This is how I LOVE to start my day, coffee to wake me up and doughnuts to fill me up. Unfortunately I can't be doing this too often...so we made this awesome photo to capture the moment.

This image was created as a test shoot at the studio. Shelly Migliazzo handled all the props and the food and we had a lovely relaxing morning on set playing with food and light. For this shoot we used our huge marble table and rolled it down into our natural light area. I love the fresh cut flowers framing the shot. 

Campfire time! Again Shelly Migliazzo came to the studio to play with food. This time we made a tower of s'mores with delicious Hershey's. This was another test shoot to keep trying out new lighting techniques and showcase new surfaces. 

This was the centerpiece of our Russell Stover shoot. We were incredibly honored to be selected as Russell Stover's photographer for an entire new library of still and motion imagery in 2016. For this shoot we had Sarah Hunt on set to style all the candies and Shelly Migliazzo to handle all the props. I love the images we made and you'll see lots of them in this indulge gallery. 

These are Welsh Cakes, they're from Wales. But these ones were made right here in Kansas City, by the amazing Lisa Barber, she's simply brilliant, and my wife. She created these after going to Wales to watch some rugby with me and she nailed the recipe first time! She's amazing, did I mention that already. 

If you head over to our blog, Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings, you'll eventually see the recipe for these and be able to try them yourself, in the mean time take my word for it - YUM.

These rolls were created in our long-standing relationship with Dolce Bakery. We captured loads and loads of baked goods, and we definitely got to sample some along the way. 

This image was shot on location and we mixed window light and strobe lights to create something dynamic that looked perfect in the kitchen. This was one of our first shoots using the Profoto B2's which are some really awesome compact strobes that are great to play around with.

Amazing muffins made by the amazing Lisa for Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings. These were the delicious blueberry muffins that require oodles of butter!

We captured these at home as another great homemade blog post. Lisa is incredible at scouring recipe sites and finding the most delicious things to make.

Here's Dolce Bakery with an amazing Dark Truth Stout Brownie Trifle...with Maker's Mark Icing, soft caramel, & sea salt flakes. This was absolutely delicious.

This was from one of our earliest shoots with them, using natural light and some crumbs to show off how appetizing it is.

And even better, there's Boulevard Beer in the recipe!

The profiterole is one of my favorite desserts, especially when paired with sliced almonds and lashings of chocolate sauce. You may have heard it described as as a cream puff, or choux à la crème, it is a filled French choux pastry ball with a typically sweet and moist filling of whipped cream, custard, pastry cream, or ice cream. Or delicious as I call it. 

For this shot we teamed up with Trina Kahl to make a stunning dessert, and image.

Another fantastic commercial shoot for Dolce Bakery, for this one we did half a dozen cakes and several of them wound up in my portfolio. I loved the lighting and the set we created for this shoot. 

The props that Dolce brought in from Ultrapom and their own personal stash of plates and silverware really tied the scene together. 

More Russell Stover awesome'ness. This is one of their brand new products - pistachio bark. Available at retailers nationwide in some stunning packaging this product is 'da bomb. I love pistachio's and I love the crisp snap from chomping it down as chocolate bark. Simply delicious.

I love the simple props picked out by Shelly to showcase the food and the immaculate presentation of the chocolate by Sarah.

As part of the new Russell Stover visual library we captured some amazing video clips. This still was captured on that set, it's not a screen grab, but instead a full-frame from a still camera so I can print it REALLY big and simply lick it in the mornings - all the fun and none of the calories.

For this image we had a pool of molten dark chocolate, that the amazing Sarah Hunt had formed some beautiful curvy patterns in. I love the sensual nature and the delicious lighting.

Another stunna from the stunning Lisa! This was a shoot of dipped chocolate fruits at home for Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings. We did this shoot as part of our pitch for Russell Stover, creating naturally lit, bright and vibrant food images with hints of chocolate.

