why not florals too?

so! on top of working on my portrait & food photography, i had an opportunity to work with emily thompson an awesome floral designer based in brooklyn that i met during the food photography collaboration i had earlier in april. emily is such a creative brain/designer/artist that my mini-apprenticeship with her for two recent events inspired me to create, create, create! (and to also photograph)... 

if you have an opportunity to look through emily's website, you'll notice she's got a different aesthetic when it comes to floral design - there's something whimsical and playful about her creations without being contrived or artificial, instead her creations look like beauteous moments plucked straight out of a wild landscape. while working on the first event (a wedding) emily also encouraged me to take pictures, which i gladly did! since photographing gorgeous flowers pretty much guarantees nice pictures - these turned out quite lovely. 

the photographs posted are a mixture from emily's studio as well as at the wedding site - a 1900s electrical parts factory in long island city restored by an antiques dealer in the 1980s. the light was great and the centerpieces suited the space really well... the other event was a centerpiece emily designed for the horticultural society of new york 2009 annual gala. i'll post those up in a while... in the meantime enjoy these lovely creations (p.s. i put the flowers in the teacups! super fun!)

 

dans le jardin (in the garden)

along with learning more about food photography, i've also been exploring the world of portrait photography. i will admit that taking photographs of people is a weak point of mine. on some lucky occasions i manage to capture a really sweet moment of folks in their natural element but the majority of them end up looking like deer caught in headlights. as such, most of my photography has been focused on still life because, well, still life doesn't move or ruin a shot w/ their hands in front of their face... ha.  

but since i'm on a learning kick and i've managed to seek out the friends who don't mind me pointing a camera in their face i've decided on working at it a bit more. the above images were taken on a gorgeous day at the brooklyn botanical garden. the models were some friends who in a few weeks will be making their way down to north carolina for wedded bliss and a 5 month stint around asia. in exchange for letting me practice my portrait skills on them - they wanted me to get some wedding-type portraits of them... as you can tell from the images, they were amazing models and absolute naturals. as we ran around the botanic gardens looking for inspiration they managed to put up with my non-direction direction ("ummm, just be natural"...) and lucky for me that seemed to work. 

i am pretty psyched with how things turned out and we had a great time! i am definitely looking forward to doing some more portrait shooting soon - volunteers?

they're here!

the images have finally arrived and how great they look! 

karen wise has posted up some images of our food photography collaboration on her blog: 

check it out here!

the "yum" factor

last week i had the opportunity to collaborate with karen wise, an amazing photographer (wedding, food and much more) i used to work for during my post-college days of part-timing 3 different gigs. so when my interest in food photography piqued i contacted karen to see if she knew anyone that might be interested in taking on a photographer and showing her the ropes, instead she was nice enough to offer a collaboration where i made the goodies and she would shoot them and let me observe and learn some "tricks of the trade".  

such an offer i could not pass up and went ahead with brainstorming on some things we could shoot. since baking sweets is something i know i can do with decent results, i decided to make 4 different items. i figured it would be good to have a variety of sweets/colors/textures to give us more options to style and shoot. karen also enlisted the help of talented floral designer emily thompson to help us style the shoot with some really amazing props (which come to think of i now regret for not photographing!). there were so many gorgeous pieces from old school cutlery to silver trays... it was hard not to try to use everything but luckily emily was there to help sort things out for us! 

*note, the following images below were just quickly shot by me, the more professional shots will come later...

one of the first things we shot was a chocolate chili cupcake with whipped dark chocolate ganache frosting. we agreed immediately that we loved the cake pedestal as a prop and that the red silk linen was a perfect color compliment. but we continued to play around with composition and placement of the cupcakes (i made about 18) - should we use 5 cupcakes? 3? with paper or without? additional props (i.e. dried chili, cinnamon sticks)? 

luckily karen also had a digital camera, so she took a few shots and made adjustments. when we were finally happy with the way things were looking, she switched over to her medium format camera - a hunky mamiya (seen in the first image above) to do some shooting in film, which as i learned gave a completely different look in comparison to the digital camera. the mamiya's depth of field and even 6x7 frame changed the composition of the setup and so slight adjustments were also made to make things look "right".

the next shot was working on the creme brulee (torching that thing was so much fun!). the colors for this were kept cool and neutral - by doing this, it really brought out the colors of the creme brulee and gave it that "yum" factor that karen told me is what every image should aim for... the "yum" factor is most certainly there! 

there was also a panna cotta which i didn't have the opportunity to shoot (i was busy trying to unmold another one just in case the first one started looking too "juicy" and flat... which it did eventually). the lemon panna cotta was given a nice splash of color with some ground pistachios and raspberry coulis. since there was a lot going on with the dish, things were kept really simple and the palette was white-on-white.

lastly was the chocolate crinkle. it was given a healthy dusting of powdered sugar and plated on this somewhat retro-y brown floral plate. frankly it looks like this plate was made for these cookies! the one thing i didn't capture in this photograph is the subtle pattern of the white tablecloth the plate is on... the tablecloth pattern really compliments the pattern of the plate itself and does a really nice job of tying the final image karen took together. 

overall this collaboration was a really great experience! i had a lot of fun learning different quirks about food photography and most importantly it really inspired me to shoot more food and things in general. i'm looking forward to the karen's final images but in the meantime here's a little sneak peak on her blog "julie's chocolate crinkles"

like a sweet bird with dorky humor...

i had the opportunity to go see icelandic songbird emiliana torrini at hiro ballroom with my friend angela 2 weekends ago. after stopping off for some good grub at westville (the w. 10th version) we took a lovely stroll through the west village up towards chelsea to hiro ballroom. 

since we got there pretty much when the doors opened, we took the time out to "strategize" and find our placement in the venue (neither of us had been to hiro before). we settled on the landing of the stairs - it gave us a great view of the entire stage and we didn't have to worry about getting our view blocked by the tall icelandic folks we saw on line earlier. 

emiliana came out donned in a dress that resembled a muumuu but with a little more structure added to it - although a bit odd looking i'm sure it was comfy. the concert was great - her voice lovely and the songs were a good mixture of sad melodic crooning to poppy make-you-wanna-dance tunes... her energy was great and her band was awesome... she definitely won me over with her ramblings of falling in love and a somewhat zen approach to life and i'm pretty sure angela and i kept whispering to each other after each story "oh damn, she's so cute"... 

the show lasted about 90 min (or slightly longer). but i enjoyed it so much that it really felt shorter and was definitely disappointed that the concert was over. regardless, emiliana was great to see and i have a feeling the next time she plays in nyc, she'll probably end up in a bigger venue that won't have the intimacy we experienced that night... so i'm gonna give angela a shout out for having the good call on seeing this show! whootwhoot!