Great Food Photos

Back in February 2010, I started a blog featuring other food photographers. I was tired of reading the same old questions. Questions about cameras, f-stops, pixels, settings…etc. I wanted to read about the photographer’s thoughts and process. What a photographer was thinking about when she/he took an image. So I started Great Food Photos and immediately emailed all my favorite photographers. Though the blog has been its own thing for 9+ years, I decided to combine it with this blog and so here we are.

I’ve been pretty lucky for the past 9+ years. I was able to connect with many of my photography heroes and was surprised by how open they were with me.

You can check out all the interviews below! Also be sure to subscribe to my blog for any future interviews. Thanks!

A
Ashley E. Rodriguez Abby Powell Thompson Anais And Dax Anna Williams Andrea Gentl Aran Goyoaga

B
Beth Kirby Brian Ferry Bonnie Tsang

C
Connie Thadewaldt Chris Ford

D
Ditte Isager David Hagerman Dylan Ho

E
Elizabeth Cecil

G
Greg DuPree

H
Hong-An Tran

J
James Ransom Jenna Park Jennifer Causey Justin Sullivan & Josh Weisberg Julie Marie Craig

K
Kelly Brisson Khue Ly Kim+Phil Kimberley Hasselbrink

M
Marie Pierre Morel Marta Greber Melina Hammer Maja Danica Pecanic Molly Wizenberg Molly Yeh Marina Aurora Michael A. Muller Meeta Khurana Wolff Mallory Elise Melissa Camero Ainslie Michael Graydon

N
Nick Solares Nicole Frazen Nik Sharma

P
Peter Bagi Pigamitha Dimar

R
Roger Stowell

S
Stephanie Shih Stuart Ovenden

T
Tara O'Brady Tara Sgroi Teri Lyn Fisher Tom Smith Tomo Kohsaka

V
Valentina Solfrini Valery Rizzo

Y
Yossy Arefi

Great Food Photos: Molly Yeh

Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos? Images that are informative about the food, the process, the location, and the season in an appealing, inviting way. I like to bring people into my kitchen and make them feel like they’re at home there and welcome to a slice of cake. I want them to feel like they can put their elbows on the table and be the first to dig in and not feel like they’re interrupting anything too mysterious.

So I've known you since...2009. And you were taking pictures of food for your blog. I think you were trying to eat at a different restaurant each night for a month kind of thing? How has photography changed/evolved for you from then to now? Can you believe we’ve been friends for seven years?! Oyoyoy. Remember one of our first lunch hangs when we went to a fried chicken place (go figure) by Shake Shack… Hill Country Chicken! I think that was it. It was on a corner and it was so orange. I had just gotten my little Canon Rebel and I was snap snap snapping away like I had never seen a fried chicken before and you stopped me in line and said, “Molly, think about the picture before you take it.” And right then and there you shaped my approach, even though it took a good few years before it started showing through. Did you know that that still echoes in the back of my brain nearly every time I take a photo? And it’s gotten more extreme recently, like, I’ve been trying to challenge myself to get *the* shot with less and less attempts, a real “measure twice, cut once” mentality. You’d think I was shooting with film. It’s gotten me to pay more attention to the styling, lighting, and set up, all of the things that go into the photo before it’s actually taken.

I think I’ve also just gotten more selective about my lighting over the years. I’m so spoiled by the dark moody cloudy light of the upper Midwest, I likely would not lug my big ass camera to an orange fried chicken place these days.

Do you think there are similarities between playing music and photography? Yes, there’s the whole, “lock yourself in a room and do it over and over and over until you get better at it” thing that applies to both music and photography. But the similarity that I’ve been thinking about most these days is the importance of negative space. In photography, the difference between boring composition and exciting composition is so often the negative space, not necessarily the subject. And in music, if you don’t play the rests as carefully as you play the notes, you kinda ruin it. You really ruin it, actually.

Do you think Grand Forks has influenced/changed your photography style? Or anything about photography? Yeah, so, because Grand Forks is in the middle of the flattest land in the world there’s not a whole lot that obstructs your view. You see the land to the horizon and maybe a few tractors tooling about, but really not much else. And I love that minimalism! You can focus on one object and one line and it’s simple but energizing. I try to bring those same lines into my work and I think that not being surrounded by a million zillion things and buildings and people all the time gives me the patience or push or whatever to be minimal in my composition.

What inspires you for your recipe and photography? I love learning about my new town through their cuisine, which is very Scandinavian and vintage Church cookbooky, and I also love keeping my heritage alive in a place that otherwise wouldn’t really see Jewish or Middle Eastern food. Wherever I go, I love cooking with ingredients that I can’t find in my town. I was just in California and could not stop with the stone fruit and fresh herbs. And I’m on my way to Tel Aviv right now where I’m going to bath in a pool of tahini and make it rain za’atar. I like making recipes that are inspired by my travels and meaningful to the cultures that I identify with, and hopefully, through them, others can learn about those places and cultures too.

