Feature Shoot

Modernist Cusine book molecular gastronomy

Six consecutive frames from a high speed camera recording at 6200 frames per second. The bullet is from a 308 sniper rifle and was travelling roughly 2800 feet per second at the point of impact.

Ryan Matthew Smith graduated from the Art Institute of Seattle in 2007. Since late 2007 he has been employed at Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, WA, as a Digital Imaging Editor and Photographer. Ryan was the principal photographer and photo editor for the highly anticipated book, Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. Modernist Cuisine is currently scheduled for release in March 2011.

Molecular_Gastronomy_modernist-cuisine-book

Plating of the Modernist Cuisine version of Russian Pelmini.

Plating of Lentil Salad.

How did you become the principal photographer and photo editor behind the book, Modernist Cuisine, the Art and Science of Cooking, which will be released in March 2011?
‘I was a pretty freshly graduated student in November 2007 when I saw a job posting on craigslist looking for a photo editor with skills in compositing for an invention firm. The ad actually didn’t even mention a cookbook project at all. I applied. During the interview process I found out about the book project and that my duty on the book would be to do the photo editing and all the compositing for our “cutaway” shots. Lead author Nathan Myhrvold was planning to do the photography himself; he has been an avid photographer for years and contributed many beautiful photos to the book. However, as the project grew in scope it became clear that Nathan would not be able to take on the lead photographer position, in addition to writing duties and his full time job as CEO of Intellectual Ventures. As photo requests piled up; it was decided I could take a stab at taking the photos for the book and I haven’t looked back since. We now have a full studio and have taken about 140,000 shots since April of 2008.

Spectral emissions from different chemicals burning: (left to right) Methane, Calcium Sulfate, Calcium phosphate, Sodium chloride, Potassiam phosphate, Sodium borate.

Egg frying at around 450°F.

The book is made up of six-volumes with a whopping 2,400 of ‘lavishly’ illustrated pages. Do you have past experience as a food photographer and what type of research, if any, did you do before taking on this unique and massive project?
‘Before taking on this project; I had almost no professional experience and no food photography experience. I had two very in depth portfolio books that grabbed the attention of Nathan and the editing team; the only issue was they were focused in architecture and nature. I had very little studio experience and had never shot food of any kind; even as a student. I really do feel that having a strong artistic sense towards photography in general can easily transfer through any of the disciplines from advertising all the way to fine art. I had spent many, many, hours working on photography skills before joining the team, so jumping to food and studio work was not a huge leap but there was definitely a learning curve involved. Most of the research was done on a trial and error basis while we were shooting because there was a constant push for photo material from the design team.

‘In terms of influence on style; it’s clear we don’t just look to other food photography for inspiration. Advertising and fine art photography have had large influences on the photography in the book. I’m very intrigued by minimalist, high contrast imagery that really pops off the page. I feel that comes through in the photos’.

Mussels suspended in a liquid center sphere filled with a mussel juice solution.

A modern version of Duck Apicius.

What equipment did you use for these shoots and did you have to learn any particular skill(s) beforehand?
‘We used Broncolor 3200 w/s power packs with Broncolor Pulso F4 heads for lighting. Typical sets would use 2-3 lights. My main camera is a Canon 5D Mark II with a Canon 24-105 f/4 zoom lens. We also have a Canon 1ds Mark II, Canon f2.8 180mm macro lens, and a Canon 65mm 1-5x macro.

‘I had a pretty good understanding of compositing but given the large amount and complexity of photo illustration I spent many hours on Photoshop trying to find new ways to blend images together smoothly and quickly’.

Cross sectional photo (Cutaway) of grilling hamburgers on a Weber grill. This photo is a composite of a couple dozen individual exposures.

How many people were involved on set while you were photographing and what were their specific roles?
‘On set, we generally had myself and one chef working on set at any given time. Sometimes two chefs for major shots. To start, it was always head chef Maxime Bilet who is both an amazing food stylist and artist; he endlessly contributed cool photo ideas and did excellent styling on the food plating shots. When Max became too busy with writing/recipe development, the food styling duties were split between kitchen chefs: Grant Crilly, Johnny Zhu, Anjana Shanker, and Sam Fahey-Burke. All of them added their own touch to food styling, greatly helping diversify the food plating in the book. Grant Crilly and Maxime Bilet also were instrumental in the creation of the cross sectional photos; troubleshooting, engineering, and styling these very complicated photos’.

In an attempt to get a shot of a wine glass breaking; we apparently didn't drop the glass from high enough but it left us with a pretty cool shot!

Direct grilling can produce heat so intense that the skin of a pepper chars before the interior is fully cooked.

