I know it’s late, but hopefully this months theme will be pretty straightforward for everyone. You all have dirty dishes, right? I know I do, piling up in my sink as I type. In fact, I really should be down there doing them right now… but this is more fun.

So, straight from a suggestion by Melody (Ms_evinrude for you fellow Flickrites) of Small Talk, this month’s theme is all about the aftermath. The dirty (or licked clean?) plates. The chocolate cake batter covered beaters. The wreckage of a feast. Show us how beautiful your mess can be.

The usual rules and are up on the Flickr group… the things like be constructive, take the photos during the month if possible, 3 photos per person and the last day will be around July 31st give or take a few days.

PS: I’m heading out of town for the month of August… anyone want to host next month?

Remember the Food Photography & Styling Conference that I attended last summer? There is another one in the works for 2009!

Phase One’s latest newsletter included a PDF Food Portfolio featuring a ton of high style, in studio work, as well as some behind the scenes on crafting a Food Portfolio.

The Food Network Challenge is on Superstar Food Stylists. The last showing is on June 25th.

Tastespotting may be gone, but Liqurious may quench your thirst with a few beverage images.

Shinebox Print makes great little bound booklets that make for interesting small portfolios. You can even make each page easily removable for cool business cards. I did a print run of 10, and am in love with the print quality.

And, speaking of printing, I recently made a new promotional piece on Blurb… just a small 10 recipe cookbook. It’s a great form factor for promotional use and with each softcover only costing about $13, it’s easy to keep 5 or 10 on hand. I’m also going to be trying out Asuka Book which is a service for professional photographers.

A few weeks ago, I got a lovely piece of mail from a food stylist that I hadn’t known before. Actually, I had known him from his amazingly beautiful stylings in magazines like Sunset among countless others. In fact, you have most likely seen Randy Mon’s work before too without knowing it. Such seems to be the life of food stylists, staying hidden behind the scenes. After my jaw nearly dropped to the floor after seeing even the first shot on his portfolio of the most luscious looking radishes and herbs I’ve ever seen in my life, I quickly popped off a response to him to see if I could coax him to take a few (or more) minutes to share a little about himself with me and you guys. Amazingly, he generously obliged and not only sent me along a fantastic interview with wonderful insights into how he works… but also a lovely handful of photos showing his excellent work.

So, with that, here’s my virtual interview with Randy for you all to enjoy!

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The goal this month will be to show your ingredients, as they come from the market and then the dish you made with them. Sort of a before and after. Extra bonus points if you tell us something about the ingredients producer or at least where you found the ingredient. Gold stars for those who can find them in their own backyard!

The usual rules and are up on the Flickr group… the things like be constructive, take the photos during the month if possible, 3 photos per person and the last day will be around June 30th give or take a few days.

Clearly, you guys love to post to the Flickr Group. And I love to see your work! But, I am quite behind given the number of photos posted in the last 2 months and a bit of a freak amount of work in my day job in April.

This month, your challenge is… well, no challenge! For May, it’s a free for all! Post up to 3 photos of food shots you want to show. Anything you want!

However, I’m going to skip commenting this month. If you really want me to comment, please tag the photo “STWFeedbackPlease” and I’ll be sure to take a look and give you some feedback.

I’m also asking for help in future months. If you have an idea for a challenge, shoot me a piece of email and let me hear your suggestions! Or post ideas on the Future Theme Ideas thread. If you think you have time to help give feedback, let me know too. Of course everyone is welcome and encouraged to leave feedback on the photos in the group. The more we all get involved, the better.

Have you ever noticed little bits on your photos? Not the little crumbs from a cookie that help make the photo more real looking. But, little indiscernible dots or smudges or blobs that appear, usually if you are shooting something on a solid white background. That’s dust. And, if you are using a dSLR, you probably have some on your sensor.

Here’s a quick way to tell. Close down your aperture as far as you can… probably somewhere around 22. Then take a properly exposed photo of something white. Any dust that is on your sensor is going to show up, and look something like this:

The first image is at 100%. You can see two little light grey spots within the red highlighted area. The second box (below) is that red box zoomed in even further. If you look closely in the first box, right by the right edge, you’ll see another dust bunny… a little squiggly do like thing. These little specks will appear in the same place on every single photo I take. Now how annoying is that?

The good news is that there are many ways to fix this problem. First off, if there are just one or two spots, the clone brush in Photoshop or the spot healer in Lightroom will make quick work of them. The only time they are really noticeable (if they are small and light like these) is when they are on solid color backgrounds where they are also easy to fix.

