Photo shoot with my hero, MarkI received a voicemail: "Hi, this is X from 'hip and happening magazine'. I'm working on our annual Best Restaurant issue."
I breathe a sigh of relief...it looks like Chef's won another award.
Next comes the ask. This call means they want something. By now I've learned....they never call to say "Congratulations."
"We'd love to run a photo for our upcoming issue. Do you have any new shots?"
Damn.
I've been bugging the Chef for 6 months..."I need new photos. I can't keep sending these old food shots...they've seen them all."
I even went so far as to interview a slew of photographers this summer.
I KNEW this moment was coming. And now it's here.
I've got nothing.
I put a quick call in to the magazine...and leave a voicemail, "How soon do you need these shots?"
I breathe a sigh of relief...it looks like Chef's won another award.
Next comes the ask. This call means they want something. By now I've learned....they never call to say "Congratulations."
"We'd love to run a photo for our upcoming issue. Do you have any new shots?"
Damn.
I've been bugging the Chef for 6 months..."I need new photos. I can't keep sending these old food shots...they've seen them all."
I even went so far as to interview a slew of photographers this summer.
I KNEW this moment was coming. And now it's here.
I've got nothing.
I put a quick call in to the magazine...and leave a voicemail, "How soon do you need these shots?"
Any significant delay means they may fill the space without your photos. We'll have to move quickly.
I call the Chef. I call my photographer buddy. And clear my calendar.
We're shooting new photos in two days.
I call the Chef. I call my photographer buddy. And clear my calendar.
We're shooting new photos in two days.
The glorious day arrives and I show up at the restaurant. My photographer buddy is all set up and chef is cooking the first dish.
This is going well.
No major mishaps along the way and we get, hopefully, some good shots. I have the ability to preview photos on site, but I won't know the real story until I blow them up on a computer.
We shoot photos for five hours.
At home, I slog through the abreviated list of photos....all 868.
Yep.
868.
Out of the mass, I have to pick a short list for editing.
I analyze every shot, looking to find the most perfect ones:
I like the lighting on this shot and the front focus on that one.
But chef prefers photos that don't blur out of focus towards the back.
I wonder if I can get him to accept this photo anyway....
On this batch, the trail of oh-so-stylish sauce has run. It's now
a blob at the bottom of the shot I like best. Good thing I had the sous
re-plate that dish or all of those photos would be ruined.
And so it goes...
Tomorrow I'll review the edited photos and send them off to the magazine.
Then, hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll have something they deem worthy for print.
Welcome to a day in my world....only 528 photos to go....
