food for thought – shooting a cooking school

…a little background…

A couple weeks ago, I shot a public forum hosted by the Richmond Times-Dispatch (my assignment was to shoot headshots of all the speakers). One of the speakers was the president and publisher of Virginia Business Magazine (which is also owned by the RTD’s parent company, Media General). I have been a subscriber for years, and knowing that most of the contributor credits belonged to writers and photographers for the RTD, I never thought there was a chance for me to get in the door there.

Anyways, I decided to strike up a conversation with the gentleman, and he basically informed me that my perception was wrong, and that they were looking for freelancers, and that I should come in and have a chat with them.

So, this past Monday, I called the editor who penciled me in for an interview on Tuesday. I went down Tuesday with a stack of my RTD tearsheets, as well as some of my best weekly tearsheets (including the “bubble” shot). We hit it off, and he told me he would keep me in mind. I told him all I wanted was an opportunity…

No sooner had I said that, we were “interrupted” by the managing editor who had a predicament. A writer had scheduled to go out on a story and needed a photographer…THAT NIGHT! They were wondering where they could find someone on such short notice…

And they asked me if I would be interested.

How sweet is that?!

The Assignment

There’s a woman here in Richmond who dropped out of corporate life and put herself through culinary school. After working around the food business, she decided to open her own kitchen and offer cooking classes. One of the programs she has put together is a corporate team-building exercise; people come in and work together, cooking a gourmet meal. They share in the food prep and the cooking, then sit down to eat while she serves them.

My assignment was to shoot the cooking part of the exercise. What i would have given to have stayed for dinner. Oh well, at least i got a great idea as to what I’m going to surprise my wife with for her birthday.

Something out of the Ordinary

Typical newspaper assignments are shot as is, where is. You might use a flash, you might not. It just depends. Sometimes you have assignments that require carrying out a complete lighting setup (since I don’t have lights, I haven’t done any of those–yet). On the other hand, for feature magazines (unlike editorial magazines), those shoots are typically planned out with lighting kept very much under control. This was not the case. I had an hour to get in and get my shots. There wasn’t time to scope it out or anything. Basically, all I could do was show up and shoot.

Almost like shooting a wedding…not much chance for do-overs. Somehow, though, I’ve come to love this type of stress. It was a blast, and even though I haven’t gotten feedback, yet, I’m really happy with the way the shoot turned out.