Tartine Bakery

Tartine Bakery
San Francisco, CA
June 2016

 

Aroi Thai

Aroi Thai
Rhinebeck, New York
July 18, 2019

Aroi is a delicious Thai restaurant in what appears to be a repurposed old house. I really love restaurants like this, where there’s a cozy feeling of being in someone’s dining room. The light and windows, in particular, are excellent. The garden is lovely, too, but for now we’re going to take a look at some great window light in the interior.

Lately in my photography I’ve been very drawn to this low key, underexposed look. I think part of it is railing against the super bright photos I used to take, but an even bigger part of it is my love for twilight and nighttime - and this brings a bit of that feeling even during the day.

I do love a very bright sun-lit space, but there’s something magical about the calm contemplativeness of a shadowy space.

If you also find yourself drawn to scenes like this, you should absolutely read In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. It’s a fantastic book about the beauty of darkness.

 

Cooking Video - Japanese rice and veggies!

I enjoyed the Ragu video so much I thought I’d give it another try. This time around I cooked up some fine Japanese rice in my favorite fancy pants rice cooker, and partnered it with some fresh kale and some leftovers from the freezer. It was a lovely rainy day, so you’ll hear a good bit of rain at the start, but it tapers off as we go along.

The wooden rice spatula that I soak in water is Yakusugi, meaning it is made from a cedar tree on Yakushima that’s over 1000 years old. If you soak it in water long enough the rice won’t even stick to it. I didn’t soak it long enough for that to happen here - so I just ate the rice that stuck to it. I got it several months ago and it smells absolutely wonderful. Even the drawer that it’s in and the cabinet that that drawer is in have this incredible cedar scent now. It’s pretty remarkable. I got it from The Rice Factory, linked below, but it was a limited offer, so you’d probably have to hunt one down.

Toyama Tenkomori Japanese Short Grain Rice (it’s delicious):

https://the-rice-factory.square.site/product/toyama-tenkomori/7?cp=true&sa=false&sbp=false&q=false&category_id=6

Cooked in Zojirushi NP-NVC10 Induction Pressure Rice Cooker (it’s awesome). It uses some crazy combo of induction and pressure cooking to try at cook rice to the most magical fluffiness. It's actually trying to mimic what it's like cooking in a stone pot over a fire in a traditional japanese kamado stove.

https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/npnwc

Kale Recipe:

Just do what you see on screen. I made it up on the spot.

The other dishes were leftovers:

Dal Tadka, sometimes I follow this recipe, sometimes I wing it:

https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/restaurant-style-dal-tadka/

Gumbo z’Herbs from John Currence’s Pickles, Pigs, and Whiskey:

https://chefjohncurrence.com/pickles-pigs-whiskey/

Camera: 

Canon 6D (mk1)

Microphone: Rode Video Micro

Tripod: I used my flimsy little Benro travel tripod for this one because I didn’t want to go get my big tripod. 3 Legged Thing Ball Head

Cooking Video - Ragu!

I’ve found that when it comes to making videos, the less post production I give myself to do, the more likely I am to actually finish the project. So I shot this incredibly simple, no-nonsense cooking video as a little trial run for that, and I’m pretty happy with how it came out.

I did, however, let it sit for several months before I got around to putting it together and uploading it. But I’ve got a baby, so I’m going to use that as my excuse.

But the best part is that after uploading this video, I got inspired to make another one, and that one is significantly better, and coming up soon!

Chez Edgar - Gatinaeu, Québec, Canada

With the first snow just landing on the ground here in Kingston in mid November, I’m reminded of this trip Regina and I took to Canada last February.

Why would we go to Canada in the middle of winter, you might ask?

I don’t know, maybe we were a little off our rockers.

Bein’ touristy

Or maybe we had Hyatt hotel points and Ottawa was the most fun sounding place in driving distance.

Regina got suckered into this “Obama cookie”. I knew it would be flavorless, but I put aside my snobbery for a moment and got into the spirit.

It.
Was.
Cold.

Cold like we’d never been. But - there’s a fabulous outdoor spa that is now etched into my memory as the ultimate winter destination, and I’m dying to go back.

Yes, that’s all ice on the ground.

On the morning of our trip up to the spa we drove from Ottawa into Gatinaeu and stopped to have brunch at this little joint I came across on Foursquare, as I do. A photo of the dutch baby is all it took for me to be completely certain this was a must-visit spot.

Regina and I were really shocked when we got down into the quiet neighborhood where Chez Edgar was located, only to find that apparently they don’t salt the roads over here, and we didn’t have tire chains, which surely people use - because the roads were entirely slick ice. Parking the car was… a challenge.

But oh boy, was it ever worth it. The food here is phenomenal.

And, while we waited for the food to come, I decided to play around a bit with my tilt-shift lens and do some wild perspective control, which I never really do with it when shooting architecture. We had fun.

Also, I’m sure as soon as Regina sees this post she’s going to start drooling and asking “when are we going back?”

The next day, we drove to Montreal in a whiteout blizzard. We made it.

Oh, Canada.

Don't trample your passion by demanding too much from it.

My love for photography was born out of a love for food.

Or maybe it was always there, and the food just helped bring it out.

Before I took photos professionally, I spent years taking photos for my food blog and eventually for this private underground restaurant that I ran out of my apartment.

