New Clients!

2014 so far is one strange year! My favorite beloved clients have been pretty slow. What is saving me is that I have new clients! You all have to know that I don't actively promote Bill Truran Productions. I have always depended upon my clients loving me and my work enough to keep me busy. Each of these new clients came as a result of a recommendation from one of my normal clients. It's a good thing. I know that every freelance person is having a rough time in this economy. I spent 4 days shooting for Daisy's Bakery. They had a very bad experience with a different photographer (he sprayed baked goods with water). Well, we had 4 great days and shot a lot of products. Let me tell you, the stuff is absolutely yummy! Hey, new clients... who expected that?

Photo studio location packing kit list pdf

When you rent studios to shoot for big clients you need to bring everything to the location that you just might need. In this economy we rarely have assistants to run out and pick up forgotten items. This Big Red Nabisco Crate travels with me on the photo-gurney and has saved me many times. 

Here is all it holds:

Here it is sitting strapped to the gurney:

While some of the things in the the Big Red Crate are used on a regular basis, fill cards and mirrors come to mind, some have been a special savior for a special time. For instance; as I walked into a rental studio in New Jersey just after super storm Sandy, the power went out. Total darkness for over an hour. The LED flashlight was right there so I had light for my food stylist to unpack while we waited for the power repairs. Wire ties have been extra handy shooting outside on location to secure wires and weights against the wind. I was on location shooting fashion in a very expensive house. I put the light bank up high on a stand and when I took it down, the location scout was terrified to see black marks on the white ceiling! Magic Eraser to the rescue. A few wipes, a little scrubbing and the marks were gone and a pristine white ceiling remained. 

I guess the Big Red Crate is just filled with all the little crazy things I've come to realize I sometimes need when I shoot.

You can download the list here: PDF List Download

Hey, it's just this photographer's experience talking.

Nice Prize!

This image was for a contest that Arthur Schuman was holding where you would enter a recipe and maybe win a cool panini grill. It was a challenge to create something pretty with a huge metal machine to fit in but the team and I work well together and I think this one turned out nicely.

Groceries

This one was a shot for Nestle Products. I set up a 1/2 white seamless in a hallway at their corporate offices, lit the shot with a huge shoot-through umbrella and spent the bulk of the time stripping out hair and tiny bars on the grocery cart. Soon it will be a giant framed images within the corporate offices. Too cool!

Defensive Line Desserts

This video now up on YouTube and the Cello Cheese Facebook page once again shows Marie Haycox doing her part to create the beautiful recipes I shot for Arthur Schuman. We shot video with a Canon 60D and stills with a Fuji S3 during the downtime waiting for the food to arrive on the set. The actual recipe stills were captured with my beloved Nikon D700. 27.5 hours of Adobe Premier Pro and we have three adorable videos that combine video and stills and help pave the way for some great recipes. 

Cello Cheese Field Goal Fondue Recipes

Hello again,

        Here is a second video to announce this coming series of recipes using cello cheese. This one combines video and stills to keep things moving throughout. They were captured in 1080p with a Canon 60D on a Linhoff Tripod and edited in Adobe Premiere Pro. Welcome to commercial photography 2013!

    

Cello Slow-Cooker Creations: Behind-the-Scenes

This is a video that I shot and edited for my beloved cheese client Arthur Schuman. It just shows you that while a commercial photographer today has to be an expert at lighting and Photoshop, we now also have to know video shooting and editing. These all have to be an available part of a commercial photographer's tool box today. 

This video shows the "behind the scene" shoot of football/Superbowl recipes that will appear on the Cello Cheese Facebook page and web site this January. I shot the recipes over three days with my favorite food stylist Marie Haycox and in my free time I captured video and stills of the shoot in progress. Under my clients directions I cut the video and stills together into a cute video to herald the coming football season recipes. Enjoy! (thanks Melissa, Brenda, Deb and Marissa)

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I couldn't resist

 

I know i'm not supposed to do it. 

I know i'm not supposed to eat the food I shoot.

