Great Food Photos: Kimberley Hasselbrink

May I get the first image as a GIANT POSTER? It's just so gorgeous! Going through Kimberley Hasselbrink's blog gives me a sense of warmth especially right now when NYC is constantly being bombarded with snow storm after snow storm. The splashes of colors, the vibrantness of her images, the light, and the shadow are so well done. Oh...I can't wait till her book, Vibrant Food: Celebrating the Ingredients, Recipes, and Colors of Each Season, comes out in June. Be sure to check more of her photos on Instagram.

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos? A. I pay a lot of attention to colors and textures - they bring images of food to life. I'm obsessed with light. I think about the structure of the ingredients too - kind of like sculpture. I'd love to inspire some kind of hunger or appetite or enthusiasm for the food that I'm shooting. Lately I've been enjoying just being present and capturing a moment, or a narrative, which is harder to translate into a tabletop scene. I'm interested in seeing how I can bring that back to the structure and control of the studio work that I do.

Q. Congrats on your first book. How was the experience of putting a book together? A. Thanks! Making a book was crazy. It was like project-managing all these disparate projects: the recipe development, the writing, the recipe testers, and the photography. Photography was my happy place in all of that - the part of the whole where I found the most fluidity, the most ease. Overall it was kind of like boot camp: a good amount of the experience wasn't fun during the process, but it feels great to be on the other side and to have learned so much. I bonded with my assistant, Stacy, who became a friend and trusted voice and confidante during the process - that reinforced the value of collaboration and peers around creative work.

Q. What is photography to you? A. Magic! I love how photography captures the transient and the ephemeral. How it tells a story. How it records light. How it connects people.

Q. How did you get started in photography and how has your relationship with photography evolved from then to now? A. When I was a teenager, I was kind of bohemian - very preoccupied with painting and drawing and writing. I picked up a camera and began taking these Victorian-inspired black and white images, sort of copying the work of Julia Margaret Cameron. I went to art school and wound up in a furniture design program, which I loved, because it was driven by craft, very conceptual, and really loose. There I began to learn about product photography because we had to document all of the work that we made and we had access to a lot of amazing equipment. When I wasn't in school I invested most of my creative energy in photography and finally began to connect the dots: it was the thing that I chose to do, and that I always returned to, when I wasn't obligated to make or do anything else. It took even longer to begin to apply that to food; up 'til then I mostly was enamored with the landscape of the American West, and documenting what I saw on my travels.

Q. Any food photography heroes? If not any photography heroes? A. So many! I love the work of Michael Graydon, Jonathan Lovekin, Eric Wolfinger, Gentl and Hyers (Check out Andrea Gentl's interview here), Peden + Munk, Ditte Isager. Outside of food I'm inspired by Richard Misrach, Todd Hido, Vivian Maier.

Q. Best meal you had in 2013? A. Ohhh, tough question! Don't they say that the last meal you had is always the best? I had a really beautiful dinner party for my birthday last December. I made a seafood feast for my friends: oysters, a crab and shellfish stew, hearty sides, lots of champagne. It was a beautiful day.

I went on a few backpacking trips last year, and after walking for miles with a heavy pack and pushing my body so hard, pretty much anything you eat tastes like the best meal ever. There was a gluten-free pesto pasta dinner that we had on a trip in Joshua Tree that was revelatory. We sat on tall rocks at sunset, feeling tired and happy and deeply enjoying a hot meal. Those are some standouts from last year.

All photos courtesy of Kimberley Hasselbrink from The Year In Food.

Great Food Photos: Stephanie Shih

Back in June I randomly stumbled onto a link, on Twitter, where someone had wrote an incredible post about the different styles of food photography that are currently popular among food photographers. It had such a plethora of information and tips. So of course I had to meet the photographer behind this post. Looking through Stephanie Shih's food photos is quite awesome. Just the different contrast of colors in each photo is so beautiful and wonderfully matched. Be sure to check out her blog "Desserts for Breakfast" where you can make this delicious looking coconut chocolate cake with raspberries and have it for breakfast!

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos? A. When I’m taking pictures of food, it’s as with any other subject—travel, landscape, people: I’m trying to capture the personality and character of that particular food subject, its innate quality that makes it unique and interesting.

Q. What inspires you? Traveling: seeing and experiencing life outside my own. People who are shockingly good at what they do, who have worked incredibly hard to get there, who believe whole-heartedly that you can achieve the same, and who push you to do so. Tall trees, natural bodies of water, floral print teacups, musicians who are amazing storytellers, fresh and carefully-grown fruit, light and shadows, simplicity, nostalgia, anything that surprises me… the list goes on.

Q. What is photography to you? To me, photography involves the intersection of two things: the inherent essence of the subject or moment and the way I, as the photographer, interact with and experience that subject, moment, or scene. Every photograph reveals something about the person behind the camera, as it does about what’s in front of the lens: when the photographer chooses to press the shutter is so crucial.

Q. Thank you for writing the “Current Food Photography Styles and Trends” post on your blog. It’s great to see all the different ways you can shoot a subject in one place. When you’re about to do a shoot, how do you decide which “style” to use? The styles covered in that post were much more of a post hoc analysis of what’s popular in food photography on the blogosphere today than a guide for when I’m shooting. Before a shoot, I’m thinking more about what photographic elements—lighting, composition, props, styling, etc—will help to best express my subject’s story. “Style” is what happens when all of these elements come together in the end, after I’ve made the whole image.

Q. Any food photography heroes? If not, any photography heroes?Ditte Isager, for her captivating simplicity and cleanliness. Gentl + Hyers’ images are always so hauntingly beautiful and inspiring. I’m also currently obsessed with the collaborative creativity of Anna Williams’The Voracity series. Beyond food photography, there are several, but I must at least mention my friend and portrait photographer, Toni Gauthier, who’s constantly pushing me to think harder about every image I make.

Q. Best meal so far in 2012? In a life so fortunately filled with good food, it’s sort of impossible to pick just one best meal! Top ranking favorites so far from 2012: lunch counter at Castroni in Rome, spicy tom yum soup on a blistery winter day at Thai Peacock in Portland, and the vast backyard BBQ potluck spread from my talented friends for my June birthday party.

All photos courtesy of Stephanie Shih from Desserts for Breakfast.

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