Learning from students

Recently I began what is now an ongoing project with the students of Johnson & Wales University.  J&W is a culinary and hospitality school producing some of tomorrow’s best and brightest chefs.  In addition to being a photographer, I’m a foodie.  I love to cook and I love to eat.  Working with the students gave me a chance to be around some great minds and steal some tidbits of wisdom while combining efforts to make some great pictures.

Part of the goal in the project was to give the students some experience on a photography set styling food for the camera and not the diner.  Preparing food to be photographed is very different than creating something to feed someone.  For starters, in photography, the food needs to look perfect.  The key word here being “look”.  It doesn’t have to taste good at all.  Heck, it can be totally inedible as far as the camera is concerned, but it has to look perfect.  The food also has to stay looking perfect long enough to be put on set and tweaked, lit and photographed before it falls apart.

An additional goal in this initial shoot was to get some ideas out of my mind and into reality.  I have countless ideas that pass through my mind on a daily basis.  Some get written down, some sketched out and some just dissipate.  I hate when the ideas don’t become images, so I try to put the good ones down on paper.  This project was the child of one of those ideas.

Overall the shoot went very well.  We all learned that day and we left with what I believe to be some great pictures but I’ll let you be the final judge of that.  I look forward to working the students of Johnson & Wales in the future.    I would also like to give special thanks to Chef Lanuzza of Johnson & Wales for the assistance in adding creative input and pulling together the crew to produce this shoot.  We couldn’t have done it without you.

See these and more images at http://www.sulwer.com.

Come on in…

Thanks for checking out my blog.  I will admit up front that I’ve been hesitant to create a blog.  I’ve read a lot of blogs and find that there are a lot of people who love to type but don’t have a lot to say.  I hope to not have that kind of blog.

Here you will find stories of the life of a commercial photographer.  The life and business of being a commercial photographer has many sides, some of which can be incredible.  Some other sides, well, there’s some mundane work to be done, but we’re not going to focus on that.  I  just like people to realize, there’s a lot more to being a commercial photographer than showing up and taking a picture.  I am always thinking about making pictures.  How to make them better, how to make something ordinary look amazing.  It’s constant, it’s consuming, and it’s my life.

There are shoots that blow my mind.  I hope to share those with you.  There are shoots that can be challenging, I will also share those with you.

I hope you find some nuggets of interest here and if you do, please let me know.  Again, thanks for visiting and I look forward to making pictures for you soon.

Dave