How carefully were the shots planned out beforehand and how much was left to chance?
‘That would completely depend on the photo. With the cross sectional “cutaway” photos, where we would cut in half pans and build sets to look like the food in the pans was in the process of cooking, we would actually dedicate a good amount of time in meetings to planning out exactly what needed to be seen in the photo. Other times we would find a crazy ingredient or technique on the fly and decided it was too cool not to rush into the studio to take some shots of. We actually would often take really cool photos with no idea of how they could fit in the book but just knew they would look really cool. And when the shots are cool enough we tend to reach pretty far to find a place for the photo. The bullet through the eggs is a good example; There is no logical reason to take pictures of a .308 round shooting through a line of eggs with the intention of placing it in the book. But we took the photo because we knew it would look amazing and ended up opening our Eggs recipe chapter in the book’.

Tomato water liquid center spheres with injected basil oil

How long have you been working on the photography for this book and approximately how long did each shot take? Were there some shots that were really difficult to capture and if so, what were the factors surrounding this?
‘I’ve been photo editing since December of 2007 and photographing since April 2008, almost 3 years now. Some of the cutaway shots would take hours to build the sets and would sometimes require reshooting. We would end up shooting upwards of a couple hundred shots of material to use in the final photo for the most complicated photo illustrations in the book. Shooting the cutaways was probably the most difficult photos to take for the book. You really need to visualize the different photo set ups and exposures you will need to get one composite image and be very careful with keeping the light consistent throughout the shots. I would often get into photoshop to realize something wasn’t working out so well and the team had to rebuild the set for a reshoot’.

Cutaway of wok fried Phad Thai.

Did you shoot much video while working on this project and if so, what are your plans for the footage?
‘We did shoot some high speed video while making the book because we are lucky enough to have a Phantom V12.1 high speed camera in house. The quality of the stills from the camera is not nearly as good as the Canons so we didn’t use it very much for the inside the book (but we did use it for the eggs photo as well as a few others) but are planning to use the video to draw attention to our website and blog. I posted a video of popcorn popping in slow motion to YouTube/our blog a couple of weeks ago and it has already generated 300,000 hits so we see it as a good advertising tool to gather buzz for the book’.

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Six consecutive frames from a high speed camera recording at 6200 frames per second. The bullet is from a 308 sniper rifle and was travelling roughly 2800 feet per second at the point of impact.

Ryan Enn Hughes is a Toronto based filmmaker and photographer working in the fine art, editorial and commercial worlds. Ryan’s motion work is promoted commercially by Westside Studio. His clients have included The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, TD Bank Financial Group, The Canadian Armed Forces, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail and Ryerson University. Ryan’s work has been recognized and awarded by a diverse set of organizations, including The New York Times Photography Prize through Barnstorm XXI, Grand Prize Winner of The Show Your Ontario Photography Contest through The Magenta Foundation, Digital Pix Competition Multimedia Winner through PDN Magazine, and most recently a Chalmers Arts Fellowship through The Ontario Arts Council.

Of this series, ‘The Roughriders’, he writes, ‘In late November 2009 I traveled to Calgary to work on a special project for The Canadian Football League. The project was to shoot portraits of fans just prior to the start of the 97th Grey Cup at McMahon Stadium. The CFL has a die-hard fan base, especially in Western Canada and I ended up photographing over 200 fans. The Saskatchewan Roughriders had the biggest draw by far, and so became the focus within the series when I made a personal edit. The project was accepted into this year’s Flash Forward Festival – included in it’s annual book, and five images were installed in seven-foot high windows as part of an art installation. I’ll be heading to Edmonton this year for the 98th Grey Cup to repeat the concept’.

Born in Liverpool, England in 1963, Carl Warner moved to Kent at the age of seven where as an only child he spent hours in his room drawing and creating worlds from his imagination having been inspired by artists such as Salvador Dali, Patrick Woodroofe and record sleeve artists such as Roger Dean and the work of Hipgnosis. Carl began his career by going to art college with a view to becoming an illustrator as he had a talent for drawing yet quickly discovered that his ideas and creative eye was better suited to photography. In 1985 he began to assist various photographers in the world of advertising for a year, after which he became one himself.

Although a very keen landscape photographer he initially established himself as a successful still life photographer, and then began to branch out into other areas of photography in the advertising world, shooting people and landscapes for a wide variety of products and brands. Over the past ten years he has been developing a body of work making landscapes out of food, and has been commissioned by many advertising agencies throughout the world to produce these for clients in the food industry.

In January of 2008 this work was featured in the Sunday Times, after which the flood gates opened to a host of media attention from magazines and newspapers all over the world to television reports, documentaries and interviews. The publishing of the images on many TV and newspaper websites led to the creation of many pdf format viral emails which are still to this day being passed around the globe.