It was a lot of fun and I really loved doing it, but I didn’t have enough money saved up to make a go of it. I learned a really powerful lesson there about demanding too much from your passion

I was extremely passionate about food and cooking, but I asked way too much of it too soon.

We hear all these stories of, say, an attorney who’s fed up with law work so she quits and starts a wildly successful pie baking business. What you don’t hear about is the runway of success that she had selling pies for a long time before realizing she could make enough doing it to quit her job.

Yeah, I didn’t do that.

I just said “I want to do this and I’m going to make it work” and tried to force it into being.

Could I have been successful? Eventually. But only if I had income from another source supporting it, or a long enough runway from savings to make it work.

Sean McCabe talks extensively about how to do this in his book Overlap. A big part of why that message resonated with me so much is because I had this exact experience, where I demanded my delicate little sapling of a passion bear me fruit immediately.

It doesn’t work like that.

Nature dictates that things needs time to grow organically.

So I learned my lesson. When I started to get paid photography work, it was a very gradual thing, where I SLOWLY got more and more work to the point that I could afford to stop doing my current job (real estate agent) and move over to photography full time.

I made less at the photography, but I enjoyed it significantly more, and that has always propelled me forward. I’ve always been careful to protect this little seedling, and not demand too much of it too quickly, because the pain of losing my last passion is always in the back of my mind.

But when my old days of cooking came up in conversation, I started to remnisce about the fun I had, and finding my old listing of Foursquare and thumbing through the images took me back. I miss it.

I wonder if I’ll get back into cooking professionally some day?

I always liked the idea of running a bed and breakfast.

Maybe it’s still in the cards.

When the time is right.

For now, have some fun flipping through some images of my past at Sky Garden Bistro:

“Is expensive” hehe

---

Read more on Food and Insight

Photo Archive Critique - Angel's Share - April 22, 2015.

Memories.

That’s who we really are, right?

What would we be without memories?

Apple likes to play up that nostalgia in the Photos app by creating little memory collections. A recent one popped up with these photos of a trip to Angel’s Share that I took on April 22nd, 2015.

It’s pretty likely, given this visit and subsequent munches at Village Yokocho (which I’ll show you in the next post), that I was out with my old partner in debauchery, Sonny Seng, for this occasion. - I just checked, and he and I also did an east village cocktail crawl just a few days prior, on April 14th, 2015. I discovered the images for that were mysteriously absent from Photos, so that’s been corrected, and I’ll share those with you in the future.

Let’s talk about one of the ingredients of a great photography - love for the subject.

I love craft cocktails - they’re often mysterious, complex, and rich with a history and origin story.

My affection began in college when a friend of mind who really enjoyed a tipple lead me down the path and helped me stock up a home bar. We started off with intensely sugary drinks (have you ever had a Rusty Nail? It’s Drambuie and Scotch. Drambuie is SO SWEET. YUCK. I can’t imagine drinking it now. I gag just thinking about it), which unsurprisingly was also how I eased my way into enjoying coffee.

As I got older or just had more experience with both of these flavorful liquids, I began to appreciate the complex flavors beneath all the sugar, so now I tend to like my drinks fairly dry instead of painfully sweet, and I like my coffee pure black - so I can get the essence of the drink and appreciate all the care and attention that when into its production.

I began to appreciate the story and history that get wrapped up in craft cocktails and the storied bottles they come from, and that love and fascination make them a great subject for me - I already care about and understand my subject, and that helps me know what I want to convey with my images, and to anticipate what’s going to happen next, because I’m deeply familiar with this process - again, because I have experience with the subject and with photographing it.

By this point, I’d been taking pictures of food for years, since it was the subject that originally sparked my interest in photography. But it wasn't only recently that I had transitioned to being a professional photographer, and brought along all that intention when it came to making images.

I made the best images I knew how at the time, always pushing myself to the limit of my knowledge and ability. It’s been several years now, and I can look back on this work and be proud of it, but I can also see some areas for improvement, and I’d like to point those out to you for your benefit.

Fire is always a fun subject, given our deep historic connection to it. I’m glad I kept this image dark, preserving the moody feel of the speakeasy. Smokey cocktails were still a rarity at the time, and this was the first time I’d seen someone blowtorch some spices and then invert a glass on it. It was quite the spectacle.

How could this be improved? I think I crushed the highlights a little too much in the edit - I don’t like that the white of the flame is a little dull and grey. Killing the highlights is a pretty common mistake for beginners, and I made it plenty in my early career.

This photo conveys what’s happening - the finished cocktail being strained into the smoke filled glass - but it’s not as obvious and dramatic as I would like. It’s teaming with grain and noise thanks to me really pumping the ISO on a camera not built for low light performance. If I were taking this picture now, I would really prefer to use a flash behind or to the side of the glass to capture all the smoke. If I couldn’t use the flash, I’d try to put some light source in the room behind the glass by changing my perspective. It’s also a little tight on the composition. These days I like a little more environment and breathing room.

I enjoy a low-key photo, but this feels more dim than it should be. It feels a little dim and muddy, and the sliver of focus on the ice cube and bubbles isn’t really apparent enough, so the image basically looks out of focus. Not a winner all around.