Any food photography heroes? If not any photography heroes? YOU, Donny!!! You’ve taught me so much and you are my greatest photography mentor and since I met you I’ve wanted to be on this site and now that I have I feel like I can sort of give up and move on and take up basket weaving or crayon drawing or something.

Toby Glanville is another hero. He shot the Rose Bakery cookbook, Breakfast, Lunch, and Tea, which contains the first food photography that I ever fell in love with. Look at it, it’s nothing too styled or precious, just understated beautiful food shown at its best, in its natural territory. It’s as if he just walked into the bakery, took a few stunning photos when no one was looking, and was off on his way. I love that so much. I tracked him down one summer in London right after college and basically begged to just be in his presence for a moment. We went and got lentil soup together on Portobello road and when we were served I got out my camera and took a few pictures. I could kind of tell he disapproved of this. When we finished there were our bowls left on the table with the remains of the soup that our spoons couldn’t scrape up and baguette crumbs scattered all over. He looked at the bowls and then looked at me and said, well, now, there’s your interesting shot. And that changed everything. Since that moment I’ve really valued the idea of keeping those human/imperfect/rustic elements that I might have otherwise freaked out about.

I’ve also recently gotten so into Summer Min’s photos, she is a queen of lighting and realness and I wish she’d blog more, and Renée Kemps, whose photos are so honest and bright.

Best meal you had in 2016 so far? Ron and Leetal from NY Shuk had me over to their house in Brooklyn last month and taught me how to make couscous from scratch. I had never had real couscous before, just the boxed stuff, and this just blew my mind. It was like a cloud of wheat. And there was some meatball wizardry that Leetal whipped up with the kind of spice and flavor that will ruin you for every other meatball. Even though the dishes on the table were new-to-me foods, they were instantly familiar and comforting. I want them to cook for me every day. Oh! And it ended with their homemade marzipan DUSTED WITH GOLD. I cried.

Why do you like cake so much? Cake is the ultimate symbol of celebration and happiness and making cake is like building an edible sculpture. So fun. The most fun.

*Please be sure to pre-order Molly's book, Molly on the Range, coming out in October.

All photos courtesy of Molly Yeh

Great Food Photos: Nik Sharma

Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos?I want to convey emotion when I photograph my subject/s. With food, it always comes down to textures, colors and flavors and since I can’t have people eat what I shoot, I do my best to (hopefully) share those emotions that are running through my mind when I taste something for the first time and when I’m cooking.

How did you get started in photography and how has your relationship with photography evolved from then to now? My dad’s a professional photographer and though I got to watch him shoot in and out of studios, I honestly never fell in love with photography till I became an adult. My food blog, A Brown Table, was what made me realize how much I love to photograph. In many ways, it’s also become a platform for me to practice and learn and a medium for me to express what is going on inside my head when I see a subject be it food, people or places. My sense of food styling has also evolved over time, I initially started out photographing ingredients and the final dish but over time, I realized that I missed an essential component of what I wanted to convey in my work, emotion! And as a cook, I knew I felt several different emotions when I prepared food in the kitchen. From excitement, to anxiety, to joy, to frustration, I go through a series of emotions when I’m cooking a dish, so why not share how I feel through my photographs. My work today is a much more mature expression of the food I love and in a way representative of me, as an individual.

I love your style. I love the use of empty space and shadows in your photos. How did you come about photographing food in this style? Thanks, Donny! I’m fascinated with light and shadows, they constantly play with each other and depending on the combination, the two can create visually interesting textures and perspectives. When I first started to shoot food, I followed the general norm of using white backgrounds and bright light but I’ll be honest, my heart was never in it and I could feel that vibe stare at me in my work. It lacked what I wanted to convey as a photographer and what I wanted to do. After some serious thinking, I decided to follow my heart that I need to style and shoot the way I wanted to, it’s not that I have anything against white backgrounds and bright light (I still shoot with those mediums) but I think low lit or brightly lit, I need to create and share an interesting perspective or story to the people that view my photographs.

Any food photography heroes? If not any photography heroes?Beth Kirby, Steve McCurry, Lyndon Wade, and Diane Arbus.

Best meal you had in 2015 so far? By far the best meal I’ve tried this year was the one I ate at Al’s Place in San Francisco. Every plate is a visual delight but there is careful thought put into the pairing of flavors and ingredients in each dish that’s brought to the table. They have a knack of making their fresh vegetables stand out without giving that overstepping the dish appear affected.