If you easily get weary of the manual dusting, SensorKleen is app that can do the cleaning for you. Basically, the software analyzes a batch of photos, and tries to find the common spots… then it can clone them out automatically. I tend to go the old-fashioned way, but if anyone out there has tried it and has feedback, I’d love to hear it. I’ve also heard that the software that Nikon ships with its cameras that has a dust removal feature.

Of course, once it gets bad enough, you really do need to clean your sensor. There all manners of brushes and swabs created for this task. Personally, I’m terrified to touch the sensor on my camera. I tried to clean my view finder up one time and mucked it up… so I stay far, far away from the inner workings. Instead, I take my camera in 3 or 4 times a year to get it professionally cleaned. In Seattle, I can highly recommend CameraTechs who will clean a dSLR sensor for between $35 and $45 dollars (depending on the size… 5Ds are more than 20Ds). If you live near one of the Canon service centers in New Jersey & California, I’ve heard rumors that you can take it in there and they will clean it for no charge.

Canon has started to introduce automatic sensor cleaning to its cameras, but early results have been not so good. Olympus’s model seems to have faired better, so perhaps there is hope in the future for this technology. Until then, CameraTechs has a pretty regular customer in me.

If you’ve ever done any research into food photography and styling, then you know how few and far between the guides are. There are a couple of books that focus on lighting and some of the basics of photography when it comes to food… almost a laughable number given the overall quantities of books on general photography and photography software. For food styling, there has been even less. However, I just received my copy of Food Styling for Photographers by Linda Bellingham and Jean Ann Bybee and I’m thrilled to see this kind of information more readily available to photographers and people considering food styling.

Food Styling for Photographers does a great job of giving photographers an idea of what they may be getting themselves into if they do decide to pick up styling. Starting from the shopping trip, to prepping the table setting, to preparing some of the harder to style foods, the book is comprehensive and easy to understand. There is a fantastic section on stylists tools, including brand name suggestions on everything from griddles (Presto Tilt & Drain) to paper towels (Bounty). The vegetable chapter has a neat trick for how to fold a corn husk, and the chapter on desserts (which yes, contains the expected fake ice cream for hot lights) has a great suggestion for using toothpicks to get neat stacks of freshly baked cookies. There are also some tricks that made me giggle… like using cardboard between layers of a cake to help it keep its height, or using Soil Moist granules to make a drink that looks like a frozen margarita.

For food bloggers interested in learning more on styling, be aware that this book is aimed at people who will not be eating any of the food being prepared. There are still good tips, even a few that say “follow the recipe” to make the food look beautiful (I had to laugh at the food styling for biscuits paragraph that simply says pop them open from the can and bake them!). The most useful chapters if you want to eat the food afterwards are likely the on making a salad and on garnishing, like how to perk up the green tops on strawberries and tomatoes. That said, the authors’ number one rule is never to eat the food from the set. But, even if you don’t use any of the styling tips, there are great shots of the lighting and setup of most of the images in the book, along with photographers notes which are incredibly useful.

Technorati Tags: food styling, food photography

Alanna, of A Veggie Venture, was nice enough to forward me this link to JPG magazine’s recent Get Cooking challenge. This photo challenge will be open for one week and will close on April 16th. And one lucky photo challenge will be featured on the back page of the next issue of JPG Magazine.

While I work on that… I hope you guys will get as excited about this month’s challenge… Food Travel. One of my favorite parts of traveling is seeing what all the special food stuffs are wherever I go. If you happen to be traveling right now, do share some of your secret finds. If you aren’t traveling… even better! Here’s your chance to think like a pro photographer and shoot your own town as a traveler’s destination. This is the kind of assignment I get all the time and it happens to be one of my favorites because I learn more about my own city and feel like I’ve been adventuring without all the $$. The key to this challenge is shooting on location where lighting is probably mostly out of your control. You’ll want to think about your destination and what kind of light it has and when the best time to shoot will be. Think about the types of shots you might see in Australian Gourmet Traveller or Travel & Leisure… the shots that are often the most intriguing bring a sense of the culture into them. Markets, restaurants, bars are all wonderful places to take photos. Feel free to combine two images to build the picture. Think about the color. Bring in some life. Explore somewhere new or share some of your favorite places. Most of all, have fun!

The usual rules and are up on the Flickr group… the things like be constructive, take the photos during the month if possible, 3 photos per person and the last day will be around April 30th give or take a few days.

Well, since I seem to be so behind these days getting blog posts up (not to mention commenting on all of the absolutely incredible egg photos that came in this month), I thought I’d just pop in to give some link love to Kathy Casey’s blog. Kathy Casey is a Northwest chef who has more than a few cookbooks under her belt. Her latest, Sips & Apps, is currently being shot right here in Seattle. Kathy has given a little peak(and hopefully more to come) at the shoot.