Another shot where the composition is just too tight. It’s focused on the pouring action, so that’s good, but too much of the subject is on the very edge of the frame - both the cup and the shaker. A good rule-of-thumb in photography is to keep your subject away from the very edges of the frame unless you’re going for some intentional disharmony.

This one’s not bad, but would be improved if there was more separation between the glass and the bottles behind it so that you’d be able to more easily focus on the glass.

It’s important to work in a little atmosphere, because no bar is just the drinks - a huge aspect of why you visit one place over another is the atmosphere and ambiance. This picture tells the story of the window in the foreground, the pretty flowering tree in the midground, and the background of buildings across the street. You understand it’s the view you’ll see out the window when you’re here. But, the composition could be better. There’s an opportunity to artfully overlay the grid of the foreground window over the windows of the building in the back, and a few minutes spent perfecting that compostion

Here’s a nice little collection of images of a vibrant orange drink. Probably had carrot juice in it (hey, it was a long time ago). All of these suffer from the same problem that plagues the rest of the set - claustrophobic composition. The final image with the copper cup is slightly better in this regard. You could call this the “learning to use a macro lens” phase. The problem is that this distance is kind of in between where a lens like this shines - it should either be closer and really focused on a single tiny element, or further away and just using its long focal length to make a well compressed shot.

This photo has some nice things going for it - the blurry second drink in the foreground, a somewhat wider composition than the previous images, and a good range of colors. Some people like the diagonal horizon, feeling that it adds action and tension to the image. I don’t. It could work for a stylized image if that’s intentionally what you’re going for, or say, you’re taking a picture of a dirt bike doing a rad launch, but that’s not what I’m after in my imagery. Given my overlap into the discipline of architectural photography, I prefer a more clean, crisp, minimal vibe in my images. So I make sure never to have angled horizons in my imagery these days. But that, of course, is and element of the style I’ve developed, and not necessarily a hard photographic rule.

Hey look, I took this with my iPhone 4! No, I didn’t. I took it with a DSLR, I was just pushing it too hard in the darkness and didn’t even hit the focus. Is it a terrible image? Not necessarily. You can tell what the subject is and you can tell what’s going on, but that’s not good enough for me. I want a more clean and crisp image now, and wouldn’t be satisfied with this. It could be so much better.

This image is fine, but would benefit from a little more space on the top and bottom. So a step or two back would be in order. But also, I probably wouldn’t shoot this image today - I’d instead go for a straight-on, one-point-perspective, again going back to the more architectural imagery approach I’ve adopted.

Here’s the brightest image in the whole set, and I still like this one. It’s wide enough that you get a sense of place and environment, it tells a story of the man behind the bar, working on preparing this drink, the order for which he’s got just off to the side. You can just see his face at the top of the frame, so you can see a little peek of him without it being distracted. The colors and light could be managed a little better in post, but out of this set this is one of my favorites.

Here’s another favorite from this set. It’s dark and low key, but you can still make a bit of detail in Ben’s face and clothing. It captures the mood and ambience of the speakeasy.

The only photo in this set where you get a good look at his face. There’s a lot of wasted space at the top of the frame that isn’t really adding anything to the image. It would be better if I’d shot it landscape, so that he could be looking deep into the frame.

Here’s a fun one where you get to see a smile on his face, as well as the ingredients of the cocktail he’s building in the foreground. I don’t know if they set the bottles out for many of the customers, but he knows how interested I am in what goes into the drink, so he often does this for me. I like all of the elements of this image, but they’re not layered quite as well as they could be - it would be better if there were a clearer view of the cocktail he’s making, since that’s where this whole story is going. This could be accomplished either by my moving to a different vantage point, or by shuffling the bottles around.

Here’s the finished cocktail from the previous shot. I like the angle on the drink here, looking slightly down into the glass and also seeing through it. Light and colors are still a little muddy, as has plagued most of the images in this series, but again, this camera wasn’t built to be a champ in the dark. Or maybe I just didn’t know how to use it well enough back then. There’s a good compositional line here, in that your eye enters the image at the top right and then roams across the bottles and down to the cocktail. And, if your eye enters the frame from anywhere else, it will drift straight to the cocktail thanks to its dominant color. It’s got the guts of a great image and a little refining on structure and light could make it better. It’s also always nice to get rid of or hide those rubber bar things. They’re very practical, but I never like seeing them in photos. But that’s a luxury you’re probably not going to get unless you’re doing an official shoot for them, or unless you’re very persuasive.

Almost good, but the bright light on the left is the most eye catching thing in the image, and pulls the eye away from the cocktail. You know the cocktail is the focus, and you want to look at it and appreciate it, but that bright light just keeps yanking you away. Be careful about what you let be the brightest object in the image, because that is what the viewer is going to see more than anything else.

Many a good sipping session ends with a shot shared between the bartender and the patrons. My love affair with rum was picking up, so that’s what we had. I enjoy this pouring shot where some of the glasses are filled but not yet all of them - it gives you a clear sense of what’s happening. Odd numbers are often stronger than even, so I could have tried to compose this so you didn’t see the fourth glass, but that would be slightly dishonest about the real story - that four people were going to be drinking. There’s always a choice to be made between an artistic image and an honest, storytelling image. I also like that you can see the label on the bottle, and I’m sure Bacardi would like that, too. How could the image be improved? That napkin and empty glass on the right aren’t adding anything, so they could be moved for cropped out. And as with every other image here, I could have moved a little further away or use a slightly wider lens for a less cramped composition. And if I were taking this photo today, I would very intentionally line up the glasses in a perfectly straight line.

