So, that should be easy right?  Well, not quite.  We had to get the shoot done in a week.

First off, we had to find a chalkboard.  For the original shoot we borrowed a chalkboard that now all of a sudden wasn’t available anymore.  It took a while to find a replacement because we wanted to mimic the texture of the other chalkboard.  Finally, I discovered one from a friend’s coffee shop that worked quite well.   Next was sourcing the food.  Ellen Zaslow, Food Stylist Fanny Pan, and I were able to split up the duties of getting products from 4 companies.  We ended up being late on the Tartine bread order, but luckily had 5 loaves for the shoot.  Scott Brennan of Fifth Quarter Charcuterie came through in-time with a nice selection of pâtés, terrines, and beef tongue.

Next was the day of the shoot.  Our first challenge was to draw the plate, fork, & knife and make it look simple and not perfect.  It took longer than we thought it would, but it turned out really nice.  Our second challenge was to make the food on the plate look simple and not cluttered.  This was the biggest challenge.  As you’ll see in the behind-the-scenes video (below) Fanny cut countless different shapes and sizes of bread, cheese, and pickles and we tweaked the positioning a number of times.  Moving things around a lot meant getting the chalkboard dirty.  Compositing all the elements onto the chalkboard was an option, but that might have run the risk of the image looking too artificial so we opted to clean the chalkboard every time we moved something around.  At the end of the day we came up with a nice, clean image.  Enjoy!

Art Direction – Ellen Zaslow - sanfranmag.com

Food Styling – Fanny Pan - fannypan.com

Photo Assistant – Maurice Ramirez - mauriceramirez.com

Behind-the-scenes video and stills – Maurice Ramirez

Behind-the-scenes video editing – Pons Maar Productions

Photographed at 4th St. Studios San Francisco - 4thststudios.com

Chef Kostow and I also talked about how moving to Napa and planting gardens has transformed him.  Here are a couple of quotes from our conversation:

- “I am an outsider.  I’m not someone who was born on a farm.  I’m an everyday person who is embracing this idea.”

- “I came up here as a good cook.  Being here and having a foundation to the cooking makes you a chef.”

Mango bread – Mango is my favorite fruit.  I’ll eat mango in anything.  A roadside stand also had pickled mango.

Starfruit (Carambola) - I just couldn’t get over its shape.  What an attractive fruit!  We also enjoyed guava and grapefruit at the Hanalei farmer’s market.  I didn’t want to leave the market.  That’s what happens to me when I find a place I love, I just stick around and soak it all in.

Smoked Marlin - What an addictive treat.  Seafood Watch, an organization that monitors the effects of overfishing on ocean ecology, says Marlin is a “good alternative” ecologically if caught near Hawaii. Still, I would be careful about forming a habit for it. That fish is BIG and its mercury levels must be through the roof!

Butterfish - Full of flavor.  However, don’t eat too much of it.  It’s known to be a laxative because of it’s high oil content.

Roosters - Those little guys are running over every inch of the island.  They probably have more of a presence than squirrels in Northern California.  At first it was fun seeing them wild everywhere.  After a while I couldn’t stand the sound.  I was thinking the natives must have hundreds of chicken jokes.  The Wall Street Journal has a story about how their population skyrocketed after a hurricane a decade ago.

Kalalau Trail and Waimea Canyon - Both have some of the best views on the island.  Make sure to have good hiking shoes with you.

Shaved Ice - Be sure to get it with ice cream at the bottom!

For the February issue I photographed Charles Phan‘s much anticipated Wo Hing General Store.  I had some nice light streaming in for my portrait of Chef Michelle Mah.  I only had a few minutes with her so I quickly moved her through 4-5 different spots and a variety of poses.  When in a situation like that you have to think extremely quickly and keep trying different ideas.

I also asked Sous Chef Li Zhang to demonstrate how to eat Shanghai Dumplings.  I thought she might be a good subject to show the correct way to eat them.  She was fun and the image brought out her smile.

Lastly, I made sure to capture the dining room to give a feel for the mood of the place.  I captured every angle possible, then found the best perspective from behind the bar and used a slow shutter to capture the movement of people walking.

If you get a chance to look at a hard copy of the February issue you’ll see me in the Contributors section!  

For my most recent San Francisco magazine shoot I was asked to bring back a vertical with a 4×5 crop ratio for the Eats full-page spread.  When I walked into Dane Boryta’s Bottle Cap restaurant in North Beach I was drawn to the baby blue tables, which were hand painted by the restaurant’s staff.  I knew there was a composition to be made somewhere on the table’s design.  I made sure to ask when the dining room would start filling up because I knew I was going to want extra time to shoot.

I shot 4 dishes, the first being the chicken thighs.  At first the composition was boring.  I kept working it.  I kept moving around my props.  I had the utensils on a napkin, but they just kept distracting the eye.  The orientation of the square-shaped dish wasn’t working so I spun it around.  Finally, all the pieces fell into place and with help from my assistant, Maurice Ramirez, we got the lighting fine-tuned.  I added a number of the outtakes below to give you an idea of what it took to get the final shot.

I came back and started photographing them with a light background and strobes.  Then, I decided to mix it up and shoot everything on a darker background using daylight.  I like shooting a variety of options because how I feel about an image changes once I start working on it in the computer.  Then, I felt curious about how the squash would taste if I roasted them with some apples and pears.  One of the squash tasted really good while the other was too sour.  The image helped round out the shoot nicely.

Have a great Halloween everyone!  Juliana and I are going to be Ricky Ricardo and Lucille Ball.

On a grown-up note, we stopped at Tomales Bay Oyster Company and Francis bought a bag of fifty for the grill.  It was my first time eating oysters outside of a restaurant.  The group next to us were major oyster addicts.  They had 4 or 5 bags and were cooking up oysters nonstop.  The evolution of the lime squeezing shot below came after doing a number of takes of oysters without the hand.  It’s always nice to have some human element added in the mix.

I had styling help from Kimberley Hasselbrink, who has the great blog, The Year in Food.  As we styled and photographed the food Syhabout would periodically stand next to us sipping a drink and looking at his phone.  He was so nonchalant.  I started to feel like he was one of my long-time high school buddies just hanging out.

I had four dishes to shoot and some interior shots.  Piccino has some great west-facing windows of which I mixed shooting in shade and sunlight.  As I was shooting the Pan Seared Salmon I noticed the light was still quite contrasty in the direct sunlight, something of which isn’t the most popular for shooting food.  Yet it reminded me of my days as a photojournalist, when I first began admiring the work of Alex Webb and his beautifully harsh book, “Under A Grudging Sun”.  People are often annoyed by harsh light, but with the use of composition and mood it makes for great images.  However, it’s a little different with shooting food.  You have to shoot even quicker than usual or else the food will turn into a melted puddle.