out at the weekend.

The Ploughman's Lunch is a traditional English lunch eaten for hundred's of years in rural England, like Dorset, where I grew up. It's simply bread, cheese, ham and a little mustard for flavor. Lisa tracked down the perfect lunch box and the flask for tea.

This is seriously one of the most fun recipes we've had to prepare for the folk at Smithfield. This particular sandwich features pork tenderloin, sliced ham and bacon. Honestly it's spectacular. 

I love the way Laurel shingled the pork so you can see each of the elements, and the lightly toasted bun is perfect for that crunchy farmhouse feel. As usual we lit this using just the window and some careful manipulation with mirrors. 

If you fancy making this dish the recipes are here and here and I even found one here. Make it already!

Fries, with extra freedom. These were created many years ago when we first got our new digital back from the folk at Capture Integration. When we started using the Phase One camera we were all about test shoots, trying to figure out how to use the camera and see the amazing detail we could get from it.

For this shoot we partnered with Hannah Brantley who did a fantastic job of creating the look and feel we wanted.

Another amazing creation for the food service folk at Smithfield, working with their full brisket product we got to slice it up and place it on this awesome toasted hoagie with French Dip and fries on the side.

Thanks to Shelly and Sarah for the awesome look and feel of this shot - I love the drip Sarah put in on the front of the sandwich!

More Smithfield product, this time on a delicious cheese pizza. Here we had basil and chunks of parmesan cheese as a fresh cue and some chili flakes for garnish. I love the pizza cutter and peel that Shelly found for the props. And Sarah did an awesome job on the slice and pull to get the stringy cheese.

It's always fun learning more about food - this shoot I got to learn all about cupping on pepperoni pizza- the pepperoni is engineered to cup and crisp to really exact specifications - and I thought it was just a mouthful of yummy...

Another lovely test shoot with the awesome Hannah Brantley, this shot was done on the same day as the fries image. I love this burger that she made, the bacon looks so delicious and crunchy, the garnish on the burger looks so fresh and crispy, and the fries are just waiting to be gobbled up.

Hannah did an amazing job with the food and props and I love how this image turned out.

This image was from one of my very first shoots for Feast Magazine, and I LOVE IT. I got the assignment to go out to Q39's one and only location at the time and photograph a variety of dishes for the magazine. I took the Phase One as I knew I was going to create some wonderful images that would be for my portfolio. 

The trick to the assignment was finding some lovely natural light, turning off all the overhead lights and just playing around with a little bit of fill light in perfect spots on the fork and bun.

Here's the original article if you want to see it.

Wings are awesome - especially when they arrive already smoked and you get to serve them with blue cheese and beer. These are some pre-smoked wings by the genius's at Smithfield that you can buy from their Food Service folk. So you can buy huge bags of them!

I love the deep color we got on the wings and moodiness of the lighting.

This was literally the very first photo I ever captured for Smithfield. they were doing a whole new series of Food Service images focused on pork belly and this was first up. It's photographed on one of the large rolling tables at the studio and was styled by Trina Kahl. I love how it keeps getting selected for our portfolio years after it was originally captured.

More awesomeness for Kansas City Steak - and they don't just sell steaks. These pork chops were beautifully styled by Sarah with a bed of fresh salad. I love the wood platter Shelly found to bring a real rustic tone to the image. 

If you haven't checked them out I would definitely do it, they have some amazing products and it's all local to Kansas City.

Cargill makes some amazing products - steak and turkey and pork, lots of delicious protein. Recently they started doing some easy to assemble burger options - the packages include the meat, the cheese and even the caramelized bacon - delicious! For this shoot we wanted a really bright airy white wood surface. 

Sarah did an amazing job with the burger and ingredients to make them look so mouth watering, and I love the simple scene that Shelly created. 

Another great photograph from the Create and Plate series with Cargill. This time it's all about the shrooms and a lovely balsamic glaze. In addition to the stills we also created videos for each of the recipes and you can see them in the motion section.

I like the subtle changes Shelly and Sarah did to mix up the scene but keep it part of a family or products.

Another beautiful image for Smithfield. This time for packaging. Last year Smithfield were releasing a whole series of pork chop packages with different seasonings and marinades and those flavors are delicious! We captured images for the front of the packages and for the web sites. 

