The Ginster's Van!

Maud spotted this before I did!

Ginster's Cornish pasties, pies, slices, subs....

Original Cornish pasty

Last autumn I started shooting Smith & Milton's big re-design of Ginster's range of pasties, pies, slices and subs under the excellent art direction of Ruth Pearson.   It was a very tight brief with specific requirements for the backgrounds which I sourced myself.   Amongst them we used slate, granite, artfully screwed-up and painted brown paper and a favourite, treasured old baking sheet of mine.   Then we spent weeks looking for exactly the right piece of wood for the Slices before discovering it hiding on the back of an old oak panel in the corner of the studio!

The lighting brief was also very tight.   We were to shoot to avoid retouching being required and with a strong vignette specific to each product range.   We managed it with a very carefully constructed (and well-documented!) lighting set-up, although in the final design this aspect has been dropped (which, ironically resulted in the need for quite a bit of retouching.   But that's how it goes....)   Product to look "natural" with crumbs but not "too many" - which turned out to be "very few" and learned all sorts of techniques for avoiding and erasing grease marks on different surfaces!  

It has taken some months to be released but I am now very proud to see the work in the shops and on their vans. 

4 Steak slices

Thanks to Maud Eden for some great styling, to Esther and Anna for their excellent diagrams, patience and good humour and not least to Friedel Schroder and his team who helped find homes for hundreds and hundreds of spare pasties!

Chicken Tikka sub

Large sausage roll

Chilli chicken wrap

For the full range of images go to www.ginsters.co.uk

Food travels in SE Asia

My first experience of life in Luang Prabang was a tourist classic - giving alms to the monks, albeit in a quiet backstreet.   Monks are an essential feature - both culturally and visually - of Laos' second biggest city with its 32 Buddhist temples and are happy to be photographed and practise their English!

My second stop was the early morning outdoor food market where all of the produce was of superb quality even if much of it was unconventional to our Western eyes.   As nothing intrigues me more than foods I have never seen before, I was in my element.   I spent the best of 2 mornings there and am still only just finding out what some things were!

It took me some time to identify these as banana flowers.   DO NOT bother with imported tinned varieties - they taste of NOTHING!

Coriander is a staple ingredient in Laos food, along with coconut milk, lemon grass and chillies.   Even a modest harvest is presented with great pride on freshly cut banana leaves.

Bamboo features in almost every walk of life in Laos, particularly for the substantial hill tribe population.   Laotians build houses with it, use it for irrigation, make furniture, rice steaming pots - as held by the Khamu tribeswoman above right (can you believe it grows that big?!), chopsticks, skewers for cooking, spears for catching fish, make traps, weave baskets and eat masses of it in shoot form.   Note the regulation issue "eau de Nile" scales - they pop up everywhere!

Some of the food is so fresh it's still alive, such as this bucket of unfortunate toads awaiting their fate.

Fresh fish - still breathing...

Other unlucky creatures; partly developed chicks cooked in their shells are considered a great delicacy.   I didn't try them.

This lady with her regulation "parasol" must have developed an immunity to the heat of the ubiquitous bird's eye chillies

Traveling further north from Luang Prabang by road we stopped for lunch at Oudom Xai a busy, dusty town on the cross roads between Laos, China, Vietnam and Thailand NOT renowned for its culinary delights but I loved this photogenic restaurant interior, looking through to the cooking area at the back.

Also, its proprietor....

On the return journey - a delightful boat trip with some great rapids - we stopped off at a small but surprisingly touristy riverside town where I spotted these sausages hanging out to dry.   They earned me a Commended in the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year awards 2013!

Last, but not least, a theme no-one who has visited Cambodia can fail to recognise....   There seem to be people laying about in hammocks and sleeping everywhere!

Market trader, the Russian Market, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

These are a small selection from the many images I took on my travels.   They are really only holiday snaps (notice I do not indulge in the popular trend of photographing what I am about to eat!) but I thought it might be fun to share them with those of you who have food/travel interests in common.   Natacha du Pont de Bie's book "Ant Egg Soup: the adventures of a food tourist in Laos" offers a more comprehensive insight into the subject including some excellent, simple recipes.

Eventually I will be posting a more comprehensive set of pics. for those who have asked.   Let me know if you'd like to be notified...

Stilton and poppy seed oatcakes

For anyone who missed out on my recent postal mailer, here's the recipe for some rather special stilton and poppy seed oatcakes inspired by some Cropwell Bishop stilton I found in the studio fridge!
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Sue's stilton and poppy seed oatcakes

100g plain flour

120g coarse oatmeal (can be ground from porridge oats)

75g butter

50g mature stilton

1 tblspn poppy seeds

pinch salt

5 tblspns water

Heat oven to Gas 4, 350 F, 180 C.

Mix all ingredients except water in a blender, finally adding water

in a steady trickle to make a lump of sticky dough.

Turn and scrape out onto a floured surface.   Knead gently to

remove any trapped air.

Roll out to a thickness of approx. 3mm and cut with a biscuit cutter.

Or, roll into a fat cylinder shape to the diameter of your preferred

biscuit size, wrap in cling film and chill for an hour or two.

Then remove from fridge and use a sharp knife to cut into thin slices.