Sure, I watched every move that my food stylist Marie Haycox made.

I knew that this sandwich was made with loving care but that was for photography.

Still, my friend Melissa (the client) tried it and and offered me some. I resisted as long as I could but to no avail.

Wow, it was soooo good! 

When this recipe comes to the CelloCheese Facebook page, make it. It really is that good. 

Just look for the Grilled Fontina with Fig Jam Panini.

Sweet, cheesy, crunchy, buttery and crispy. What could be better than that?

My favorite client

My favorite client is absolutely Arthur Schuman Cheese Importers. I have so much fun shooting with Melissa Shore and the best food stylist in the world Marie Haycox. Here are some images from our last 3 day shoot.

Split Image studios is my favorite  rental in New Jersey. John Campos who runs it is a very busy photographer but always makes sure that my clients and I are well cared for. 

Melissa on shoot days becomes art director, prop stylist and client all while answering a never ending stream of emergency emails yet always with a smile!

Ah, my beloved Nikon D700 with it's full frame chip (giant 8.42mu pixels), super sharp 40 year old 55 macro lens and dependable Pocket Wizard.

This job involved shooting recipes for kids. You can see the tables covered in kiddy-type props one of which was a kaleidoscope. So I stuck it on my lens and shot.

Marie Haycox in the kitchen.

Marie Haycox on the set. 

You can also see my optical spot with a small bush to break up the light hitting the set.

Melissa and Deb picking props.

So that it. Three days of hard work and fun with one killer team. Melissa, Marie and Bill. 

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Sneaky Pete

This one is very cool. Sneaky Pete's Beverage contains Heart Healthy Oat Bran but you'd never know it. It's just a yummy drink. I did these shots for my friend John Moran who now lives and works in Florida. It's great when clients become friends. It just makes the work all that much the more fun...

Greek Yogurt Bars

Food Photography? Certainly! 
One of the ways I keep busy is to shoot supporting images for my food clients. My newest client this year is Rickland Orchards. Along with food images, I will be shooting more sports stars for them along with possible upcoming lifestyle shots and fun shots like this one of the CEO carrying an impossible pallet of product. My speciality is lighting food in a yummy way but I would go out of business soon if not for the additional images for my beloved food clients like these.

4 days in heaven

This is the studio I rented for my 4 day shoot with Arthur Schuman Inc. We were shooting recipes for their new Cello website. Most of the images were captured with one Optical Spot and one head with a large reflector off the ceiling.

A few images (mostly pasta dishes) were lit with a medium bank kept far away for better contrast.

These next three images are of Marie Haycox. She is one great food stylist and one third of the team that made these three days so heavenly.

Marie works for all of the NYC television studios as well. Don't think that those famous chefs and actors making their favorite dishes really are... It's usually Marie!

Ummmm, Mascarpone cheese in desserts!

This smiling girl is Melissa Shore. I would tell you what she does but it would take too long (she does so much). She's the art director, prop buyer & stylist, final decision maker and so much more. 

Here are a couple of images from this shoot. You can see how the hard light from the optical spots bring a little snap to the food. Yum!

So there it is. 4 days of fun making art for commerce. Money with a camera. There is no better way.

Paid to learn

These days I try to get paid to learn new technology. 18 years ago I was being paid to learn digital photography. I was one of the first and therefore have more digital experience than most. This time my beloved cheese client asked for a video for their new Cello website. We had been shooting still images for many days when the request came up. I went to Unique Photo, my local photo superstore and rented a Nikon D7000. I prefer Nikon because I have a large number of Nikon lenses and the D7000 can use them all; the manual and the auto focus. The set up for this shot involved locking a large 4 sided grater into 2 C-stands. The lighting was strobe modeling lights (that's right Speedotron modeling lights only) and the rest was just a matter of using a 300mm lens (450mm on the D7000) using my assistant to fake grate some cheeses, and me pouring 3 different cheeses down the grater while shooting 1080p video.
We shot a lot of "footage" and the rest was post production using Adobe Premier®, Adobe Flash®and Adobe Dreamweaver® to combine still images and video into a final .swf flash file for the website. 
It took me longer then a real video pro to get this job done, so I am billing my client for only one day instead of the 2 1/2 days it actually took. I didn't want to bill my client for the time as I learned these new programs... Here is the video:

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My busiest month yet!