One thing that comes from experience is a willingness to get more involved in the image. This was fairly early in my career, so I mostly sat back and took the pictures photo journalistically. Also, I was just here having drinks, not on an assignment. But these days, even if I’m just traveling or out having fun, if I see a photo I want, I’m doing to reach out and fiddle with whatever I need to in order to get the photo I want. I build the image I see as I see it in my mind, because that’s how I share my vision of the world with my viewers.

Do this.

I encourage you to take this approach with your own pictures, no matter what skill level you’re at. Look back at pictures from a week ago, a year ago, 5 years ago, and ask yourself what you were doing then, and what you can do better now, and the photos you take today and tomorrow will be better for it.

Props to Ben

Quick shoutout to Ben Rojo for making some of the most fabulous drinks around. When he sees these old pictures of himself he’ll probably respond as many do when looking at old pictures of themselves: “hey, delete those!”

If you read my previous post on the power of repetition and prolific production, then you know the best thing you can do is go out and put some of the stuff you learned here to use. Send me some pictures you took using the lessons you learned from this.

Frank

Hot Dog outpost on “The Drag” at the University of Texas. Great spot for drunk eats. Intimidating for the sober.

Frank
The Drag - Austin, TX
$
★★☆☆☆

The onion rings on top remind me of a tandem rotor helicopter. (I went down a rabbit hole of reading about helicopter mechanics after writing this comment. Lost for hours.)

Is there any food more iconic of summer than the hot dog? Well, probably, but I was on a hot dog kick for a while last year, so when I was craving lunch in Austin I thought I’d see what they had in the hot dog department. If I were doing a more scientific study I would have gone for the most simple hot dog at each joint in order to make a fair comparison. Unfortunately, my highest priority when searching for food is trying something new, something I can only get at the particular place I am. In this case, that equated to a beast of a hot dog that screams Texas: the “Drag Dog”, so named for this dog hut’s location on “The Drag”, a string of shops on Guadalupe Street within the University of Texas. What’s on it?

Brisket.

BBQ Sauce.

A locally made, smoked hotdog.

Pickles & Onions.

It was super intense, over the top, even. Especially for someone who’s always trying to eat a little healthier. But when I’m out I crave adventure, and this dog certainly has it. But my favorite thing about it? The house-made bun, reminiscent for me of a northeastern lobster roll.

The Drag Dog: Local-made smoked beef dog with chopped brisket, Texas BBQ sauce, pickle, and onion on a custom-made Frank bun.

The manager of Frank noticed me taking photos of my hot dog and came over to ask if I was with Grubhub or something like that. Wait, was I? No, just up to my normal antics of snapping my food. Then I offered to take some photos of whatever dish she’d like, so she sent out something I really wasn’t expecting.

Reuben Fries: Waffle fries with melted Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, corned beef, and Thousand Island dressing.

I hadn’t even noticed the section of the menu with waffle fries, so when I first saw this I was bewildered. I could hardly tell what it was. I also thought “Is this the most photogenic item on the menu?”

But I shrugged and tried to find a good spot to take some photos of it anyway. I’d already used the cool distressed table as the backdrop for the hotdog, so I wandered around the lot to find other good backgrounds for this texan poutine sorta thing. I liked the rocks and succulents in this planter, which bring some different colors to the image and also give it a little bit of context. With food photos, I’m always looking for something to place the food in the environment, so it not only says “here’s some food” but also “here’s some food and a little atmosphere that you’ll feel when you’re there.” Because going to a restaurant is never just about the food. There’s a whole experience wrapped up in there, and that’s something I like to convey with my images.

Meanwhile, Heather decided she was hungry enough to order something and went for this veggie dog.

Veggie dog with sauerkraut

After we ate, we wandered around the lot a bit more and Heather took a few pictures of me on her AE-1, and we also came across this cool looking door. I never saw the photo she took of it, but I’m sure it’s an exciting world of textures in black & white.

Thoughts on Frank

There are some creative items on the menu that I hadn’t seen anywhere before, but none of the flavors really changed my life. The food is very heavy and hearty, so I suspect it would make very good drunk grub. And given this outpost’s location on a college campus, I’m sure there’s plenty of need for that.

About the images

The location was kind of interesting, in this communal yard called “Space 24 Twenty” that seems to be host to different events, and it nestled between Frank and an Urban Outfitters. Like most of my early days in Austin, it was very overcast and I wasn’t feeling very inspired by the dull light in the lot. I also wasn’t seeing much that really jumped out at me as exciting to photograph. But I’d set the intention of making some food images here, so I wandered around and looked for interesting things to take photos of anyway. I didn’t end up with anything portfolio worthy, but I do really enjoy this image of the chipped paint on the table, which has the potential to be a nice abstract print. So there’s a lesson there in always pushing yourself to make images. You can’t love an image that you refused to take because you were being pouty about not having the light you want.

