Frozen Shrimp Packaging

I just shot several frozen shrimp packaging shots for a company in San Diego. I picked up all the plates and bowls myself, which seemed like a simple enough task except that the images were going to be the same size on the packaging and you had to be able to tell the different size shrimp from the images. That meant I had to have exactly the perfect size plate or bowl for each image, so that the right amount of shrimp were used, and of course I wanted to have lots of choices for each shot so what seemed simple enough at first ended up taking a lot of time. My bad. Next time I hire a prop stylist like on most shoots!

This was my first time working with a food stylist in Southern California and she did a great job, Cindy Epstein.

Each image is going to end up against a dark color so I put them against this purple/blue just to get the retouching and exposure adjustments right before sending them the finals.

Mason Jars, again!

Carol Hacker has a few Mason jars that I like better than my own so I pick up a couple to shoot some jam in. I looked long and hard to decide on the jam I want to shoot and finally pick this Habanero Jelly form Berkeley Bowl. It tastes great but is crazy hot and not for the faint of heart!

The first shots are my testing lighting and backgrounds and figuring out how to get the muffin in the shot.

Lunch Time

One of my favorite cheap eats meals here in Alameda from Calafia on Webster. Somewhere under that mass of lettuce and tomatoes and cheese are two hard shell tacos. I add one of these great fried chilies, some of there perfect spicy carrots and some roasted pepper salsa and it's a great meal.

Kaiser Store San Jose

I have been wanting to shoot some cleaner more modern interiors so I was really happy to get an assignment from Kaiser to shoot their KP Store down in San Jose.

 

Tart Tartine

This is the first shot where I've been crazy enough to try and cook something myself. Scrambled eggs are about as fancy as I normally get for cooking.

These are my tests of the set. I want to work on this idea of the really dark set again. If anyone reading this has any ideas or wants to make something they think would work in a dark set please let me know!

This is how NOT to make caramel. Notice all the crystallization? Big no no. Took three attempts, and a different pan, to get it right.

This is the final image.

Africa and Beyond

I just got back from a busy trip to Southern California. Scouting and pre production for one client and shooting for some friends of mine who have a high end African Artifacts store on Prospect in La Jolla. The container from their latest buying trip finally arrived, after a few hick ups with Customs, and they wanted me to shoot several hundred of the pieces.

 I am usually just shooting clean product shots of their artifacts against black like the images above but this time we also shot their home. I really liked those pics so I put them up on my site. All the props are from their store, Africa and Beyond. 

Shannon's Apartment

I have been trying to convince my Stylist friend Shannon Thompson that her apartment is amazing and that we should shoot it. You're always your own worst critic so she was skeptical but once we got started watch out. She just kept coming up with more and more ideas of areas to shoot and ways to shoot them. Now I just need to get these out to some magazines and see if we can't get them published!