Trippin'

Sometimes creating the idea you’ve got takes a good amount of work. I’ve been thinking about this image for a couple of months, it took some time to figure out how to work it out, and some misses along the way. It drove home an important lesson, just because a photograph doesn’t work out right away, don’t give it up. Keep at it and you will figure it out. You might need to put it down, have a think on it, and then come back to it when the right idea arrives.

Dinner with the television on

When your significant other teaches evening classes a few times a week, you spend some dinners in front of the television. However, a “TV dinner” doesn’t have to be a frozen box you’ve nuked up. I got the recipe for this jambalaya from the Dookie Chase Cookbook. Who better to get a jambalaya recipe from? Then if you’re going to make that, you’ve got to have an Abita Beer and some Zaps chips.

There's always more to learn

I was recently reminded that there is always more to learn and always room for improving your skills. When you don’t know what you don’t know, things seem simple. The more you uncover about any pursuit or skill the more you realize how much there is to learn and how little you really know. I think this goes for anything in life and specifically in my goal of working to become the best beverage photographer I can be. Always more for me to learn. Always strive to get better. Cheers!

Back to Basics

Every once and a while, whether I’m hired to do a product photograph or not, it’s good to get back to the basics. I’ll pick a bottle and do a clean white photograph. I’ve noticed the more I learn, the better they get (duh!). Even in a simple shot like this, there’s always more. This time I wanted to make sure I had good highlights to give the bottle depth and really nail the black sides to provide the definition to the bottle to separate it from the background. PS - this is a good rim for a dark and stormy. Cheers!

Dark & Stormy

Dark & Stormy. What a great name for a drink. I do get the feeling that we’re coming out of the dark and stormy days of Covid-19, at least here in the US. Prayers (and vaccines) to India. I’m looking forward to some semblance of a normal summer, we will see what the new normal becomes. I can’t wait to gather with friends and family again, share stories, make memories and live again. Cheers!

Beware of the Trolls

The other day I posted a question on Facebook group for food and beverage photographers. I asked what companies other photographers are using for printing marketing materials, post cards and brochures and the like. Within a couple of minutes I got some great answers which got me looking at a few great companies. But sure enough, one person decided not to answer the question at all, but provide me with an unsolicited opinion that sending marketing materials now was dumb, as he believed no one was working in an office and the ROI on the marketing materials would be quite low. Whenever I come across someone providing their “opinions”, I look at their social media profiles, to see what they do and what they create. 99 times out of 100, there is nothing to see. They don’t have anything that they have shared. No work to be found. Nothing to see that they have created. It seems to me that more often than not, the only thing they produce are those opinions. As someone who consistently searches out informed critiques of my work, I always look for creative people whose work I admire to get their input on my work. When I get input from people with no visible work, I give their options, either good or bad, very little weight. My point for all this is, ignore the trolls. Ignore those that don’t seem to create but want to do everything they can to knock the creators down. I guess it makes them feel better. Take input from people who know what it means to do the work and make good work. Ignore those that are doing nothing but trolling around social media ready to knock someone down.

Collaboration is good

I talked about a class I took in a previous post where the goal was to do something out of your normal element to extend yourself. I came up with an idea that I was pretty happy with. When I shared the photo with the instructor and the rest of the participants, there were plenty of great variation ideas that I hadn’t considered. That got me back to do a reshoot to try the different elements. They worked great. That got me thinking about collaborating with others. Even when you have a great idea, working with other people can bring even more out of it. A lot of photographers work in solitude and there’s nothing wrong with that, but when given the chance to work with other people, take every advantage of other ideas and perspectives. You can’t have all the ideas yourself but when you collaborate, real magic can happen. Cheers!

Lean in to it

I’ve been making a real push to push the limits of my beverage photography lately. I’ve always had the approach that I can always do better. My goal is not just to make photographs of beverages, but to elevate my beverage photographs so they are viewed as art. I’m not sure I will ever reach that point in my own mind, but I do enjoy the process of working toward that.

Challenge Yourself More

I’m still working on doing more photography with a human element. This one is pretty straightforward with the hand in the frame. I’ve got more ideas to come. Going to try to make them more subtle and still have the human element there.