Wednesday, January 25, 2012

a cookbook shoot

I could not be more honored or excited to be shooting Kim O'Donnel's second cookbook, The Meat Lover's Meatless Celebrations, to be published fall of this year by Da Capo.

Not only is Kim a fantastic person, but her vegetarian recipes are absolutely scrumptious and oh-so fun to photograph. Every single dish is rich with color and texture and inspires me so much I can hardly contain myself, (an opportunity to use some new props! Hooray!)

I thought I would share some of the steps and thought processes behind this shoot as it goes along. We are on day 3 right now so we are already halfway through the shot list, but you can get a sense of how things have progressed so far.
In my final post about the shoot, I will share one of the final images.

(As a side note, I just tasted the most INCREDIBLE vegan caesar salad. I am not a vegan and I have to say that, in my opinion, this salad is better than the best caesar I have ever had--and I am a salad snob. It's worth buying the book when it comes out just to have this recipe. )

my color coded shot list
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Author Kim and Sous Chef Brooke working in the kitchen on day 1Photobucket

Deciding which bowls to use for the first dish (carrot fennel soup.) I already knew I was using this surface.
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Getting ready for shots 2 and 3
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Kim setting up before I photographed her demonstrating how to assemble stromboli
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Laying out some of the props for day 2
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And for day 3...
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Items ready for me to style for an ingredient shot
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Trying to choose linens
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The dish and surface I ended up choosing for Kim's amazing poached pears
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Stay tuned for more.....

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, it looks like so much fun! Can't wait to see more shots from the shoot!

Unknown said...

This is fantastic. I am so curious to understand how a cookbook is pulled together. Thank you so much for putting this together! Cannot wait to see what else you share!

Valery Rizzo said...

Thanks for sharing. Loved seeing the process.

semplicemente ... j said...

What a fun way to spend the day ... great day at the job ... looking forward to more posts to follow!

Helena said...

Clare - the props look amazing. Can't wait to see the final shots. Always enjoy seeing your process.

Maki said...

I was just wondering why you color code the shot list? What's the purpose?

Clare said...

Hi Maki,
That's a great question! I color coded the list so that I could keep track of which items were being shot on each day (green= wednesday, black = thursday, red = already shot, etc.)

Maki said...

That's so organized! Fantastic :) Thanks for the great blogposts!

Jenni said...

What a fantastic set of posts. The props are gorgeous - can't wait to see the cookbook and very glad to know about it. Reading the shot list is making me hungry!