Great Food Photos: Chris Ford

Couple weeks ago my friend Danielle had tweeted "BRIOCHE" and since I love brioche I clicked on the link that was in her tweet. That link got me landed right on Pastry Chef Chris Ford's blog, Butter Love & Hard Work. Chris Ford is the pastry chef at Wit & Wisdom down in Baltimore, Maryland and most recently won the People's Choice for East Region Pastry Chef at Food and Wine. The 2 things that I love are both in Chris Ford's blog. 1) Behind the scenes photos. As some of you may know I'm a little obsessed about that. 2) Big giant images. Beautiful images are meant to be shown as big as possible. That night I ended up going through his entire blog and I believe you will also.

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos? A. I want to capture my love and appreciation for that particular product. I think it's the love in the details that tells my stories through photos, you see what I see, bad or good.

Q. Have you always been interested in photography? If not, when and why did you decide to start taking photos? A. I have always been a creative person. Drawing and painting have always been a great passion of mine, which I still use in pastry today. Although photography is my true second love. From a young adult I decided I wanted to capture my life through a lens, never to forget an experience or food I ate. One day I can look through them all and re-live those amazing moments.

Q. Do you see any similarities between dessert making and photo taking? A. In a way yes. It is the creative drive and inspiration part that binds them both together for me. I will see something and it will inspire me to make a dessert with it or see something I want to take a photo of and tell a story.

Q. What is photography to you? A. Photography is a outlet for my story, ideas and talent. I have always said that food is my passion, photography is the outlet for that passion.

Q. What inspires you as a chef and as a photographer? A. Creativeness inspires me, doing something that I haven't seen or eaten yet. I love the sound of things that don't make sense, like brioche macaron. They are two complete different things, yet a simple idea brings them together. I am a very visionary person, whether its planning a photo or a dessert, I usually have the end product's picture/taste in my head. Q. Best meal you had so far in 2012? A. I had the chance to enjoy an amazing meal in early January, meal of desserts that is! Killed By Dessert, brought together a group of seriously talented pastry chefs, 12 courses of sweet 7 savory. It was such an amazing meal and so inspiring at the same time!

All photos courtesy of Chris Ford from Butter Love & Hard Work.

Whitehall

I'm a huge fan of Chef Chris Rendell and his team. I had an incredible meal at Mary Queen of Scots last year though sadly I haven't had the chance to dine at Whitehall yet. Yeah I know I suck.

I want to say a big thank you to Chef Chris Rendell, Chef Ryan Butler and their team for letting me into their kitchen and snap some photos. Also thanks to my friend Danielle, she works for Chef Ryan Butler, for helping me out with setting up the shoot.

Great Food Photos: Michael Graydon

Thanks once again to Tara O'Brady for showing me the works of Michael Graydon. His photos are so inviting and have this sense of calm in them that I wouldn't mind living in any of these photos (or maybe just buy a GIANT print and stare at it all day). I also admire the fact that he started photography when he was 16 years old. I can't even remember what I did when I was 16 and I doubt I had any serious hobbies back then (yeah I was a boring kid).

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos. A. Beautiful light and rich shadows.

Q. You fell in love with photography when you were 16. What did photography mean to you then and what does it mean to you now? A. At 16, I enjoyed the artistic and technical challenge and the trance it could put me in. Plus, I seemed naturally good at it. At the time, I wasn’t good at what kids were meant to be good at. I wasn’t good at schoolwork or sitting still for too long. I was good at photography and baseball. Photography is as exciting to me today as it was back then.

Q. What inspires you? A. The people I work with, film and well made television. In fact there are times that the light, composition and set design in a show like Boardwalk Empire can be so distracting that I’ll miss entirely what the characters have said.

Q. Best meal you had in 2011? A. I was fortunate to eat at Per Se in 2011 and it was excellent. It wasn’t necessarily about the place, it was more about watching Nikole’s face light up as each course was presented. For me, that made the meal magic.

All photos courtesy of Michael Graydon.

Food52 Piglet Party

This past Monday was the Food52 Piglet Party. For people that don't know the Piglet, it's basically having cookbooks go head to head with one another till you have only one book left. Each round there are judges picking which book to move onto the next bracket. In the end Alice Waters picked Joe Beef over Momofuku Milk Bar.

The party was loads of fun. I got to see some old friends, few new acquaintances and shook hands with an idol (SARA JENKINS OF PORCHETTA!!)

I also found out about the Craft Coffee and SoCo Creamery (ARGH their espresso chip ice cream was so good).