These virals have led to a recognition of his work throughout the world which has resulted in a book deal with a major U.S. publisher, the licensing of images for many merchandising opportunities as well as advertising campaigns and commissions from some of the biggest brand names in the food world. Some of these campaigns have led Carl to expand his work into the moving image where he has begun to direct television and internet commercials. Having completed work on his first book, Carl Warner’s Food Landscapes, Carl has begun work on his second book as well as plans for an animated children’s television series which will promote healthy eating and tackle some of the issues of diet and nutrition.

Banana

Sung Yeonju was born in Korea in 1986 and graduated from the Hong Ik University in 2010. This work is from the series, Wearable Foods, in which she makes garments out of food and photographs them. As a fine artist, she fell in love with photography as a main tool and a medium to create her visions. ‘Wearable Foods’ is the first long term project she started two years ago and it still continues to this day. This series of her work forces viewers to defy the actual meaning, the functionalities, and the aspects of what clothing signifies in our lives. The essence of clothing and food has been reinterpreted. Each element does not fulfill its own role and yet, each suggests an unconventional and even contradicting role – un-wearable clothing that is made out of the materials that do not last. This work will be shown for the first time in the U.S. this January at a gallery in Los Angeles. Yeonju is represented by Art-Merge.

Winter Mushroom

Bubble Gum

Tomato

Winter Mushroom

Lotus Root

Eggplant

[/caption] Sung Yeonju was born in Korea in 1986 and graduated from the Hong Ik University in 2010. This work is from the series, Wearable Foods, in which she makes garments out of food and photographs them. As a fine artist, she fell in love with photography as a main tool and a medium to create her visions. 'Wearable Foods' is the first long term project she started two years ago and it still continues to this day." data-image="http://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Sung_Yeonju.jpg" data-site="Feature Shoot">

Banana

Sitting somewhere between photography and illustration, and influenced by cinema, video games and pop culture, Simon Duhamel takes a distinctly modern approach to the art of digital photography. In early 2009, he co-founded Made of Stills, for whom he has shot several stop-motion animations. Most recently he won Grand Prize in the Lux Awards for this series, ‘ThermoPlastic‘. Duhamel is represented by L’Éloi.

Alexander Crispin’s delicate and playful style of lighting springs from an early passion for film-making, the starting point of his career. An elaborate and humoristic approach to each commission is a trademark. Still life, animals, portraits, environments – Alexander’s works are always based on visually strong ideas. He has worked all over Europe since 1992 and is represented by Agent Bauer.

Klaus Pichler was born 1977 and lives in Vienna, Austria. After graduating from university in 2005 he decided to quit his profession as a landscape architect and become a full time photographer- without any education in photography. The topics of his work are the hidden aspects of everyday life in its varying forms, as well as social groups with their own codes and rules. This work is from his series, ‘Skeletons in the closet’, which deals with the backstage environments and storage sites of the Museum of Natural History in Vienna.

After graduating from The School of Visual Arts with a BFA in Photography in 2004, Yvonne Albinowski began exploring American landscape and subcultures with a focus on abandoned desert towns. Her images have been exhibited in numerous galleries in and around NYC including both the Claire Oliver and ZieherSmith galleries located in Chelsea.

Of this series, ‘Slab City, California’, she writes, ‘Nestled three miles east of Hwy 111, at the foothills of the Chocolate Mountains in the Colorado Desert, lies a small community of year round campers called Slab City. This area was the site of Camp Dunlap originally constructed in 1942 as marine barracks for WW2. The only evidence of its existence are the concrete slabs that remain on the site. Slab City, has undoubtedly become a domicile for wayfarers of all walks of life. It is an area of land that belongs to the state, but has evidently been disregarded and therefore has become a place to settle for free. With no running water and no electricity, the people of The Slabs have been forced to subsist with the basic necessities and have taken no more and no less. They focus on generating solar power, creating earthquake monitors, and speaking eloquently about ambitions, dreams, and what once was. It is a place to be heard and not heard at the same time. Solidarity, peace, and human expression radiate throughout this forlorn land and the sheer magnificence of the days last sign of sunlight embraces you much like the residents who live there’.

Gisel Florez is a still life photographer and Rhode Island School of Design graduate working out of her studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Florez is first generation Cuban American, and speaks fluent Spanish. Some of her product photography clients include the New York Times Style Magazine, G2 Grey Worldwide, ESPN, L’Oreal, Henri Bendel, Bebe, Blackbook, VMagazine, Futureclaw and Lush. Her photos have also been shown in multiple galleries including Winkleman Gallery in Chelsea. She travels locally and internationally to gain inspiration from natural elements, as well as to draw from the vast amount of cultures that define who we are as individuals.

Cody Hamilton is an Austin-based advertising and editorial photographer. He’s a cross between a photographer, photo retoucher and illustrator in the way he uses situations, framing and digital editing to create works of art. He recently finished this series entitled ‘Relics’, which is a tribute to the most colorful and vibrant decade ever, the 80’s.