Dizzy's Club Fall 2017

Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, Fall Menu 2017
10 Columbus Circle, New York
Client: Great Performances
Date: September 19th, 2017

Dizzy's Club Spring 2017 Menu

Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, Spring 2017 Menu
10 Columbus Circle, New York
Client: Great Performances
April 18, 2017

Boatyard Restaurant - How to be in the moment and enjoy the little things

Don't take pictures. That's what Regina often stresses to me when we're on vacation. She wants me to be in the moment and more importantly to be present with her, rather than wrapped up in creating pictures.

But when you walk me in to a place like this, what do you expect? You can't just take me somewhere beautiful and ask me to ignore it.

Can't. Be. Done.

So let's talk about this place I can't resist. Boatyard is what I like to call 'upscale nautical.' Let me paint the picture:

• Super yachts parked in the canal out back

• Thick wooden beams

• White beadboard walls

• Navy blue accents

• A chandelier made of oars

• A canoe-turned-light-fixture 

• A furled sail hanging from the ceiling

• Ropes. Ropes everywhere!

There's even a bar cabana among the palms on the back patio along the canal.

Excellent space by Miami's Big Time Design.

The food, by the way, is excellent. Not to be missed.

Boatyard Restaurant
1555 SE 17th Street
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
$$$
★★★★☆
February 23rd, 2017

We flew into Ft. Launderdale because the tickets were way cheaper than flying into Tampa, which was much closer to where Regina's parents live. We'd need to cross the state by car, but that was a problem we'd be dealing with the next day.

We came in a day early and stayed at a hotel. We enjoyed a morning in the town while we awaited Regina's father to come pick us up. It was really nice having some alone vacation time together before visiting the family. I learned later this year a massive difference exists between "a trip to see the family" and "a real vacation". And while the later days of this trip fall more on the former side, I'm going to keep calling it a vacation none the less.

I digress.

Not being one to go hunting for food willy-nilly, I looked up places to go on the Eater's "10 Hottest Resturants in Fort Lauderdale". There I discovered Boatyard, which we loved so much we made a second stop here before we flew out.

I don't know if I've always had such a love for the nautical, but it certainly feels like it's always been there. I'm a calm person and I like to relax, some might even refer to me as "chill." I get the feeling most folks who like to drift on the waves feel the same way. That's the life in Florida, right? 

Possible Florida Life Priorities:

• Take it easy.

• Lounge in the sun.

• Put your feet in the sand. 

• Enjoy life.

Sounds about right.

When we stepped into Boatyard and saw these ropes dividing the rooms, a canoe light fixture, and a chandelier made out of painted oars, I immediately knew I loved this place. The entrance is dark and the other rooms have bright skylights and open up onto the canal beyond. It's a fantastic use of framing and hide-and-reveal design.

We asked for a table and were lead out to the patio along the canal, which is exactly where we wanted the to be. We only sat down for a moment before I sprung out of my seat to roam around the restaurant taking pictures.

Fortunately it wasn't busy on this particular day and I was able to get some nice shots of the space itself without a crowd.

The beams, the ropes, the tile, the beautiful wooden floor, the sail, the white beadboard... what more could you ask for?

I don't often do a lot of extensive editing / photoshopping on images like this where I'm just roaming around taking photos. But this one below compelled me to work on it.

Can you spot all 7 of the changes?

In spite of all the work I did on this, including the nightmare of photoshopping out the vent duct, I still prefer the previous image from the other side of the bar.

There's a lesson in there about not trying to force it. Just seek out the best compositions that already sing on their own.

Still, it was a fun exercise and I learned a lot of good techniques doing it.

This was our first day in Florida, our first day of escape from the harsh and crippling northern winter, and it couldn't get any better. Is there any better departure from cold weather driving you indoors than to lounge in the sun and have a meal outside in a t-shirt? I think not.

While I absolutely loved the design and detail of the place inside, I was most happy to be sitting out here and soaking up the atmosphere. Contrast gives us clarity, and I'd never felt anything so nice as escaping winter and coming to this.

Let's talk about the food! 

I didn't take many food photos here, in fact the only one I have to show you is this singular image below. In the spirit of truly enjoying the vacation, I was not going to risk letting my food get cold. So when this dish came out I moved quickly and made this image with the bubbly Regina had ordered.

I've mentioned before how much I love grilled octopus, and they do it exceptionally well here. The sautéed greens, chili oil, and crispy fried chickpeas made for a flavor and texture explosion I was in no way ready for. Would I say it was among the best octopus dishes I've had in my entire life?

I would.

'Oh hey, I heard you like pictures so I'm going to take a picture of you taking a picture.'

After this amazing lunch an excellent introduction to Florida, Regina's father came to pick us up and drive us back to his side of the state. In a convertible, naturally! Could you live in Florida and not have an open air car? That would just be silly.

Once we arrived on the gulf side, we settled in to relaxing slow days in the sun, and planned out our upcoming beach excursions. Check in next time to see our first stop.

By the way, if you'd like to know more about this trip, you can get the introduction here, or take a look at the February Retrospective for an overview of the whole trip!

