I have so many reasons to want to visit San Francisco. I have been visiting there since I was 12. My uncle and mentor, George, was one of the originals of the Haight Ashbury crowd back in the late 60′s and has never left. I have wonderful friends there including Foodwishes.com’s Chef John and his wonderful wife, SFQ’s Michele and my buddy Alexis from Fearless Critic. Even my pal, former SF denizen, Pichet Ong makes his influence felt when he’s not around paving the way for great restaurant reservations and recommendations via constant texts and emails. It truly feels like a home away from home.
This visit was obviously business related and the workshops I was teaching at the terrific Contigo Restaurant went superbly. We were blessed by the weather gods and it was almost too sunny and warm to use the beautiful outdoor atrium at our venue. But all this being said, it was the reaction of the participants that was the most gratifying part of my trip.
Both our Saturday and Sunday groups were engaged, energetic and worked hard physically and creatively to make great pictures.
Both groups embraced the difficulties of shooting ugly foods, absorbed the information I was sharing about the business of photography and stood tall during the critiques of their work at our conclusion. This last part may have been the hardest and most daring. Consider handing over your card of unedited, unprocessed images to be critiqued by a teacher and group of other photographers. The thought of it even makes me sweat. I applaud their willingness to grow and learn and put ego and self consciousness aside for the sake of their art. Bravo!
One of our participants, Paola Thomas, wrote a terrific breakdown of what we did on Sunday and included her shots and how they were related to what we were learning.
Some of our other shooters were:
Stephen from Kitchen Beard
Natasha from Non-Reactive Pan
Irvin from Eat The Love
Annelies from La Vie En Plat
Anonymous SF Food Blogger Tummy Morsels
Kimberley from Edible San Francisco
Johanna from Low Sodium Blog
Marjorie from This Is My Dinner
Lydia Chen & Craig Lee
Thanks to all and thanks to Foodista and Andie Mitchell for publicizing the event.
Stay tuned for our next event scheduled for late June in Seattle and my debut workshop in my newly refurbished NY studio in July. And…don’t forget IFBC in Portland in August.
PHOTO CREDIT: Paola Thomas
Over the past year in addition to my other assignments, I shot a cookbook for the ABC TV show The Chew. Some of the other things I have been doing outside of my studio, as many of you know, is teaching food photography workshops and speaking at blogger conferences about food photography. On top of that the Outtakes column on The New York Times Diner’s Journal has given me the opportunity to share what I know with a broader audience still. Well, I am getting yet another wonderful opportunity to do more of the same.
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