Another delicious cake from that same shoot for Dolce. I love the crumbs, the stand and most of all the eye angle on this image. I love how you can see all the delicious layers of moist cake and down to your own personal slice just waiting to be eaten.

This time we went to the house and captured some products on-location to give Dolce a different look. In this image we captured a single slice of their delicious lemon cake and played with some lovely props to give it a distinct lemon theme.

Dolce were able to use this image in some incredibly successful ads to target production to match demand. Knowing that their ads would feed sales they baked extra lemon cakes to have them on hand.

This image was a background prop to a stunning food image for Smithfield Foods. Sarah created a fantastic prop oatmeal yoghurt, with beautiful fresh fruit, to fill out the scene and we realized it would be the perfect image to feature on our portfolio by itself. I love the crisp fresh fruit and the scene that Shelly shaped around it.

Sometimes the props of the scene are just as good a shot as the hero!

We captured this stunning honey drip on another Smithfield shoot. Honey was one of the focal ingredients in the dish and Sarah found this awesome looking honeycomb as a lovely flavor cue. After we captured the hero shot we decided to create this delicious detail shot to show off the vibrant colors and sensual form.

Another Dolce classic - in this case it was pumpkin whoopie pies. Shot on location again we created these using the lovely Profoto B2's and all their compact power. 

I love the level of detail that we created in these images. Using the Phase One back we can capture so much highlight detail that would be unimaginable in a lessor camera.

Another Hannah Brantley piece of genius! In this scene she made an entire tea time table scape. I love the flowers and color scheme and props she brought in for the shoot. 

I love collaborations like this for test shoots; if you've seen some of the images in the "Eat" portfolio you'll see some great images we made with Hannah.

This image was from the Q39 editorial assignment for Feast Magazine. Along with the brisket sandwich image in the Eat portfolio I love this pair of images - they just did a wonderful job of showing off very simple food photography without a complex site and crazy set of lighting equipment - just great food, a camera, tripod, a window and a little fill light - kinda the perfect ingredients for simple food photographs.

Macaroons are delicious and this macaroon from the Beachery is no different. The Beachery is a fantastic boutique bakery owned by my dear fried Kathy Fullerton. They are our baked goods of choice.

For this shot we decided to utilize focus stacking to insure that the macaroon would be sharp front to back, but that the pile of macaroons would be beautifully soft in the background.

This delicious layered cake by The Beachery was great fun to photograph. Kathy makes some stunning baked goods and I loved the white chocolate topper!

I love this overhead shot of lemon bars at the Dolce store. We shot this on location with a whole series of pies when they first opened the store. They have a beautiful huge farm table that we used as the surface for a lot of the shots, but for this image Erin had a wonderful marble surface which was perfect to drop in for the shot. We took several images and my favorite was this one with the "missing" lemon bar in the middle of the shot.

Check out the soft and buttery mini old fashioned sugar cookies with raspberry cream icing!

This is from another location shoot for Dolce Bakery with yet more delicious product. This time Erin found us a beautiful house and kitchen to shoot in and we created some wonderful shots of their platters of product.

This delicious basket of yummy chocolate is from Russell Stover's 2017 Easter treats. The milk-chocolate rabbit is Russell Stover standard, but the filled eggs are the new treat for this year. 

Another amazing dish created by my beautiful wife for Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings. Jam tarts are one of my favorite dishes - I just love them and my mum used to make them a lot. Dolce makes some bloody good jam tarts too! 

I love the rustic jam and the crumbly pastry.

This was a very fun last minute shoot for a book project that was capturing breakfasts of restaurants throughout the Midwest. We had the day off, but the photographer they did have lined up had to rush back to NYC for a family emergency and I got to have a wonderful day capturing a whole series of amazing food dishes at restaurants around KC with the Art Director.

This was one of my favorite photos we captured for the book "America's Best Breakfasts" in a quick one day shoot touring around the best breakfast restaurant options in Kansas City. We visited a half dozen locations photographing all the food and beverages using natural light and simple reflectors to make a series of wonderful images.