Bunker Vietnamese - How to take better food photos on location

Bun-Ker was one of the restaurants that really put Ridgewood on the map. Back in the day, Ridgewood was just a sleepy neighborhood with nothing exciting around. The first touch of hipsterdom was Bun-Ker Vietnamese, this restaurant in what was basically the middle of nowhere on an industrial stretch of Metropolitan Avenue. I remember when I first drove by and saw a crowd of people huddled outside and thought "where the hell are they going?" That popularity begets growth, though, and times change. Bushwick has grown radically since those days and Bun-Ker traded one obscure location for another, and simplified its name to just "bunker". The food, though, has gotten even tastier. Have a look.

Bunker Vietnamese
99 Scott Avenue
Bushwick, Brooklyn
$$$
★★★☆☆
February 16th, 2017

This was one of my first photos of a restaurant dish that I did some intentional styling on. For years I've been photographing dishes exactly as they're served, which doesn't always make a compelling image. So this time I played around with adding some of the ingredients that make up the dish. In this case, the summer rolls, or gỏi cuốn,  contained mint and basil and the sauce contained peanuts and chilis. Deciding what to do with each of the items was a bit of a challenge, and I definitely moved that pepper around several times. Here a few photos I took along the way, to give you an idea of how it came to be.

The first shot had this light shaft in it, which I really like now looking back at it. I took it out to simplify the image, but now I kinda wish I'd kept it.

So here's the image facing the opposite direction to remove the sunshaft. 

I asked for some of the ingredients that made up the dish, and the first they brought me were these sprigs of mint and basil. They were fairly large, so where they fit was pretty obvious.

Next up were the peanuts and chilis. I really wanted to fit all three in because I like 3s, but it just wasn't quite working.

For the final image I went with a  tighter crop and only 2 chilis. I also spilled a little bit of the peanuts, because I feel a little mess adds some life to an image that can otherwise look too sterile.

So that was a fun beginning to styling food images, and you saw that I got much better at it by the time I went to photograph Cebu later in 2017.

I didn't do a lot more with the styling here after that initial experiment, though. On the papaya salad, I had a sad little pile of peanuts that looked a little too intentional. But the light is good, so that's nice. I tried a few different compositions and styling, but the light shifted away from this spot so none of them were quite as good as this one.

The next dish they brought me was this fried crepe filled with bean sprouts, called bánh xèo. I had no idea what it was at the time. I was also surprised by the amount of greenery on the plate, which is always a welcome addition.

I decided to switch up the location on this one and move to a spot with better light as well as a little bit of character from the restaurant. they have this round counter with a planter in the middle filled with bamboo, something unique I've not seen elsewhere. I felt adding the bamboo leaves to the frame helped to put the food in context, giving a little a little hint of vietnam's tropics.

I kept the bamboo leaf vibe going for the next dish as the sun was just starting to hit the leaves and give them a nice glow, which I felt added a nice dimension fo the images. Although looking back at it, they may be a little too bright and stealing attention away from the rolls. This whole looking at year old images thing really gives some perspective, haha.

I think these are called chả giò, spring rolls.

Next up was the Pho, which for me was one of the starts of the show. I struggled to include some stuff to style in this one and ended up with just the two little peppers. I'm also noticing now that that bamboo leaf is a little on the sad side. But the red bowl and the spots of red beef in the pho pull the eye, so it's still pretty eye catching (and tasty).

We picked up the pace to move through more dishes, so I cut back on the styling and just went with simple images for the rest of the shoot.

What to do with a Bahn Mi?

Cut it in half?

This next dish went through a minor change in styling, but I feel it makes a bit different for folks who obsess over patterns: going from three cucumbers and two tomatoes to three cucumbers and three tomatoes. I also rotated the pork chop slightly to give it more prominent placement. I also had never before seen the steamed pork quiche, called Chả Trứng Hấp, and that was pretty mind-blowing. So luscious and fatty.

Pork Chop, before styling

Pork Chop after styling

I really love the design inside Bunker, it's a very fun and colorful spot with a lot of character and I wanted to work that into these images. You know how I love interiors, given that the bulk of my photography is either food or places. Why? Because it all goes together to inform the experience. Being in the place sets the mood, it starts to transport you, and then the plate arrives, culture and history right before you that you get to ingest and become one with. It's a beautiful thing.

Anyway, that's why I always want to get a bit of atmosphere in with my food images, because when you're eating at a restaurant, you're not just having some food, you're getting an immersive experience. 

Blurring out the colorful chairs in the background helped to play them down a bit so you can still focus on the fish. Your eye starts in the top left corner and is lead right by the colors and lines, then your eye hits the vertical lines of the bottles, which brings you down to the lovely fried fish

I kept the theme of showing off the restaurant's character going in the next shot. There was this beautiful painting on the floor that struck me as a great backdrop for this curry. I started with just the bowl in the center, but I needed a little something else to feel lively. Adding the diagonal lines with the chopsticks did it, and adding the rice bowl gave a little more bulk to the image and also shows off the complete dish. 

Daylight was fading fast, this being February and all, so I was getting up in several second exposures that aren't so great for food that is quickly getting cold. It was time to get out the lights. Bunker has a great night time vibe and I wanted that to come through some of the images as well, so I started working on some darker flashed images. The first pictures were a little too heavy on the darkness to fit in with the rest of the set, so I found a good balance with a contrasty flash lit foreground and a soft, inviting tungsten background, that says "come in and enjoy this fantastic, perfect plate of shrimp.