December has been super busy. I am still grateful for my cheese client who has continued to need photography despite the continuing worldwide recession. Their Cello brand is working on a new website and requires many images for support. We have been shooting new product shots and other supporting objects, but the real fun is the many recipes that need to be shot. The team included the client Melissa, the food stylist Marie Haycox, and me. The three of us make a terrific team. Melissa brought all of the props and art directed the shots, Marie made each of the recipes look awesome, so all I had to do was light and focus each different shot. I believe that I am done for 2011 but have already been booked to shoot more in 2012. We are even going to shoot video (a first paid video shoot) so I've got an editor ready to go. Maybe things are beginning to turn around....

Yum

I am very grateful for the cheese folk that I have been shooting for this year. So far they have been by far my best client. Not only do I get to create pretty images but I also have lots of cheese to share with friends and relatives. This is all working out to be tons of fun. It's a yummy win win!

Bringing the past around again

Back in the mid 1970's, as I was trying to leverage my feeble relationship with Eileen Ford into a fashion photographer's career, I had a style that involved underexposing film by over 3 stops and then pushing the processing the same amount. I did this with 3000 ASA (ISO) police recording film for black & white, and Ectachrome 200 for color. The resulting film was so contrasty that I had to shoot with a #4 Tiffen fog filter. The result was an image that was basically of normal contrast but super chunky grainy with puffed out highlights. I have fashion and beauty images still from that era. My engagement to Barb (we are still together) made me end pursuing my career in fashion (since I had never seen a faithful fashion photographer) but now, over 30 years later I am trying to replicate that style digitally. I'll keep posting them as a find some that I like.

Pretty shots are more fun

I picked up the product for this shoot while on location for another client. That's exciting! My client/friend Nick had this to shoot and gave me an Italian booklet of the kind of images he wanted. The Italian images were soft and beautiful: just the kind that I love to shoot so I used a Nikon D700 with a 55mm macro lens almost wide open. The lighting was an optical spot from the back right and then just a large overhead light to fill in the shadows. That's it. I like it a lot. Like I said before, pretty shots are just more fun!

Photoshop to the rescue

As a current full-time commercial photographer and an adjunct university photography professor, I always tell my students that Adobe Photoshop is a super important part of our photo arsenal. This recent image is an example. I was hired to shoot a salad for a cheese client. I was directed to use multi-colored lettuce, as well as tomatoes, croutons and oh-yes cheese.

I shot two different examples and sent them to my client to pass on for approval. Low and behold, the client says they are looking for an all green salad because the red lettuce looks like "olives". Well, I set everything up again and shot 2 more salads, this time with all green lettuce. Just to see if I could, I also selected the red lettuce in one of the first shots and changed them to green. Now the client had three choices and guess what? They chose the retouched salad. Like I said, Photoshop to the rescue!

Been busy

Life isn't as busy as it was maybe three years ago but this year so far has been far busier than last year. I spent 2 full days shooting cheese for Arthur Schuman. Beyond that I have been retouching others images for my clients. Morgan Design has kept me busy at night retouching images from stock companies. I strip parts, add them to others and end up with what Clint (my client) wants. He sends me an InDesign file with the parts all together and notes as to what he wants. I can just export the .indd file as a pdf and add it as a layer to my .psd files. It all makes things go very quickly. I just strip things, clean them up, assemble them and send them out via ftp. It has kept me pretty busy and nicely filled in spaces between my own shoots. It's so important to know Photoshop. It helps to keep everything busy and earning money. There you go. It's still nothing but fun!

Food Styling with Photoshop!

