Celebrating with a Client

Last week one of my longtime clients, Chronicle Books, celebrated their 50th anniversary. They held a colorful gathering in their offices in downtown San Francisco. I enjoyed attending the celebration and hearing the insightful speeches that were given. Since I have been shooting cookbooks for Chronicle, I have seen them evolve and grow, so it was interesting to hear them recap their history and reasons for their success. They discussed the hardships that publishing has gone through and attributed their success to the ability to be flexible and change with the times. They also gave credit to the collaboration with good teams of people from distributors, to writers, photographers, designers and many more. I know I talk a lot about this, but I find that creating great teams is one of the more important pieces to my business.  Not only finding great talent to work with, but also surround yourself with. Being inspired by the talent around you is almost just as important. That is why I find myself working on various projects with people whose creativity I admire.

Hot off the Presses: A New Book On Salmon that I Shot for Chronicle Books

I love it when a book that I have photographed comes out. I get to see how the images and text work with each other to tell the story. The choices of fonts, layouts and cropping all are so important in how the work is interpreted. It is why I love to work with the talented designers of Chronicle Books. I also am interested to hear what the author's feelings about the book, it is most important to me since the book is their "baby". I am always hopeful that I have done justice to their writing. Thank you to Diane Morgan for giving me another chance to work on one of her books.

Here is my email announcement for the book.

Slow Fire Cookbook Release

There is nothing more fun than BBQ, except maybe photographing it! At the beginning of summer, my latest cookbook venture: Slow Fire hit the bookstores.  And not to my surprise (since it is written by a Ray Lampe-Dr BBQ himself) I have been getting emails and texts from friends and colleagues excited to buy the book and start mastering the art of Slow Fire! They also think it is cool that they know the person who photographed it tooJ

There are many reasons I love to shoot cookbooks. One of the top reasons is that I get to learn about a subject as I photograph it. I have learned the intricacies of Southern baking (Southern Pies), the incredible flavor combinations in Vietnamese cooking (Into the Vietnamese Kitchen), about the traditions of eating the whole animal and the uses of FAT (Odd Bits) and (FAT), the symbolism and culture behind each dish in Japanese cooking (Woshoku and Kansha), and with this book, I learned about the true art of BBQ’ing.  Grilling doesn’t get to play a hand in this discussion- BBQ is something altogether different. It is an art form. During the shooting of this book, my crew got to meet a few true BBQ aficionados, all friends of the author. Tim and his wife came to lend us his BBQ’s for the shoot. With him came not only a vast array of smokers, but also an incredible knowledge of how to wrangle it. Smoke expert, I would say. This very kind gentleman had his hand in the BBQ moving burning coals around to create just the right smoke. He offered us different colored smoke even.  All with a specific purpose, and flavor in mind. Next we met two other BBQ buffs.  One of them worked at the book publisher by day but on the weekend, he and his friends were full scale BBQers. These guys had apps to remotely control the fans on their BBQ’s to maintain proper heat while they were out. The result, I have to say is unbelievably deeeelicious- they brought us Brisket which they had spent pretty much the whole night cooking. Nothing like the stuff you find in a diner, just melt in your mouth yummy. Food is getting more and more fun!

Chronicle Books takes note of the custom Bella note cards I sent them for Christmas!

I just stumbled accross this blog entry mentioning the Christmas gift I sent to clients this year- the cute Bella note cards designed by Miss Peggy Wong of Bluepool Road.  I knew I couldn't go wrong with mixing Bella's cuteness with Peggy's great design and sense of humor!

From the Design Desk: Beloved Freelance Santas Deliver Design-y Goodness
Wise photographer Leigh Beisch knows she can’t go wrong with a gift of booze. She also included these charming notecards that feature photos of her cute pug, Bella. Leigh has photographed many cookbooks for us over the years, including the recent beauty, Southern Pies.

Chronicle Books honors me with a interview/posting on their blog