And were they ever amazing! For all the amazing flavors present in the other dishes, the spicy, sweet, lemongrass tinged sauce and perfecty juicy shrimp of this dish won me over as my favorite of the night.

Thanks for reading!

Have you been to Bunker? Do you like Vietnamese food? Hit me up with your favorite dish in the comments.

2017 Retrospective - February

Feb 1st - Another Met Trip, this time with folks from the Seanwes Community

Of course I spent half the time just enamored with the architecture in this one section. All this ancient art, and I wanna look at the building it's housed in.

This piece caught my eye. Such intense colors and the range between the brightest and darkest parts is incredible. I should go back and look at this one for a few more hours. Love it.

There are a few members of the Seanwes community that live in the tristate area and they sometimes come to NYC to meet up. One such visit included a trip to the Met. What better to do on a cold winter day than wander around indoors? Speaking of which, it's getting about time for me to visit again.

Feb 8th - Blue Bottle Bushwick

Pour-over action at blue bottle coffee

While I was at Blue Bottle I decided to do one of these popular "what in my bag" Images. It's a little bit of a mess, haha. I no longer have the big Tokina lens on the left. The aperature started to jam up all the time. It had to go.

It was really exciting that Blue Bottle opened an outpost in Bushwick. There aren't nearly enough excellent coffee shops in the neighborhood. It also had a clean white modern look that few other coffee shops around have. Moiz, too, was pumped about it coming around, so he asked me to meet up with him there. We talked about restructuring the photo team and moving away from the retainer system, so February was my last month of retainer work for them. It's been all project-based since then, which has been fantastic. It has freed me up to take on a lot more client work elsewhere since they no longer need me to produce content constantly.

Also Feb 8th - Galen Gatzke's F*ck Cancer Benefit

I realized a few years ago that I really don't enjoy event photography, so I stopped doing it professionally. But, when a friend from Nooklyn got cancer and his sister was hosting a benefit for him, I was very happy to do my part to help out. There was a raffle and some really cool art and really amazing prizes, including something like $900 of advertising and a fancy Yeti cooler. I should have bought more raffle tickets, haha.

Feb 10th - Snowy photos in Forest Park

I see all these wonderful photos of snowy places on Instagram and it makes me jealous. So I tend to stroll out and look for fun things to photograph when it snows. But I still haven't taken one that I'm really proud of. So the quest continues.

Regina and I started working on Save the Dates for our wedding later in the year. Or at least I have some samples in Photos on this day.

Feb 12th - Dinner at Kyo-Ya with Jacob

I only took one photo at Kyo-Ya, but it's of Jacob being Jacob, and therefor not suitable for this blog. Instead, here's a rainy sidewalk near the restaurant. I really wanted to reflection, but I wish now that I'd waited one more second to get this person stepping into the puddle and creating ripples.

I'm well known for taking tons of photos every time I go out to eat. It's the curse of being a food photographer and takes quite a bit of fortitude to overcome. But I did in this case. I was incredibly excited to try out Kyo-Ya. It's a French-influenced Japanese Kaiseki restaurant with an incredible prix-fixe menu. And with that, I've got another Michelin Star dining experience under my belt.

Feb 16th - Bun-ker Vietnamese

Lil' fried meat rolls by the bamboo.

Harley is buds with the owner of Bunker, so when they opened in the new location Harley set it up for me to photograph some items from the menu.

This is when I first started to play with food styling and including ingredients in the photos. The spring roll had the most transformation, going from just the rolls and sauce to including all the mint, peanuts, and peppers. It's a much more exciting image than what we had before.

Bunker is a fun and pretty place. I definitely recommend you try it out.

Feb 21st - Harley's House

Meow!

Harley's house is beautiful and a very comfortable place to be, so I always enjoy when he invites me over to photograph it. He and Tristin (now his wife!) had done some redecorating with a bunch of flea market finds, so he wanted to get some new photos to show the place off. I'm very happy with these images and a few of them are still in my portfolio. I love the vibe they've got going here and would be excited to snap more places like it.

We took Harley's son to the park afterward so he could burn some energy. The kid is an atomic bomb.

Feb 22nd - Winter in Florida

Regina and I went to Florida to visit her parents and also to escape from the brutal NYC winter. I've heard of this 'snowbird' concept of people leaving the frozen north to enjoy a winter in the tropics. I always assumed it was just an activity for the rich and not something achievable by mere mortals. But thanks to having family down there to visit, we were able to have a fairly cheap trip out of it, and it really affected me. I want to do it every year from now on. And since I'm writing this blog post in January of 2018, that means it's time to get cracking on planning it. Especially since this year's winter has already been so rough.

I intended to make some vlogs from this trip but only ever got around to making one., which is linked above. I've got lots of footage left to make the additional videos, but it will probably never see the light of day, in lieu of spending time on better things I can produce now. You can check it out here.

Below are a couple of highlights from the trip that I never posted about. I also recorded some video that I intended to make vlogs with, but that hasn't happened. I did, however, write posts for all of these upcoming things, so I'll link those when they're up.

Stay tuned. There's a e-mail sign up at the bottom of this post if you want notifications when they're up!

23rd - Boatyard Restaurant, Fort Lauderdale

She snappin' me snappin' her.

