Thursday, January 30, 2014

Lets collaborate!

Working in the advertising photography business can be extremely fun, yet at times very stressful. 
My goal is always to produce the best imagery as we can for our clients, and have fun doing it.
I'm normally a serious person when working, but, I find it pretty easy to laugh at myself!  I say and do some pretty silly stuff. What helps is to surround yourself with people that are fun and funny.  Life is a lot more interesting that way.  If you really stop and think about it what we do and how we do it seems pretty silly to the outside world.  That is -outside of the advertising world.
Take for example food photography.  We pick through cases and cases of food to find 6-10 perfect chips, we glue seeds on buns so they look perfect, we spend hours playing with the food on set just to get everything in it's right place, we glue hotdog buns together so they don't spread apart on set then we pin the hotdogs and buns together so they don't move.  We use a fabric steamer to steam bread so it doesn't dry out and crack and we use steaming hot tampons hidden behind food so it looks like the food is steaming hot.  Now you have to admit, this seems pretty silly to someone not in the business.  Quite frankly just writing about it puts a silly grin on my face.
In spite of how silly it looks or is, we all work hard making it happen.  Over the years we've put together a fun and hard working team of people that make the work look outstanding.

Food stylists, assistant food stylist, photo assistants, retouchers, producers, production coordinators, digital techs, grips, directors, set builders, hair and make-up stylists,  the list goes on and on.  We truly appreciate all the team members we've been able to work with.
At the end of the day if you love what you do, have fun doing it, and like the people you do it with, life doesn't get much better. 

Sarah styling the salsa to perfection



Making sure everything fits in the layouts



Working with the stylist to arrange the food



Now you have to admit, four adults standing around discussing the merits of sauce on a bun looks pretty silly to most people, but it's what we do.   


Our Retoucher (Tiffany) working hard.


Pretzel retouching


Pizza surgery


The behind the scenes tools to do our pizza pull shot. 


Sarah having fun for the camera.


What, your food stylist doesn't style your food like this?  You are missing out! 








1 comment:

Mary Dobbins said...

Thanks for sharing. No wonder you love what you do. I think back to the time we toured your shop. Keep up the good work. So glad there is a need for your talent.
Mary