February Highlights

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February Recap

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Wow it’s March already! February was an absolute blur of shooting, exploration and lot’s of envelope stuffing for my Q1 promos, which I sent out with the coolest lenticular T-Rex stamps! Did you get one?

Loads cooler than the random Arnold Palmer stamp- the guy not the drink…

A glimpse at the many, many (many) envelopes that were stuffed!

Beyond sending postcards and personalized, handwritten notes to all my favorite folks in photography, I got spirited away to Catalina for a relaxing Valentine’s day weekend where I brought my favorite little Fuji Instax Pro, foraged with fermentation wizard Pascal Baudar (check out the blog post), met with amazing women in photography at a mixer hosted by Amy Cooper’s Diversify the Lens and Focus on Women, took many shots of many snacks and made an absurd background for a tasty mezcal shoot (which I’ll share when it’s released)!

HERE ARE SOME SHOTS FROM FEB:

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I hope you’re off to a great start to March and you didn’t have to wait nearly as long as I did to vote yesterday! I’ll leave you with this photo of your faithful, slightly melted, food photographer after 2.5 hours in line!

Til Next Time, Happy Snacking,

xoxo,

Winter Update

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Winter Recap

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This Winter has been full of really amazing shoots and great new snack photos. I also explored learning about fermentation and mead making! After a few weirdly blustery days here in LA the sun has finally come back out and I am ready for Spring shoots! Bring on the color! Are you ready to pack your soups and sweaters away? I sure am….

HERE ARE SOME OF MY FAVORITES:

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Thanks a zillion and a half to everyone I’ve gotten to shoot with this winter, and I cannot wait to see what Spring drags in!

Til Next Time, Happy Snacking,

xoxo,

Ooh La La, Pretty Pastries in Los Angeles

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If you have ever been around me when I suggest places for lunch or it should come as exactly zero surprise I love my local bakery/cafe Gigis’ in Echo Park.

Gigi’s has a glorious assortment of Cuban favorites and Mexican staples (hello potato balls and cheese + guava empanadas…), a really bangin Medianoche sandwich and one of my favorite neighborhood breakfasts (beans + crema + plantains thank you very much) but on this particular day I was in search of a couple of pretty pastries for a portfolio picture (ok alliteration calm down) and knew they would deliver.

As I work on getting up to speed in the food and beverage industry one of the biggest challenges is what to photograph for my portfolio? I am not a baker. This is beyond obvious. I could over-bake air. (Meringue? Impossible! Who do you think I am? A wizard?) So I am relying on some of my favorite neighborhood spots to help a girl out in a pinch. I’m not getting anything by sharing this, just that I hope you all keep supporting your local food spots so they stick around in these messy gentrifying times. ANYWAY, so on this day Gigi’s got called into action in the studio. Here were some of the shots I came up with!

***That bottle is a several hundred year old ceramic bottle that was literally dug up in England that I picked up on my honeymoon with the Mr who was patient enough to let me talk to a dude at a street market for entirely too long about antique bottles and historical dumping sites….***

Things I learned

• Meringue melts really fast and is super easy to mess up even if you are careful

• It can be fixed in retouching which I did a lot of in these shots

• Berries in a guava syrup look pretty erotic

• I’m ok with that

• Having a brush and tools are very useful for carefully moving accidental crumbs

• The best part of shooting pastries is sharing those beautiful babies with my studio mates!
  

Hopefully this inspires you to all go out and grab a snack from a local spot! Until next time,

Happy snacking,

xoxo,

RP

Rosemary Vegan + GF Biscuits with Rachael

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It's not often that I get the surreal and wonderful experience of photographing another photographer, but that is exactly what happened earlier this month for my latest food story with photographer turned baker extraordinaire, Rachael Lee. 

Like so many of us artists, Rachael has found it hard to stick to just one avenue of expression.  She often shoots portraits and weddings but has been exploring her passion for writing and baking recently through the release of her very first cookbook called "Flour for Thought", which is a collection of vegan and gluten free recipes and poems. 

As I hopped over to her kitchen, she was working on the first of many batches of snacks for her book release party and I had the opportunity to see her rosemary biscuits in action and capture some snack making for a really important and momentous occasion.  If she was nervous about her book release, she never showed it for a second.  Ever the hospitable host, Rachael poured me a cup of coffee, introduced me to her tiny pup and got to work on the dough. 

One of my favorite parts of these food stories is seeing how people get started, how they arrange their ingredients and the way they use their hands.  I hear from so many people that they are nervous to be seen working a dough or mixing with their hands, as if it somehow looks unprofessional or messy.  To me, it's the sweetest moment, where one sees a person really interact with their creation and put a little bit of themselves into it.  Basked in the sunlight of her wonderfully vintage kitchen Rachael and I got to talking as the biscuits took shape.

Here's a little bit from her in her own words about the importance of these special biscuits.

"Something new woke up inside of me this year...my heart began to ache and long for things that it had previously given up on. Things like community, seasons, and being nourished. Food has a lot to do with history, legacy, and what is passed down from generation to generation. Our ingredients and recipes can be a deeply intimate record of who we loved and how we lived. That being said, my work on my poetry cookbook (Flour for Thought) led me to a newfound discovery that there has been a beautiful history of strength in the women of my family -- strength that came from pain. And while I adopted these powerful habits of independence and fearlessness, I had to become self-taught at what it means to be soft.

Living in a large city like Los Angeles doesn't always make the gentleness easy. It's massive and sprawling and makes us prone to disconnecting. In a world that has become loud and a culture with more noise than we can decipher, we have to become our own teachers, physicians, and spirit guides. It is crucial, now more than ever, that we learn to nurture ourselves and each other. It is our duty here.

These vegan rosemary buttermilk biscuits are one of my favorite ways to cut out the noise and create "home." This recipe is straight from my book and I hope it inspires you."

The biscuits get kneaded and patted out.

The new little biscuit shapes are popped onto a tray and prepped for baking.

We relax for a moment, sip some coffee and talk about the ever changing landscape of photography.  Though the world can certainly be stressful and heavy, in these brief little windows, in a bright kitchen on a lazy morning, it's so comforting to be just two women, doing what we love, sharing and hanging out.

The oven lets us know our biscuits are ready and it's time for their close up!

Seriously, look at those beauties!

After a quick quality control taste test, it's confirmed- Rachael's rosemary gluten free vegan biscuits are a success! 

You can find out more about Rachael on her blog at: rachaelleestroud.com or her photography at: rachaelleephoto.com where I hope you will snatch up a copy of her cookbook and poetry book for youself!

Happy snacking everyone,

xoxo

RP