At the Alameda Flea Market there is a seller who always has great table top items, Elsie Green of Elsie Green Home. I decided to drop by her store/warehouse in Concord because she just got a huge shipment in from Morocco. There are so many beautiful things I hope I can figure out something to use them for before they are all sold.

These are set tests I did for a series on breakfast foods that Randy Mon did the food styling on. I don't usually create backgrounds, preferring to find things with real patina, but I couldn't find anything with the right blue so I created this one and am pretty happy with the results.

Here are some of the final pics.

The shot on the left is one of a seeries for Jelly Belly. While I was shooting it I thought that the glasses in the back were worth shot of their own so the next day while doing some testing the stylist and I set up the other two shots based on the original image. Karrie Nitsche was the creative director on the shoot and Shannon Thompson styled it.

Just a few snaps of some of the props and backgrounds I had for the the Numi Teas packaging shoot. I sent these to the client before the shoot for approvals.

and some of the final pics......

I was getting in to my car at Berkeley Bowl with the micro greens to garnish this picture when I looked in the seat and saw this cool light happening to my test image print.

Whenever possible I like to do quick test shots of the backgrounds and props to test composition and lighting before having the food prepped. On assignments we don't usually have time to pull prints, we just look on screen,  but for myself I like to have prints to look at while working on the final images.

On my latest trip to the flea market I found these wine barrel tops and wood fruit baskets that I liked so when I got home I started playing around with them to see what I could come up with.

After a little messing around I decided to go back to Berkeley Bowl and get Apricots and Spanish Garlic to create some final images with. I love the look of Spanish Garlic and have been wanting to do a shot of it for some time now. The colors will be perfect against the wine barrel and the Apricots will be perfect for the baskets.