Last week, we told you what actually goes on at a Food52 photoshoot—and this week, we'll give you a similar recap, but one that's not quite as neatly organized.
How else to fully reflect the nature of our slightly-chaotic, always fun shoot days (and because not every photoshoot has nugget-y takeaways)?
So here's our day, unabridged and unashamed, from start to finish, beginning with toast ending with... a whole roasted fish?
Good mooooorning and welcome to our "office," where Ali, who doubles as Book Editor (can't you tell from that stack o' galleys by her feet?) is armed with a mug of coffee—and some wine?
A closer look at our "desk" (ignore my feet):
Just a small selection of flowers to choose from (many of which were selected by our Art Director Alexis):
Burnt-ish toast for "breakfast." This melty pat of butter doesn't just happen—we torched it! (Note the supernaturally bubbling butter two photos below):
Take a wild guess as to why we shot this photo:
The beginning of cream pie, before we smoothed out the pudding (and before we piled on a whipped cream hat!):
The end of cream pie, the real version:
The end of cream pie, the Instagram-filtered version:
Cream pie, the afterlife:
Two angles on the same zucchini cupcakes, shellacked with a frosting that gets it bright-green color from an herb (to find out which one, check back in on Monday!):
And an extreme close-up by James:
After dessert, it was time for bed. Ali nestles corn husk soup (recipe coming soon, we promise!) into its placemat blanket (and goes through a lot of basil and cheese to find the perfect garnish):
A midnight nacho snack, and additional proof that Ali's hands touch every piece of food we eat:
We put off saved the day's greatest challenge for last—whole roasted fish that Test Kitchen Chef Josh Cohen filleted on set:
What else do you want to know about how our photoshoots work? Talk to us in the comments!
Written by: Sarah Jampel
Popular on Food52
11 Comments
This article might help someone understand what happens in the day of a professional food media person, but it doesn't help the typical home cook in any of the more immediately relevant situations happening in his/her kitchen.
But, it is well known that media people like to indulge in navel gazing, so have at it. With the Instagram/Twitter/Facebook generation coming of age, we should expect more of these kind of focus in the future.
I am OLD.
We hear you. It takes different resources to take a beauty shot than it does to capture a process, but we're working on it.
Thanks for your feedback!
Thanks for acknowledging my request.
I'm no recipe author, but I capture some of my own key cooking moments with my smartphone (their cameras are good now) and upload to Flickr for my own personal reference in the future.
I note that this interest in providing shots of the process seem to be closely tied to the person. For example, a certain unnamed guy with the initials of JKL-A who posts to a certain website that -- oh, let's call SEATS -- seems to be pretty good at documenting key steps. This person has done so even when he wasn't as good at photography and didn't have the choice equipment.
Because of this, I am convinced that this is more of a mindset of the publication or individual in question rather than the available resources. Cooks Illustrated magazine back in the Nineties was able to do this, so my belief is that today's camera-ladened cooks should be able to provide such documentation should they adopt this mindset.
I hope Food52 endeavours to encourage recipe contributors to not just hand in beauty shots and some words, but to include other media that will enhance the educational value of their work because other sites are already doing this.
Thank you!
Apparently, that has been lost in your fancy NYC digs.
Just take the damned photo, don't worry about tripods, whether or not there's any empty dirty prep bowl in the background, a crumpled up paper towel, some ingredients spilled on the counter.
Remember, a large part of Julia Childs' genius was not to hide her mistakes. *THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE DO: MAKE MISTAKES*. Many of today's food media folks have lost sight of that vision, unhealthily obsessed with perfect presentation.
Again, I reiterate that Food52 did a much better job of capturing the process in the past. That emphasis has been lost in recent years.
You do not need to ask your lead photography James Ransom to shoot the process. This can be adequately done by your test kitchen chef and test kitchen managers, plus any random bystander.
The underlying problem is that the senior editorial management team has let this slide, not resources or talent.
If you want it to happen, it will because the resources necessary to do this are inconsequential in 2016.
See what other Food52 readers are saying.