All photos courtesy from Nik Sharma of A Brown Table

Great Food Photos: Justin Sullivan & Josh Weisberg

Left: Justin Right: Josh

Justin and Josh, 2 photojournalists traveling around the world on assignments, are so in love with burgers that they decided to start their own burger review blog, The Hamblogger. I sure wish I can travel for my job and get the chance to eat at so many different cities and towns.

Every time I read their blog it makes me want to run out and get a burger, which I did couple times. It's hard to resist with their intensely beautiful shots of tasty burgers.

Q. What are you trying to capture when you take your food photos?

Justin. I want people to experience the burger through a photo. The more detailed the photo is, the better idea they will have as what to expect if they decide to try it out for themselves.

Josh. When photographing a hamburger, I aim to share the emotion I personally experienced when the burger was placed before me. I focus on documenting the work of art that the burger is before obliterating it for my own pleasure.

Q. When you visit a city, how do you go about finding a burger place and what happens when there are more than 2 or 3 places you need to try?

Justin. If I have advanced notice of a trip I will do some online research of the area and if it is a last minute trip I will always ask locals for their opinion. Cops and fire fighters usually know some good places. If there are 2 or 3 places that I need to try, I will squeeze them all in if I have the time. I think I have had a couple 3 burger days.

Josh. I pretty much rely on google and recommendations of friends who live or frequent the city I'll be visiting. When it comes to google results, I try not to start with the most popular and heavily reviewed locations but rather with the hole-in-the-wall mom n' pop locations. I'll visit as many as I reasonably can when time allows but have yet to do more than one in a day -- Justin is the master of that. It's painful when you're in and out of a town too quickly to even do one.

Q. Is this your first time food blogging? How does it feel to take food photos for your blog? And as a professional photojournalist how do you feel about some of the chefs complaining people photographing the food and go so far as banning cameras in the restaurants?

Justin. This is my first time doing a food blog and pretty much the first time doing food photography. Back when I used to work at newspapers I did a little bit of food stuff here and there but not too much. I recently dug up some of the shoots I did for restaurant reviews in the late 90’s, it was appalling. I had no concept of food photography. I am really enjoying the food photography, much more than I thought I would. I have a better appreciation for food now than I did 10 years ago.

I have heard from friends in NY and LA that some of the chefs aren’t very receptive of cameras in their dining rooms. I haven’t personally experienced this since most of the places that I review are smaller mom and pop type establishments. I rarely do reviews of high-end restaurants. I can see where they might be frustrated though, here they are making amazing dishes that are usually all about presentation and people come in with crappy cell phone cameras that take lousy photos which end up on the web and aren’t really a true representation of their creation.

Josh. This is my first time blogging, period! I've always been fairly shy (which contributed to me becoming a photographer) and never thought of myself as a writer (which contributed to me becoming a photographer) so I didn't feel I had any profound words to share. But it's different with burgers. The goodness of burgers should be shared, which has led to the Hamblogger. I love creating images and the photography component of the blog is the most important ingredient for me. The words are the garnish for the images and not the other way around. I have yet to run into a restaurant that has banned cameras but in the end the restaurant is private property and the owners can do as they please, in which case I'll simply get the burger to go and shoot it outside.

Q. Does it help to be a photojournalist when taking your food photos?

Justin. I think my background in photojournalism helps me because I take the viewer beyond just a photograph of food. I try to make each review a small photo essay about the place. Some places are more interesting than others so each review is different as far as number of photos.

Josh. Being a photojournalist helps when it comes to handling the inevitable questions about why I'm photographing my burger. It also helps that photojournalists are practiced in making a high quality image with limited equipment in a minimal time span.

Q. Yes to animal-style everything in your In-N-Out burgers/fries?

Justin. I like the animal style burgers, but I can’t really eat onions so I usually omit them. Pickles are a must on In-N-Out burgers. I’m not a huge fry guy so if I do get fries I just get them plain.

Josh. Perhaps it's because I'm not a native Californian and thus I'm lacking the INO gene, but I say no to In-N-Out.

Q. Best damn burger you have eaten so far and your dream city to go for a burger.

Justin. Best damn burger? Wow, that’s a tough one. I don’t know if I could actually put my finger on just one since there are so many different styles of burgers that I like. I did have a really good one recently at a Mexican restaurant called Don Pistos in San Francisco which got the hamblogger’s highest rating.

A dream city for a burger? I’d have to say Los Angeles would be a perfect destination for a burger binge since they have a ton of awesome burger joints. I could spend a week down there and still not be able to hit all the places that I like.

Josh. As I mentioned before, I enjoy hole-in-the-wall locations and the burger I've enjoyed the most Hamblogging so far was at Hole in the Wall in Los Angeles. I'm looking forward to someday having a burger in Seymour, Wisconsin as well as Hamburg, Germany.

- Justin Sullivan & Josh Weisberg of The Hamblogger