I love the deep grill marks and the perfect sear that Sarah managed to create on the chops. It's really stunning. And I love the table scape that Sarah and Shelly made with the fresh veg and the perfect props.

I LOVE CURRY! As in I REALLY love curry. So when Lisa said let's do a curry post for Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings I jumped at the chance. I love what we made with the naan bread and the poppadoms and the chutney and the pickles - YUM!

And this was incredibly delicious.

This delicious burger recipe was developed by Chef John Tesar for Smithfield's Prime Reserve product line. The final dish is delicious and the recipe is right here and it's definitely worth preparing. The Salsa Verde is delicious by itself and well worth mixing with other dishes.

Sarah and Shelly did a wonderful job of creating an outstanding dish and scene, and it was lovely to include this in the whole Prime Reserve line of recipes.

I love this simple image of sage straight out of our garden. This was another image that I captured with Lisa for our Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings blog. It was a quick grab of the ingredients for our pork rack recipe and I was so happy to grab it on the side of the scene.

Lisa keeps an amazing herb garden full of delicious fresh options. My favorite part is working with her on new planters and making sure we get it frozen for those winter months. 

And this is where the sage ended up! We used it to garnish the delicious Frenched Rack of Pork we got from Broadway Butcher. This is an amazing recipe that Lisa and I prepared for Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings. The best part of getting the meat from a great butcher is that they prepare it beautifully AND they left the full fat cap and skin so we could render it for delicious crackling. 

Here's some info from Feast on Broadway Butcher.

More Hannah Brantley magic, again from the very first shoots with our Phase One camera and back. We were still in total awe of the color and crisp focus from the camera. It's really amazing. 

I love how Hannah tied together this very simple but beautiful platter of fish with a little garnish and a hint of sides way in the background. It's lovely!

This was from another great test shoot with Shelly. The highlight of this shoot was learning to shuck oysters - we managed to not injure anyone in the shucking process. Lucky days!

I love the props Shelly brought in to make the scene and it's always great fun to play in the studio.

More magic from Hannah Brantley. I love this crab claw image, the shape and the texture is so beautiful and all it needed was a little bit of fill light for the final image. My only regret was putting that one radish behind the dark claws, it just blends a little too much. 

But even perfection needs a little flaw!

This bacon wrapped filet shot was styled by the amazing Casey Dobbins as a test shoot. I love the bone marrow salt and pepper shakers, and I love the delicious drip she put on the blue cheese.

Meatballs! This was a wonderful specialist product shoot for Smithfield for their Carando product line. It's some amazing product and the meatballs come individually packaged from a select list of retailers. 

I love the dish that Sarah put together and the wonderful hints of fresh parmesan and salt and pepper seasoning. I think this may have been our first full commercial shoot using only natural light.

This image was from our last shoot with Hannah before she left for Australia. It's a beautiful rustic Italian scene with ribbons of delicious pasta, topped by bolognese and some crumbles of parmesan cheese.

I love the crumbage in this photo!

Here's another wonderful dish from the culinary team at Smithfield. I love the recipes they come up with. This is a delicious green chile pork dip - the bread for the dip is in the dish and you simply break it off and dip it in.

If you want to watch an awesome video of making this delicious dip check out the video here, it was our first ever Tasty style video. Sarah did an amazing job of creating the dish with a lovely rustic feel and texture, and I love the skillet Shelly found to cook it in.

Ribs are one of my favorite things to pop on the smoker. It's so easy to get them tasting yummy, but so difficult (for me) to get them perfect. This is another one of the wonderful raw image shots we captured for Smithfield and their Food Service folk.

I loved the simplicity and contrast on this shot, we wanted to find a way to show off multiple racks without it looking like a huge field of pink pork and this worked out wonderfully. Sarah did a great job of prepping the racks and I love how the crumpled foil gave us texture and contrast with the meat without proving to be a distraction.

A lovely action shot for Smithfield in our backyard space. We keep a series of Weber kettle grills on-hand for props, and in this case we actually got to light one up for the shot itself.

Sarah prepped the ribs in the studio kitchen and then brought them out for the grill and then we prepped the fire to create the perfect flame. For lighting we used the natural light for fill, and then a Profoto B1 strobe with a Magnum reflector to create the highlight and freeze the flame.