The Source – Guest Post by Alicia Griffin

:: Today’s entry comes from a good friend and very talented photographer Alicia Griffin, who did a photo shoot for Wolfgang Puck’s DC restaurant, The Source.  Aside from myself being extremely passionate about food and food photography, I was really intrigued to hear about her experience on that day of shooting.  Therefore, I asked her to guest write for my blog, not because I am lazy and wanted to buy time (although that certainly helps), but because I think she had some great work result from this shoot and even greater insight about her photography session.  To find out more of her work, check out her Twitter handle, signed at the end of this article, and links to her Flickr throughout.  Plus, more photos from her are posted in a gallery, with a description of the dishes.  Enjoy! ::

When I first checked out the ground floor lounge at The Source, I was excited to catch up with my friend who bartended there, and say good-bye to another friend who was moving to NYC.  I was anxious to try out their lounge menu items and cocktails.  Little did I know that this night of eating pork belly dumplings and catching up with friends would turn into a potential food photography gig at the restaurant.

Executive Chef Scott Drewno, who oversees the fine-dining menu as well as the lounge, launched a new Izakaya-style menu in the lounge, was looking for a photographer to shoot these new dishes.  The menu offers sushi items, noodle and dumpling dishes and authentic “Robata” grilled dishes.  A couple of weeks later, after sending him some sample photos and sitting down with Chef Scott for a quick chat, it was on!  I was beyond ecstatic – I now had bragging rights for having done photos for a Wolfgang Puck restaurant!  Who gets to say that?

The restaurant itself is a photographer’s heaven; floor-to-ceiling windows that line the restaurant allowing for steady flows of natural light and spectacular views.  In a word: gorgeous.  The space was absolutely perfect for natural light photos, especially since I tend not to use flash when photographing food.  It’s nearly impossible to replicate the wonders of natural sunlight artificially, so I always try to shoot during the day and utilize the sun.  I feel that food often looks better when shot this way, and using natural light is probably one of the best ways you can improve your photos overall.  When shooting food, my goal is to make them look simplistic and natural, yet sharp and professional.

Since the restaurant is not open for lunch on weekends, we scheduled the shoot for a Saturday afternoon, a few hours before dinner service started. Fortunately on this particular weekend, my friend Karman Lee, a Boston-based photographer, was in town and able to assist me on the shoot.  I arrived a bit early so we could choose which area to set up, give the kitchen time to get the dishes ready and allow myself some time to get mentally prepared.  I always get nervous right before a shoot, the same way I used to get nervous before a piano competition back in high school.  The nerves usually calm down and confidence kicks in after taking the first shot.  When I review the shot, I smile and think to myself, “Oh, I got this,” and all goes well from there.

We decided to shoot upstairs since there was more light and less foot traffic, in case we ran into overtime and guests came to the lounge.  In terms of props and equipment, I am quite minimalist.  While some people believe you need to have the most high-end camera/equipment to produce top-notch photos, I say you don’t need to invest in lots of studio equipment to get great images.  As I mentioned earlier: the best lighting you can get is FREE and it’s coming through a window somewhere everyday.  As for the rest of my set-up, I used a table next to a window covered in white linens.  Yep, that’s really all I used!  I shoot with two Canon lenses – a 60mm f/2.8 macro and a 28-135mm lens on a Canon Rebel XTi.

There were about twenty dishes to shoot and each one looked even more delicious than the last.  I requested that each dish be fired one at a time so that a sauce wouldn’t congeal or move while I was still shooting another dish.  There were only two challenges that were posed during the shoot: dark dishes plated on dark plates and long plates with multiple dishes that did not fit in the frame.  Thankfully, the chefs were happy to re-plate, which really did enhance the overall outcome of the photos.  For 3 hours, I took nearly 800 photos – different angles, different lenses, up close, far away, with a glass and fork as a prop, some without – and was feeling quite satisfied by the time I finished.  The shoot couldn’t go on any longer because servers had arrived to prepare their sections and the natural light was starting to diminish.

Overall, this was definitely one of my favorite shoots and I felt it was a great success.  Chef Scott is simply awesome and I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity to shoot for him and hope there are many future shoots.  I hope that after seeing some of their new items that you will head over to The Source and check out the ground floor lounge.  Be sure to say hi to Chef Scott and the bartenders for me while enjoying the pork belly buns, Guilin chili squid or any other delicious creation on the Izakaya menu.  Heck, you may even find me sitting at the bar sipping on an Asian Pear Martini.

Cheers,

Alicia (@iDineDC)

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at 1:39 pm. It is filed under Featured, photography and tagged with Alicia Griffin, food photography, photo shoot, photography, The Source, Wolfgang Puck. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.