(To keep the mixture cool cover the block you are cutting from with

a tea towel.)

Place on a baking sheet (probably 2) and put into hot oven for 20-25

minutes until beginning to turn golden brown.

Remove from oven and cool.

Store in an airtight container until required.

Wonderful with a bit more stilton and some juicy pears!

Photograph and recipe - Sue Atkinson September 2012

New Simply Food Advertising for M&S

At the end of March I did a test shoot with RKCR Y&R for M&S's new (press) advertising campaign featuring their value range.   Do you remember March? - beautiful long cloudless sunny days....   We shot one Sunday using the lovely directional daylight from my studio window and on the Monday got the go-ahead from M&S!

By April the weather had gone into gloom mode but we still captured a sunny feel, working to some interesting "book end" crops along with regular single and dps formats.

The TV campaign launched on the 12th May and the press ads have been rolling out since the 14th with a lot of the pictures also in-store.   I have been loving working on it - with a great team.

Here are some of the images:

Honey and Scotch Pancakes - for Bookends

Breakfast Range shot

Pasta and Tomatoes

 

 

 

 

Apples and Pears!

Pasta Meal Range shot

Everyday Shopping Range shot

Potatoes and Broccolli!

Tea and Choccy biscuits - for Bookends

All the above shots commissioned by RKCR Y&R for M&S - Art Director Paul Angus.   Food styling by Katie Giovanni, Props styling by Penny Markham.

Twinings Teas Fruit "constructions"

From the sublime to - well, this did seem even a bit more over the top than usual.

In 2010 Brand Opus asked me to shoot a series of shots for Twinings Black Tea range.  I do a lot of fruit shots - which I love - and often creating the composition can be challenging, especially when we are using real fruit, which I like to do whenever possible.   There is usually at least one ingredient it's hard to get your hands on - in this case real tea leaves and vanilla flowers.   But the brief for this was unusual in that a range of different crops were required to be used from the same image.   So, the only way this could be achieved (avoiding massive retouching) was to shoot one large composition which covered off all the crops.

In the visuals the fruit looked to be piled up and overlapping so I decided to shoot from above, allowing gravity to help rather than hinder, and also to give me the opportunity to light from the sides for the correct subject lighting and also from underneath to allow for a clean cut out - on all sides if needs be.

But it wasn't until we started constructing that we realised quite how many layers of fruit some lovely (and still nameless) designer had actually visualised.   The set just kept growing and growing as we all held our breath but happily there were no mishaps.   Thank heaven for all those games of pick-up sticks I played as a child!

Here are a few more shots of work in progress (courtesy Brand Opus Art Director John Ramskil):

Twinings Orange and Cinnamon Tea

Twinings Mango and Passion Fruit Tea

Twinings Lemon Tea

And reproduced:

  Thanks also to Alan Dunn (for flowers) Denise Smart and Dagmar Vesely.

First Bloomsbury Farmers' Market

First Bloomsbury London Farmers Market

Bloomsbury London Farmers Market begins to warm up

I couldn't resist a trip to our first local Farmer's Market in Torrington Square - just beyond Waterstone's book shop - on Thursday.   I went early when many of the stalls were still setting up and the golden light seeping through the plane trees made it feel just like a market in France.   It wasn't a huge market but there is space for it to grow as I am sure it will.   Even if you go just to look it's impossible not to have the odd nibble with many samples on offer - in particular delicious and perfectly ripe fruit, cheeses, let alone cakes...

Some of the stall were one-person operations - Lois Lawrence "Plumbun" impressed me with "I cooked all the cakes yesterday".   Others were family or family + businesses.   The friendly guy on Nut Hall Farm's goat cheese and produce stand had plenty of stories to tell about belligerent goats and I had an interesting squirrel conversation with the lady on the fruit and veg stall (Brambletye Fruit Farms, I think!) selling fresh cob nuts and hazel nuts - the ones the squirrels didn't get.   Apparently they had sent a shipment to feed the red squirrel population of Brownsea island!   But I suspect most of them were snitched by the pesky common grey variety!

There were plenty of lunch opportunities (for those NOT watching their weight) - free-range meat burgers from Woodwards Farm, Giggly Pig's delicious free-range pork bangers and faggots.   Different stalls offered free-range produce breakfast rolls, lamb burgers and plenty of pastries and pies - even fresh paella - plus plenty of seasonal fresh fruit and pressed apple juice to wash it all down with.

For the shopping basket there were treats like beautiful courgette flowers and the Bath Soft Cheese Company's blue and brie-type cheese were succulently oozing with flavour and perfect ripeness.   Now I am making myself hungry again.

I will be back another Thursday having planned my weekly shopping needs and looking forward to the promise of more and different goodies on offer.

For more info see www.lfm.org.uk

Apple Produce, Bloomsbury Farmers Market

Flourish Bakery at Bloomsbury Farmers Market

Lois Lawrence "Plumbun" home made cakes

Courgette and other edible flowers

Giggly pig bangers at Bloomsbury Farmers Market

Gerberas at Bloomsbury Farmers Market

Fashion and hygiene collide, Woodwards Farm free-range burgers

Plenty for lunch at Bloomsbury Farmers Market