This was quite an involved job. The lighting was pretty typical for me. I use an optical spot strobe from the back to cross light toward the front. This light is moved slightly from shot to shot to bring out the most contrast and detail. Next a large light bank goes overhead to fill all of the shadows so the images can be printed. Like I said, the photography part of this job was normal for me and all three shots could have been done in a quick day.

However...

I offered to do the food styling. Adding tricky food styling to shooting turned this into a 2 day job.

For the pizza, I bought a Digiorno frozen pizza. I pulled off most of the cheese but left the sauce and slightly under cooked it. I then added my own cheese (the client) plus wedged tomatoes and black olives and broiled the pizza to carefully melt the cheese. Finally I ran downstairs to the studio and shot the slice. After I uploaded the image to my client, I used Photoshop to extend some of the cheese over the edge to the exact amount that the client desired.

The panini sandwiches was styled in a similar way to the pizza since it also needed melted cheese. Before I sent an image to the client, I cut the top bread off each piece and lowered it since my bread looked too fat for a panini.

Finally there was the salad. This shot was difficult because the NYC area was super windy and rainy so everything was slowed down considerably. I would email my salad image (shot on a tiny saucer) to the client for approval but have to wait an hour for a response. Salad wilts while it waits. In the end, I combined an early lively salad with the front of one that showed the cheese very well and the result was approved! It is wonderful to work with a client who appreciates Photoshop and knows what it can do.

If you are a photo student or enthusiast in this digital age, a good handle on Photoshop is absolutely necessary. In this case it helped me make more money as a photographer/food stylist.

Crazy busy

I am fond of saying that commercial photographers are crazy when they are super busy and crazy when they are super slow so they are always just plain crazy! While I have been busy shooting products and jewelry for a catalog printer, I have been super busy shooting for my own clients as well. This is an image of a round of Romano for a label that will be applied to the whole rounds and most likely wedges that would come from them. The cheese is imported from Italy so I tried to give the image a painterly renaissance feel. This is one of maybe 8 different images that I have done lately for this client and that has kept me crazy busy during the summer season which is normally slow. Crazy busy is much better than crazy slow. Making money with a camera is just wonderful.

Pretty Cheese

Once again it is wonderful to have clients that come back to you time after time. That is really the only way to stay in business. These two shots were images for packaging for the Arthur Schuman cheese company. For this company I am often the food stylist as well as the photographer as I was for these shots. After so many years of shooting food for different companies, It just takes a little courage to go ahead and try styling the food. My favorite stylist Alyssa Alia is usually booked when I need her. I would always prefer that we let her do the food and let me control the focus and light but when we can't I am happy to step in. I think these shots are yummy and help make you hungry. That's always my goal in food packaging. So thanks Melissa, this job was fun to do!

Somebodies watching over me

I have a good friend who just lost almost half his billings because one of his clients was bought by a private Japanese company who needs no annual report. This is a typical situation I have seen in my last 2 recessions. Companies buy companies and the artist is often the loser. Having just learned about my friend, I was informed that one of my favorite clients had just been bought by another company as well! I was all set to see a huge chunk of my income go away when I got a call from said client and was booked for a job! Wow! That was close. The company I just shot for was Sensible Portions. I have written about them before. I just love them. They have been bought by Hain-Celestial. Hain-Celestial is one great company. The owner seeks out healthy companies, buys them and leaves them alone to do what they do best. Trust me: a company like that is very rare. If my year turns around I may just have to buy stock in this rare, awesome company. It's always better to work for nice people. I'm thankful Sensible Portions is still a client.

Recession

This is the third recession I have endured as a commercial photographer in the NYC area. I came to NYC directly after college in the midst of my first recession. I left NYC and took a job with Nabisco in NJ in the midst of my second recession and now I am living through the third. It is during these times that you need to have all of your overhead cut to the absolute bone and have clients that you have cared for over the years to keep giving you work. I have done both. I really appreciate Arthur Schuman for giving me work of different kinds especially during this difficult economical time. All of these jobs require the ability to light well, retouch and then assemble the images in Photoshop.

