Roasted red onions for One Eyeland

Really chuffed that my recent test shot (playing around with a lovely old Strobe strip light I've recently acquired) has been accepted by One Eyeland.

Chocomania

Krispy Kreme have been satisfying our sugar cravings with 2 shoots in the last 2 weeks. Although the last shoot was for their shakes, coffees and chillers, they brought along some of the Chocomania special edition douhgnuts which hadn't been filled when we shot them for the current campaign. Truly wicked....

Gnawing on Knorr's nosh

It's surprisingly seldom I get to photograph real home-style cooking which we then eat for lunch! But during our recent shoot for Knorr's Stock Pots the (large and very enthusiastic) team were all more than happy to dive in. Dagmar's roast chicken was particularly good.
The ideas are fun - nice to shoot meals part or fully eaten according to whether or not they used Knoor Stock Pots! Pity the recipes are not available on the UK's web site (which explains why they were able to use the "Taste the difference" slogan).

Client: Knoor, Agency: Edelman, Art Director: Jack Kent, Food stylist: Dagmar Vesely, Props: Jessica Georgiades

Working with the Artisan Baker

Earlier this year I had a real treat working on a book with Ori Hellerstein, Artisan Baker. Publisher Nick Eddison from Eddison Sadd Editions left me pretty much on my own with a regular exciting delivery of fresh bakery produce from Ori and a modest but adequate styling budget. With food like this who needs a mass of props! Just the right ones which Jo Harris sensitively sought- out for us.

We had fun with this shot. Ori remembers when he was a child buying bagels with twists of a pungent green spice called Za'atar (actually ground hyssop - a new one on me, exciting!) from a man with a donkey, so when we found this picture in the paper it simply had to be included (kitsch or not!!)
The icing on the cake (!) was two days shooting at the bakery near Stroud and watching the (very charming) Ori ply his craft - post to follow.
The book is due to be published in September. Watch this space!

A taste of summer - Edgerton Pink Gin cocktails

I don't photograph a lot of drinks so when Design Happy asked me to do a shoot for Edgerton Pink Gin and some summery cocktails made with it, it made a refreshing change - literally. The bottle was a tricky one, clear with the pink gin and white writing on the front but the cocktails were great fun to shoot. In order to represent the colour properly we used all real ingredients (OK the bubbly was a bit cheap but - hey...) and of course we felt duty-bound to sample the end-products. I am very happy to recommend it!

Preparing my Masterclass in Food Photography

Selecting images to illustrate the morning talk for my Masterclass at the London School of Photography on February 28th has been a major task! It's a very long time since I last gave a talk - 1999 at the Courtauld Institute, a short paper on advertising photography in Britain 1929-39 to co-incide with the Design Museum exhibition "Modern Britain 1929-39" (wearing my photo-historian's hat) - so it's a bit nerve-racking but it's been fun re-visiting old favourites. It seems like a good opportunity to share a few....

The interior was shot as a jacket for a historical cookbook called "Under the influence of Bright Sunbeams" by China de Burnay. I never quite forgave the publishers for flipping it, cropping it heavily and montaging an azalea over the top! The idea was that the picture spoke for itsself(...?) The picnic was shot at the top of Box Hill for Colin Spencer's "Cordon Vert". We lugged all the props manually to the highest point and shot on 5x4 sheet film, battling wind and wasps - but the sun shone!

Before moving to my London studio I used to shoot on location quite frequently. These images are from an M&S Calendar, "French Country Cooking" which we created in the environs of one of the food stylist's relatives' home in West Berkshire. No location fees but some serious training in how to handle geese. (NEVER turn your back on them!) A large sheet of plastic was a Godsend when it rained hard just as we'd set up in the poppy field and a few spare branches helped break up the harsh sunlight on the lemon cake. Good English weather. At least 120 film sufficed this time.
A few years on we had a phase of shooting things heavily filtered with coloured gels. The effects for this project for Thomson's Holidays were created entirely in camera, shot on 10x8 which used to terrify me - I couldn't even reach round from the back to the front of the camera to focus it, it was so enormous and I HATED loading the sheet film. Marie-Ange Lapierre did a brilliant job on the food styling. It is not easy to create transparent green-blue sorbet!

McD landscapes

Earlier this year I did some more shooting for McDonald's France with TBWA\Paris for a summer press campaign featuring their iconic close-up images cleverly layered into specially-commissioned landscapes by Andy Glass which take the produce back to its origin - be it a humble potato field or rolling sea. What amazing imagination art director Maud Poilpré has! Agency: TBWA Paris Client: McDonald’s Photographers: Sue Atkinson (food), Andy Glass (landscape) Creative Director: Jean-Françoise Goize Food Creative Director: Maud Poilpré Art Director: Hugo Katsumi Art Buyer: Barbara Chevalier, Julie Champin and Isabelle Jaubert Food Stylist: Anne-Claire Delphin/Seiko Hatfield