Feb 24th - Casey Key

I fell in love with the beach.

Feb 26th - Siesta Key

More beach love, this time with a side of architecture.

Also Feb 26th - Lido Key Tiki Bar

The Speakeasy of beachside tiki bars

A Fond Farewell to Florida Fronds

Cebu Interiors Case Study Video

In the previous post I showed you the images I created for Cebu of the restaurant's interior. To dive deeper into how that project came to be and how the images went from concept to finished project, I produced this video!

Rustic Farmhouse Style at Saraghina

There are few restaurants that really take me back to the Brooklyn of yesteryear, but this place always does. The style is often imitated these days, but as my mother pointed out on a recent visit, this is the genuine article. It really reminds me of why I love this place, along with upstate new york. There's a coziness to it that is just so comforting. It's a great place to go for a slow, drizzly day.

The pasta is pretty, the pizza is better.

Saraghina Restaurant
Italinan / Pizzeria
435 Halsey Street
Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

The Story

Oct. 24th, 2017, Tuesday

My mother and I were roaming around in Williamsburg running errands while Regina was having hear hair put into braids in anticipation of our honeymoon trip to Hawaii. Braids are no-muss, no-fuss, so Regina can collapse in to bed at night and hop out in the morning without having to do any daily maintenance. Very good for traveling. She was having it done in Bed-Stuy, and she was finished around the time we were ready to have lunch. Any time I'm out, I try to find a restaurant in the neighborhood I'm in so I can have excuse to go there without having to travel. But nothing in Williamsburg was really jumping out to me. However, the last time I'd dropped Regina off at the salon to get her hair done, I wandered around the neighborhood and seriously considered having dinner at Saraghina, so much so that I was standing at the door reading the menu. I decided to have my money and go home that time, but the desire to eat there lingered. You know that feeling when you really want something, but don't get it and it's still nipping at you in the back of your mind. Yeah, that's the one. So I had to go.

It was a drizzly day, which felt perfect for this place. It was slow and there were only a few other diners present. So we got a great seat right by the windows, and I was able to get a few photos of the place without having to avoid patrons in the photos.

There's a quick photo tip for you. Want to photograph a restaurant? Go in the middle of a weekday. This was 2pm on a Tuesday. I only had my iPhone 7 on me because I'm trying to be more conscious about not carrying my camera constantly. It's nice to go out in the city and not have a heavy bag with me. But of course I always get into a situation where I wish I had my camera so I could take better photos. This is one such occasion. But still, I'm happy with the results. It's not like the iPhone is bad, per-se. Just not as good. But if you're reading this on your phone and the images are small, then it's not as obvious as it is on a larger display. So, there's that tangent.

I focused on photographing the space right around the windows, to capture the mood of the day and a bit of the design of the the place. I went very minimal on the edits, but now the lack of perfectly straight lines on that one picture of Regina with the windows behind her is making me a little crazy. But I'm not going to change it. It's important to be comfortable with imperfection. I slipped a few photos of Regina's silhouette in because 1. I love her & 2. I've been playing with more silhouette and dark areas in my photos. So a lot of these were a trial in embracing having really dark areas in my images. I shot so many super bright, light filled images for so long that I'm looking to go in a different direction, and these are experiments in that realm, pushing my iPhone to see what it can do.

After the interiors I took a photo of my menu, which reminds me of a book I made in college out of an old pair of pants. I took a bookbinding class that has always stuck with me. Hand made books always catch my eye and I have to pick them up and inspect how they're put together, which is exactly what happened with this menu. The denim cover is really what too me back to my pants book, which I believe my mother still has on her mantle. I don't make books much anymore, but I still seeing handmade ones, so this was exciting for me. The stamped logo is really nice, too.

The drink was a special that day. Spiced, Spiced Cider. It was fantastic, comforting, a great herald of fall. Regina and I were flying to Hawaii the next day, but we both really love fall, so it was good to get a potent taste of it right before we left.

Finally, the pasta. I don't eat much pasta, so it's a great treat when I do have it. So I was very excited to order this Tagliatelle al Ragu. It's the dish I was eyeing that other day when I was outside looking at the menu. It was good, but the pizza Regina ordered blew it out of the water.

Sorry, no pizza photos, because I've gotten over the hump of making my fellow diners wait while I photograph their food. No reason they should suffer for my craft. If I'm going to take food photos it will be of my own dish, and I try to get my shot as fast as possible so I can enjoy my food at its peak, too. Somethings, though, I get caught up in the moment and keep snapping. But that's how I know I still love doing this, so I'm never going to chase that feeling away.

Case Study - Cebu Restaurant, Brooklyn, NY

Zazie

Zazie
Cole Valley, San Francisco
$$
★★★★★

Brunch places can be a dime a dozen, and still lines will be out the door. I was pleasantly surprised with the amazing quality of the food at Zazie. Though the line is often an hour long, there's a helpful little guide by the door to let you know very accurately what your wait will be. You can also grab one of the first-come-first-served tables out front, but I prefer the garden in the back. Get there early to get the Miracle (ricotta) pancakes before they sell out. Also try the Poached Eggs La Mer (dungeness crab eggs benedict, basically). Fun Fact - Zazie pays its staff full wages and benefits, so tipping is not required. More restaurants should follow suit.