I have to laugh a little when an article about a photographer crows about how they have lasted for over 10 years! That's funny to me. I often said that a commercial photographer's career usually lasts for 20 years. The first five years is for developing and growing the business. The next ten years are spent shooting, building relationships with creatives and making money. The last five years are waining as your art directors become creative directors or leave the business. Each recession has seen art director friends get fired or laid off. A recession as deep as this one effects everyone above us. I have a friend who just lost a big client because the company he did the annual report for was bought by a private Japanese company who doesn't need an annual report. If he loses a client, then I lose work as well. The way I have lasted for so many years is that at time like these, my overhead is cut way down and I have clients that still use me. I just have to hold on and realize that "this too shall pass".

Wife as food stylist

I have a favorite food stylist that my clients are very comfortable with but she is VERY good and VERY popular so when my clients are in a hurry, we have to look elsewhere. My wife Barb has been married to this food photographer for many years so between the two of us we had no problem creating three salads that would show off the client's cheese. Barb slightly undercooked the pastas so they would hold up, cut up the veggies into tiny pieces and then we carefully hid them among the different pastas. You would never know it but the pastas are sitting on a pile of paper towel to keep it from weeping onto the plate. I now have a happy client and my talented wife got to find one more thing that she is good at. Once again, nothing but fun.

Happy Easter

Just a note to say Happy Pesach (Passover) and Happy Easter to everybody out there. This is not a new image but one I did for a 1993 calendar. Doing a calendar or recipe book is always an enjoyable time because it usually involves a writer, art director, prop stylist, food stylist and me! That kind of group working long hours late into the night can get crazy and that is when the fun begins. I won't go on here. I just wanted to wish you all a happy holiday and eat some chocolate and Easter bread for me.

Desserts

This was a very long day....

In the end we had 137 final images but we shot a lot more than that. This job took one full day to shoot (on location at the Baker's Perfection offices) and then an additional 2-1/2 days to strip out and retouch. In the end, I think all of the finals look great. I try to light these desserts with an optical spot for a hard kick coming from the back side and then a front light that I either bounce off the ceiling or the wall depending upon how much contrast and direction I feel I need from the main light. Since my Fuji won't tether to CaptureOne Pro, I use Fuji's Studio Utility® software to tether the files to a folder on the computer as I shoot and then Adobe Lightroom® to watch the folder and display them large on the screen. It's not as fast as CaptureOne but it works pretty well. I backed all of the files to a 250GB external drive as I shot and made a quick flash website in Lightroom® for the client once I had selected the finals.

So there you go: to do this job I needed to know Fuji's Studio Utility®, Adobe Lightroom® and Adobe Photoshop®. That's what it takes to be food photographer today. Tomorrow afternoon we leave for Pennsylvania for a pharmaceutical shoot. I guess I'll write about that in the other blog. See you then. Remember: this is supposed to be fun!

Why I love Shooting Food Packaging

I've been shooting food packaging for many years now. These boxes are my latest example from the Sensible Portions company. I worked with an art director friend who is a principal at One Flight Up Design. There are images on 2 or three sides of the packages and I think they look great. Now here is why I love shooting food packaging: I need to shoot a couple days per week to live comfortably. That means that I need clients who require original images. In the world of art directors with digital cameras and the ever lower cost of stock photography, we who make our livings from photography need to find clients who need a continual supply of original images. Food packaging fills that need for me. Since food packaging represents a companies "in the home" advertising, a renewed packaging version becomes a new advertisement for a company. Therefore food companies re-do their packaging on a regular basis and I get to shoot often. Add to that the satisfaction of shooting beautiful images that help a company grow and you have a win - win situation. Repeat business, good money and constant work = one happy photographer and that's why I love shooting food packaging! By the way, when you shoot food, you get to eat the yummy food. My current favorite is the Sensible Portions Apple Straws!

