The exhibition will run from Jan. 6th to Jan. 27th.

Jury Members for the contest were:

Alex Pollack – Director of Photography, Bon Appetit Magazine

Bret Jefferson Stott – Director and founder of the London Street Photography Festival

Jon Chonko – Photographer, Graphic Designer, author of “Scanwiches”

Krzysztof Candrowicz – Founder and Director, Lodz Art Center, Int’l Festival of Photography, Photo Festival Union, Lodz, PL

Manolis Moresopoulos – CEO of the Hellenic Center for Photography & Director of the Athens Photo Festival

Enjoy!

Finished making over my new website. I’ve uploaded tons of new photos and have more organized categories such as, Recips, Ingredients, Drinks, Products & Food Art.  There is also a dedicated gallery for the collaborative work I’m doing with The Impossible Project, shooting new instant film with my Polaroid SX70 Camera.

All in all, I’m very pleased with the new layout and presentation of my site. It’s quick to load and the first page is easy for buyers, editors, visitors, etc.. to get a comprehensive look at what I do. Dig a little deeper into my site and one can discover a whole lot more.

The best part of remaking my website was the ease of which everything was done, and being organized with my image archive was really helpful for editing and uploading my images. Lightroom was instrumental with the organization of my gallery sections and upload process.  This is thanks to the developers at viewbook.com, who ingeniously have created an add-on for their image uploading process via Lightroom.

I’ve also included a subgallery site of my Fine Art work, Light Paintings. This has usually been hosted on a separate website dedicated solely to my fine art work.

So, I welcome my friends and colleagues to take a peek and hope you enjoy the imagery.

Took some time, but I got the pics of us working on the Shellfish story shot with PX70 Push Color Shade film from the Impossible-Project.  You can see the process in action – sorry no video yet!  The work-flow is great and I have it done to be able to produce and re-produce quality images with this instant film, especially for the demands of an editorial shoot or even commercial project.  I welcome it.

Two weeks ago, I found myself on the Upper East Side in a beautiful 6 story town house with Botero original paintings hanging on the wall, a baby grand piano being sweetly played by a Julliard graduate in the other room and a raging kitchen down in the basement chock full of wait staff and camera crew.  My colleague and friend, Private Chef Richard, owner of Bountiful Feast &  Ricard Chocolat, is doing a private dinner party for one of his long-time clients; 30 on the guest list wtih an 11 course gourmet meal. From Beluga caviar to hydroponic mushrooms to chocolate brought in from Hawaii cacao farms, this was la créme de la créme.

So, I find myself in the middle of all this doing a favor for my friend Richard because he asked me to show how beautiful his food can look.  How could I say no?  I already know how delicious his food tastes (his dinner parties are the best). All plates were beautifully presented in a modern style, rich in flavor and 100% divine.  Honestly, the work was all done for me. All I had to do was point my camera at the food and snap away. However, It got a bit tricky in the small space with 3 camera men circling around every second. Me, I’m trying to avoid being in the shots but only given a few seconds to snap away before each plate is whisked away upstairs to the dinner guests. I only wish I had a second camera, a 35mm point-n-shoot with some black and white film or Portra NC, to capture more candid moments would have been perfect. I found it extremely difficult to switch out my lenses with the little time I had for each course and get extra shots. Oh well. I’m very pleased with the images I did capture and so is everyone else.

Now, this is completely different than what I normally do. Removed from my element in the photo studio with my strobe lighting, flags, scrims, bounce boards, assistants etc., I’m shooting like a photojournalist – a sort of reportage approach (I’m back in Paris all over again). It’s all about working with the available light and capturing candid moments as they transition throughout the night. The whole evening was a lot of fun and the crew were a handful of talented guys.  Let’s hope the show gets picked up because then we’ll get to visit some really beautiful places. Here are a few samples of the evening delights…

Preparing asparagus to accompany the main course.

Filleting the Cod Fish in preparation for the main course.

Chef Richard plates the first of 4 appetizers for the evening. Tuna tare tare potato crisp.

These were beautiful beet shoots. Smoked Gouda pear Turnover Spicy Dijon aioli.

Beautiful platting and presentation for the 8th course dish - Beef wellington wrapped in Prosciutto, steamed asparagus and wild mushroom potato gratin Red Wine Buerr Blanc

Chef Richard preparing the Hawaiian chocolate meringue desserts for his guest. A little brulee please!

The final touches on this magnificent dessert, shavings from crepe rolls and an edible flower.

Silk Screened chocolate petite fours from “Ricard Chocolat” Hawaii Dole plantation.

The other delightful occurrence was getting a chance to meet “Doc” (Dr. Kaps), Founder & CMO of The Impossible Project.  He, along with Andre Bosman and Marwan Saba pulled together and started this venture to save analog instant film.

I was eager to meet this man, to shake hands and thank him for what he’s doing.  To my surprise he had already heard about me and was delighted with the results I was producing with PX70 film, especially shooting food.  So far, I’ve been achieving great colors at remarkable consistency.

And, to mark the special occasion I shot some new images with PX70 Push film to share with Doc.  He was delighted to see them. Plus, he gave me good advise on archiving the film to help prevent further shifting in color.  Per their experimentation at the factory in the Netherlands, they found the best way to preserve this film is to try and absorb all the moisture from it.  In other words one can place silica pouches in a Tupperware container with a group of film sheets inside and let sit covered for at least 3 weeks. The best way to tell it’s ready is from the rigidness of the film. It should be hard as a credit card. Unfortunately, only time will really tell the effectiveness of this method. But, I will try it out for sure.

My subjects were tiny Heinz bottles of ketchup and mayonnaise my wife brought back from her trip to Vegas.  My goal was to try and eliminate the magenta cast that was occurring in all my previous images. I decided to try some new green tinted filters to neutralize this, per the suggest of the Impossible Team.  It worked.  Well, not the first time. Initially I used too strong of a green filter and thus created a dark green cast over the entire image with a muddled red color ketchup…cool effect though.  I then listened to my senses and chose another green filter with some color temperature balancing as well – this achieved the best results out of anything I’ve tried to date!  A very proud moment to see the Heinz bottles in an almost exact color representation.  Even the mayonnaise produced a great white color along with nice red & blue lettering.

One thing – with the color correction gels, the yellow background paper got muddled up, to a dark yellowish brown.  The next challenge ahead of me I guess.

I’m still please with the results though. And this experimentation is giving rise to some future creative projects…

PX70 Push Film - color balance

PX70 Push Film - color balance

PX70 Push Film - color balance

PX70 Push Film - green cast