These chocolate dipped pretzels were photographed as part of a video shoot for Russell Stover. In this scene we created a "Pretzel bathing machine"! where we lowered a pan of liquid chocolate from underneath the pretzels and then sprinkled sea salt on them to make it appear as though the pretzels were freshly dipped. 

After capturing the video we also captured some stills using the same lighting rig. The styling and sea-salt sprinkle was handled by our food stylist, Sarah Hunt, while the pretzel bathing machine was built by the awesome husband of our props stylist - Shelly Migliazzo.

And here's the final result of the chocolate covered pretzels - they are stunning and super tasty. I highly recommend them to anyone who gets the chance to see them on the shelf in their awesome Russell Stover packaging.

Sarah and Shelly did an awesome job of styling the shot.

Another amazing Dolce cake - this time it's Guinness and Chocalate, two of my favorite things in the world. I wish they would put bacon in this cake. Anyhoo, this was one of my first moody shots, really closing down the amount of natural light hitting the cake and being very selective on the highlights. I'm very pleased with the results.

Yes, I ate the cake.

These Stover candies were photographed at home and styled by Lisa for Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings. In this shot we stacked a whole series of candies in a candy tin and then sprinkled some chocolate powder over them to create a yummy image specifically for the pitch.

Lisa and I made this scene for our Russell Stover pitch, we played with a whole bunch of chocolate products and cocoa powder. We had a ton of fun playing with the all the elements and steering the light around the set to create the drama we wanted. 

It's always wonderful to have an opportunity like this to play with lighting and product when working with a new client.

WOW! These were delicious. Just a really light flakey cookie baked by Lisa for our Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings blog. This shot was intended to be a lighter image than some of the more moody shots I create. I love the raw and natural ingredients that Lisa blended into the scene.

One more delicious treat from the team at Dolce. These mini cheesecakes are amazing! I love the pastry on them and the fruit toppings. 

Hannah made this delicious sheet cake of brownie and then methodically coated it with raspberries and finally sprinkled it with crumbled pistachio. 

Just delicious.

We made a lovely broad lit and flat set to let the brownies be the focus.

Russell Stover has some amazing artists on their team - they are constantly innovating and making new packaging for their signature products. In this case it's the delicious Whitman's Sampler that we captured along with some of their other wonderful products. 

Whitman's has a very long history, and this shoot was part of their 175 year celebrations. As part of the Russell Stover brand we loved having this opportunity to capture some of the brands story history and show off their signature candy - the Messenger Boy, part of their sampler boxes for over 100 years.

This delicious cake was captured as part of Dolce Bakery's first shoot after opening in their new Prairie Village location. We had an amazing day shooting lots of delicious product at their new store. 

It's wonderful getting to work on a library of product for a full day.

One of my very first images for Dolce. This slice was photographed in their original location using window light and a little fill. This was the first time Adam learnt how to use an iron, and I think he did a pretty good job with it.

This cake is absolutely delicious and I definitely recommend getting a slice if you're in the area!

This is another image from our pitch for Russell Stover, Lisa and I made this as part of a Peas, Love and Yorkshire Puddings shoot at the house. For this shot we wanted to make a delicious tray of dipped strawberries with milk chocolate, white chocolate, and nuts. 

This is another shot from our awesome Russell Stover library shoot. We captured a whole slew of their Christmas candies and Russell Stover's new Christmas packaging. 

Sarah and Shelly did an amazing job of styling some delicious candies.

I love the tight details we captured for Russell Stover, but it was great to build these larger tablescapes for Russell Stover too. For this one Sarah did an amazing job of finding the perfect props and even bringing in the perfect Christmas tree! As always Sarah did a wonderful job of styling the candies and wine.

For this shot we commissioned a unique, huge wood surface to create the perfect Christmas scene.