Bobby

This is the second time that we "shot" Bobby Simmons. The last time we were in a conference room full of people at the Javits Center. We shot there because he had been upstairs signing autographs for the food company that he helps out. This time we set up in a tiny locker room at the Nets home offices. 1/2 a white seamless gave me a head start for stripping him off the background. Bobby is amazing! He actually remembered me (sports stars usually don't pay attention to the photographer), the date we last worked together and remained patient and kind for this second shoot. We covered every possible pose and now we can match Bobby to Ahmad and Leon (the foot-ball players) in a series of ads and billboards. By the way, Bobby is actually palming the basketball. No Photoshop needed there!

New Clients

I have a new favorite client.
His name is Nick and the company is Baker's Perfection. They are well named. I haven't eaten anything of theirs that I haven't loved!
Not a bad job when you can shoot and eat. We even "had" to test some yummy products during the shoot. I use the photo gurney and we shoot on location at their facility, bringing all of the equipment in. It's a fun day. The real work begins the next day as we strip and retouch all of the cakes. You always need new clients to add to your base of established clients. It's awesome when their personalities fit so well within the whole group. I just love all of my clients. They keep me busy and help keep the kids in college. La vita loca! I wouldn't have it any other way.

I couldn't do it if it weren't for food...

These guys are Ahmad Bradshaw and Leon Washington, players for the Giants & Jets . I met them while shooting (photographing) them for a food client. They were both very professional and worked hard to get the work done quickly even though it was late. We shot about 140 images, got done by 11PM and had a web site up for the client by early the next day using Adobe Lightroom. No word on picks yet, but there were more than enough to meet the clients' wishes. I have turned my raw files into DNG's using Adobes' DNG converter, so all of my raw edit metadata is now included in each single DNG file. When the client makes the final picks, these images will be made into a billboard and header cards. See? Food photographers have to know how to shoot everything well.

This is only a test...

This is a test for a new client. They make desserts that are sold all over the place. Nick (the new client) is related in some way to the owners of one of my other food clients. This is how my business works. I work hard to keep my current clients happy and feeling safe so that they will bring me new work and new clients that they know. Nick has no idea what my dessert photography looks like so we agreed and he dropped off one dessert for me to use for a test. I shot the yummy cake with lots of detail, stripped it off the background and then put it on 4 different backgrounds so he could see what is possible.
This is how we survive in this crazy business. We go beyond to impress and win over new clients and work just as hard to keep our current clients happy. You need them both: happy current clients and happy new clients. It's the only way to stay in business this long.
When I say work hard, realize that it's not like digging ditches (I've done that too). No, it's staying focused on perfection while enjoying the people involved.

Too busy...

I often say that photographers are crazy when they are not busy and then crazy when they are busy. Therefore, we're always crazy!
I have a dungeon full of product for my friend John and World Gourmet Marketing. I have three different bowls and maybe 4 or 5 different products. I'm not sure exactly what to do with it all. I would be picking on John for direction, but Revlon has kept me pretty busy so I just kind of look over to the boxes of product over there. Since Revlon takes the weekends off, I was able to get 4 shots done for 4 packages for one of the products. John is in Dallas for work so I don't actually know if these are perfect or not. At this point, I don't think I'll have to reshoot, maybe just do some Photoshop work to make them fit perfectly. In this economy, I guess it's just good to be busy.

The Cheese goes on

This job began over a week ago. This day we shot in the Split Image studios in Fairfield NJ. And now, it is slowly drawing to an end. I think there is one more day left and it will be the least fun (but still fun). Least fun because the final day will be alone in the dungeon. Fun because hey - photography is fun! Not as much fun because a lot of the fun comes from shooting with friends. I am grateful for the work and when the job is done I can bill it. Thanks Melissa!

It's not all glamour

What I mean by the title is: shooting 170 different sku's (stock keeping units) of cheese wouldn't be considered glamorous by any means, but spending 2 days with a great client/friend in an office set up as a "studio" was nothing but fun. The people in the cheese warehouse were all very nice or at least very interesting. So far we've done 86 images so there is one day left for the Split Image studios, and I'll finish up the balance in the dungeon. It all good.