Wednesday, February 1, 2012

a cookbook shoot, the finale

(This is a continuation from this post and this post.)

Well, today is the last day of the shoot with Kim O'Donnel and, I must say, I am a bit sad. This shoot has been so fun and smooth from the very start, and it has felt so good to be working on a new project in my studio.

We only have 5 dishes to shoot today; a crepe dish from the Mother's Day menu, a noodle dish from the Lunar New Year menu, a gorgeous eggplant timpano which is part of an Autumn menu, some sopes from the Cinco de Mayo menu, and a pasta and white bean dish from one of the Spring menus.
Below are the props I gathered for each of those shots.

crepes/mother's day
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noodles/lunar new year
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pasta with beans/spring
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sopes/cinco de mayo
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eggplant/autumn
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So what happens once all the recipes have been shot? Well, I will spend time working on the images in Photoshop, making sure they are touched up if they need to be, checking that the images are saved in the correct color space, and resizing everything according to the publisher's specs. Photos are then saved as tiffs and then usually FTP'd (or mailed) to the client.

At that point, the publisher will choose which images will go where, and start laying out the design of the book. While we are handing over close to 50 final shots, the publisher may choose to only use a portion of those. The most important thing is that we are giving them options.
For example, Kim and I made a point to include a number of "process" and ingredient shots. These are important images because they can be used in multiple ways-- as possible section openers, within chapters to further explain a recipe, or as front or back matter within the book, (images that may go behind the table of contents, foreword, etc.)

I promised I would show you one of the final shots, and so here it is! I chose the onion shot because I spent a fair amount of time talking about the process of shooting it in the last cookbook post.
While I did shoot it with the cover in mind, it may or may not end up being the cover image. That decision is entirely up to the publisher and their sales team. However, this shot gets my vote! :)

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Thanks for following along with this process.
I hope you will check out the book when it comes out in the Fall!

4 comments:

Olga @ MangoTomato said...

Clare, thank you so much for sharing these posts with us! I loved learning about the process and seeings your gorgeous props and photos.

Hope to be able to take your workshop onee day {come to DC!}

Anonymous said...

Beautiful shot - I love the choice of surface and the silver dish! Looks like a gorgeous cover to me.

Emma Galloway said...

Love that shot! That blue surface is amazing. Thanks for sharing all these cookbook posts, really interesting.

christy lee-engel said...

I love all the shots for the cookbook, and getting to see all those beautiful props before they take their background roles.

And I *especially* love the gorgeous onion shot, with its wonderful rich colors.

So great to chat with you today! xo