A food blog dedicated to the Kansas City commercial photography studio - Alistair Tutton Photography
Sugar Cookies!
After the gingerbread men came the sugar cookies - yummy! Oh, and a bunt cake. Dolce make some amazing baked goods and we love photographing them - thank you.
Credits:
Client: Dolce Baking Company
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Gingerbread Men!
I have a love affair with gingerbread men - they are simply delicious. So when Dolce wanted us to photograph some gingerbread men I was crazy excited. They are simply delicious. Oh and the photos were cool too. We shot all of this using natural light in the studio and popping in some really sharp fill with mirrors. I loved the overall feel of the images. Plus I got a huge kick out of all the different decorations Dolce used.
Credits:
Client: Dolce Baking Company
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Making a Beautiful Red Mess
We’ve been working on some liquid shots recently and using some really fast recycling strobes, coupled with our fancy new 1Dx camera…yep, I’m name dropping. It’s kinda cool making the images as it looks like a dance club in here when we’re shooting them. Not quite sure what we’ll use them for, but I definitely want to print a couple of them out for the wall!
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Mmmm Pork.
I love working with local companies, and sometimes you don’t realize how incredible some of the local companies are that we have here. So it was an absolute pleasure to hear from Farmland (who we’d been courting for a while) and be given this opportunity to work for them. The shoot was for their brand, spanking new line of DuRoc pork products, that will be sold directly to restaurants. Our task was to style a series of images that would reflect the high-quality style of restaurants that Farmland wanted to target, and to synchronize that with the delicious dishes that Farmland’s in-house team devised.
I love the final result and it’s even more inspiring to see it in use by Farmland in their materials.
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Food Stylist: Trina Kahl
Client: Farmland Foods
Don’t Try To Pull One Over On A Brit.
I’m English. So I know scones. I really know them. And these scones from Dolce Baking Company are the most incredible scones ever. Ever. You should try them with a cup of tea. Crumbly, yummy goodness.
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Location: Dolce Baking Company
Everyone Screams For This Ice Cream…and Cookies.
Shatto rocks! And then you add Dolce Baking Company to Shatto and I guess you get rocks squared - so there are these fabulous new Ice Cream Sammiches that have been on the market for a little while…and apparently are fully addictive. They taste delicious and as always we worked with SHS to get photographs of their latest packaging design for Shatto. Here are the results.
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Client: Sullivan Higdon and Sink
Client: Shatto Milk
Client: Dolce Baking Company
Hungry???
I have no idea how to make a cinnamon roll, let alone a roll as incredible as the one’s that Dolce Baking Company makes. They are a-mazing. So here’s a beautiful step-by-step series of photos of how to make the most a-mazing cinnamon rolls ever.
Enjoy!
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Location: Dolce Baking Company
Fun with Fireworks!
Adam and I were looking for a fun way to celebrate the 4th of July, so we decided to set off some large smoke bombs and fire of some sprinklers…luckily we only set the backdrop on fire once.
Also, Adam really can cross his eyes like that…the things we learn at work.
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Friday Is For Cakes!
I love cakes! That is all. It is absolutely amazing knowing the people at Dolce and the best part is we not only get to take photos of something this beautiful, we get to munch on them.
Yum.
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Location: Dolce Baking Company
Sometimes Photography is Yummy.
I can remember the day I heard that Shatto Milk Company was launching a line of ice cream sandwiches. I knew they were going to be marvelous and I fully enjoyed being a part of this tasty debut. The sandwich packaging was shot on white seamless, so all that was required on the background was a bit of cleanup and some level boosting. The shadow from the packaging gave the sandwich some dimension, so it was left in. Some of the packages needed to have the creases taken out or reduced, so there were compositions used for that task. Some careful manipulation was used to align the packaging comps that didn’t line up perfectly. Yay liquify tool!
The shot of the ice cream package in between the two cookies was a result of combining three images. The cookie wasn’t large enough to cover the whole top of the package, so I blended all three positions of the cookie to create one big one. It wasn’t too hard because the texture and color of the cookie was fairly easy to blend. The last thing to remove was the reflection coming off of the plexiglass. It was easy since the ice cream and cookies were shot on white. Simple and sweet!
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Author: Adam Caselman
Retoucher: Adam Caselman
Assistant: Adam Caselman
Client: Sullivan Higdon and Sink/Shatto Milk
Ask More Questions Than You Think You Should.
One can never overlook the importance of details. It’s always better to ask as many questions as you need to get the details that will help you do your job more effectively. When you don’t ask enough questions you wind up assuming things, which is essentially guessing at important facts. This never ends well. Whether you are bidding out a job, planning out a shoot or working on marketing it’s always imperative that you ask questions. Trust me the aggravation you encounter from the person you are asking questions of is no where near the disappointment, anger or exasperation that being ill-prepared will cause. So ask away.
A good example involves the shot above. We were at the end of the shoot for this lovely piece of salmon and had gotten what we thought was THE SHOT. And then we opted to ask.. “What would happen if instead of cutting the skin we peeled it back and pinned it?” Well, you know what happened? A MUCH cooler shot than the one we previously thought was THE ONE. So never take anything at face value always dig a little deeper and ask questions.
It pays off.
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Assistant/Retouch/Arm Model: Adam Caselman
Stylist: Trina Kahl
How do you retouch a cup of coffee?
Ahhh, smell that? That’s the smell of coffee brewing and Photoshop layers. This was a shot we did in studio while experimenting with different beverages. Trina Kahl was our food stylist extraordinaire. What might appear to be a cup of espresso is actually a mosh pit of a few images and lots and lots of cloning.
To get the swirls, we shot the coffee as the milk was being poured into the glass. It mixes quickly so you only have a second or two before the coffee and milk merge. I took these shots of the coffee and milk mixing and cloned them over and over. It would have been a lot easier to use the liquify filter to make these swirls look genuine, but because of the design of the glass I had to alter the liquid without altering the shape of the glass. Arrr, photography, she’s a cruel mistress! Oh, and of course the reflection had to be added in after all the swirls were done. I would love to say that I had an exact image in my head, and it was a symphony of retouching, but to be honest, it was a whole lot of trial and error, and what I like to call the “optometrist method”. What is the “optometrist method? You know when you go in to the optometrist’s office and they put that eyesight machine up to your face and ask you, “Better or worse? Better or worse?” That’s what I did with this image. I would manipulate for five or ten minutes, then turn the layer on and off asking, “Better or worse?” Occasionally the image will get worse before it gets better, but that’s for another blog post.
Sometimes an image is retouched without an exact destination. Alistair knew what he did and did not want out of the image, and that was enough for me to create this delicious composite. Excuse me, I think I’m going to go make myself a cup of coffee.
Credits:
Photographer: Alistair Tutton
Food Stylist: Trina Kahl
Retouching/Assistant/Author: Adam Caselman
So we’ve been doing a lot of images in the studio with strobes, and so today we decided to play a little with our windows. You may not have had a chance to taste Nutella - it’s one of those European things - but if you see it, buy it, spread it, eat it. It’s yummy.
Recently I got approached by the wonderful Layne Haley to take some photos with her. Layne’s one of those collaborative artists who like to create work for fun - I like that. So she wanted to photograph some waffles and make some yummy in-studio photos. So that’s what we did. The big question now is what are we going to work together on next?
Credits:
Layne Haley
Assistant - Adam Caselman
One of the big advantages of having a bloody huge studio is that I get to play around sometimes. I’m really enjoying working with some reflections and translucency recently - so here’s a couple of quick shots from a very relaxing afternoon. Enjoy.
Credits:
Assistant - Adam Caselman
