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

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

Nutella = Yummy

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.

Credits: Trina Kahl - Food Stylist, Adam Caselman - Assistant

Here’s the rub…Part 3

This was the last part of our recent mailer campaign and while the salmon shot is a really simple image, it’s definitely one of my favorites. We tried a variety of different hanging techniques to support the salmon. We tried using the whole fish and variations on it, but ultimately we found Adam (my wonderful assistant) was a great prop to get over the scale of the fish and show off a fun way of supporting it. Trina did a fantastic job of peeling back the skin, one of the outtakes was so perfect where we trimmed the skin it just looked like we did it in post, so we finally worked with this solution, where we pinned the skin back and kept the rub strictly on the exposed portion of the fish.

Meanwhile we worked with Sarah to get the “Bake” image just right - here we tried a couple of different models and wound up finding the blonde skin and long hair of Haley Middleton was a perfect match. 

Definitely a fun shoot, a wonderful mailer and thank you to everyone for all the kind comments we’ve received.

PS. The rub does NOT work as a sunscreen.

Credits:
Food Stylist - Trina Kahl
Stylist - Sarah Thompson Lift
Assistant - Adam Caselman

Here’s the rub….Part 2

Part two of our mailer campaign recently went out and again, thanks for the ongoing feedback. On this one we opted for a postcard mailer so we could show off the artwork a little larger. This time we opted to use the rub as a hair tonic with my good friend (and fellow photographer) Phil Peterson stepping in to model for us. Also, that’s Kate’s hands are doing the rubbing. On the food - Trina prepped a beautiful tied pork roast and this was one of those occasions where we got to eat the props - we finished shooting this one just before lunch and without any obscure adulteration to the food Trina finished it off and we just sat down to reflect on a great shoot. Thanks to Sarah Thompson Lift who styled the head rub shot and made sure Phil left with his eyesight in tact - safety first. 

Part three is coming up next. I hope you are enjoying the images.

Credits:
Food Stylist - Trina Kahl
Stylist - Sarah Thompson Lift
Assistant - Adam Caselman

Here’s the rub…

So it’s been a while since we last did a physical mailer, so we knew we had to come up with something that would stand out, amuse people and show off some really nice images. We were coming into Spring and Valentines Day was just around the corner, so we figured we’d make it a gift, with a twist. Kate, our resident genius, came up with the double entendre of a meat rub - so we could show some portraiture and some food imagery with a twist - in this case we went for “Give your meat a little rub…THIS MEAT” as the copy and went with a good old fashioned Kansas City strip for the meat. Thanks as always to Trina Kahl and Sarah Thompson for their fabulous styling skills as well as Chris Galloway our perfect “find” from Kate’s morning workout at the gym. We heard some great feedback on the mailer and apparently there was a lot of use of the included BBQ rub. This is part one of a three part series - so get ready to see some more wonderful imagery soon.

Credits:
Food Stylist - Trina Kahl
Stylist - Sarah Thompson Lift
Assistant - Adam Caselman