Chinese Tofu

There is a recipe for Tofu in one of Yotam Ottolenghi's books that I have been wanting to try. The amazing thing is that it tastes very close to one of my favorite Chinese dishes that I used to order in San Diego, so now I can make it at home and not have to wait for my next trip to Southern California to have it!

I want this image to be very dark and moody so I start with some black enamel ware and a cast iron skillet. These are the test images with the two at the right being the direction I picked for composition and props. It's very "campfire" looking because of the props, which is an odd choice for Tofu but I think it works.

Next comes the cooking,

and the final image.

Unusual baking flour

I like these bowls from Sur La Tab and I think they will work well as containers for some various flours I have at home.

I do a series of composition tests. My favorite is actually the middle image with the brown bowls but the flour will stand out better in the gray bowls and background so that's what I go with. I try to remember that they are called props because they are supposed to prop up the main idea and not become the focus themselves.

After a little tweaking this is the final pic.

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.