Foods and Moods- Pineapple!

This year I wanted to start a project that reflects a challenge to myself to explore new ways to use my photography + passion for food to help deepen peoples connections to the foods that not only nourish and nurture, but also heal us. Growing up with my mother fighting breast cancer for over 30 years meant being exposed to alot of talk of healing foods and nutrition. It is probably why she lived so long with cancer, due to her proactive attitude and diligence to nutrition. So you can see that healing foods is something very special to me. I also seem to have spent my career shooting for magazines and brands that revolve around healthy food and lifestyle. Each project has exposed me to how powerful ingredients are in helping our bodies heal and be healthy.

For my first study on “Foods and Moods”, I partnered with twin sisters and talented chefs Mary Barber and Sara Whiteford, aka Mary and Sara  (www.maryandsara.com). Besides our mutual love of making a storied image, they also have learned along the way to make and eat foods that help the body heal. And we love Turmeric.  And pineapple — not only for its taste, texture and flavor but because it is also a serotonin-rich food that helps promote optimism. For this project we wanted to focus on foods that promoted good mood and optimism in conjunction with my friend Riley John Donnell’s movement UMEWE ( you me we) and “Into Yellow” which is a platform and specific tone of yellow he has created in conjunction with Pantone to promote optimism as well.  http://www.intoyellow.com.  

James Fink from Wine WIthout Worry Asks My Philosophy on Shooting Food

James Fink from Wine Without Worry interviewed me recently on my work for the wine book "Essences of Wine"

Food Photography Philosophy From Leigh Beisch

Posted on: October 15th, 2014 by Jameson

Do you have an emotional connection with lychee? How about when it’s in your wine?

I hadn’t given it that much thought until I got a review copy of The Essence of Wine to check out on my tablet. The words are provided by Vinography’s Alder Yarrow and the beautiful photos by Photographer Leigh Beisch. It’sa meditative visual workconsidering many of wines most classic flavors and aromas (oak and pear, for example) along with Yarrow’s picks for bottles that exemplify each essence. Lengthier essays on wine can be found throughout the book as well.

Read Yarrow and Beisch’s thoughts regarding the creation of the book and how the process impacted them on Grape Collective.

The food dude in me had to ask Beisch about photography. I was really impressed how energetic all of these inanimate objects were in every photo. My query and her response, the latter I enjoyed for its philosophical insight as well as practical advice:

JF: Many of the pictured fruits are squeezed, smashed, and/or sliced; they look very dynamic. Can you give a casual photographer a quick tip for shooting food so it doesn’t look it’s “sitting there doing nothing”?

LB: “Food is an experience. We share it, we desire it, we need it to survive! Don’t think of it as a static object when photographing it. Food has a life span, it dies quickly, sometimes subtly. Shoot it quickly, passionately. Show evidence that it was enjoyed.”

Lychee by Leigh Beisch. Please peruse her photography portfolio.

Shooting a Cookbook

One of my favorite kind of projects is to shoot a cookbook. Shooting a cookbook means that for an extended period of time- one week, two weeks... you get to sink your teeth into a subject. So far I have had the delicious opportunity to shoot books on subjects as diverse as BBQ, ice cream, baking, kids baking and cooking, pickling, Japanese cooking, Chinese cooking, Vietnamese cooking, Irish cooking, infusing alcohol, tea, olives, apples, bread, vanilla, marshmallows, cooking with all parts of the animal, including FAT... well, perhaps I will stop there. All have been great fun, hard work and learning a lot about each subject. The icing on the cake is getting the opportunity to meet and sometimes work with the author. At the beginning of this year I worked on a book that offered me the chance to work for the second time with a legend in the baking world. Working with the author Alice Medrich I have learned to appreciate the subtlety of ingredient flavors complementing each other. I saw how a chef with a refined palatte can balance this so well. I try to do that justice in my photographs. I always have to be careful about how much I say about my projects so I need to leave it at that. I will disclose more when it is published by Artisan later this year.

New Work, New Website

Building a new website can be a daunting task.  My last website wasn't that old, but I decided to redo it because I liked the functionality of the new website.  I especially like the custom PDF function since we get a lot of requests for that- it is nice that a client can create their own collection of images from the website that is relevant to their project if they want to.  The challenge for me was how to personalize the website to make it more of an "experience" that reflects my me and my style.  The photos of course show that - but I am into having it be a holistic experience.  Every detail about the experience should be reflective of my vision.  So here it is.  I owe a lot to the team of folks who worked with me on the images and helped put the site together.