Photographing the chefs and food that went in to The Culinary Mistress, we ended up setting up our roving photo studio in some. . . nontraditional spaces in order to accommodate the schedule of a chef: dining rooms during service, kitchens, back hallways crowded with ladders and spare 4-tops. My favorites were the chefs we photographed who were in the process of developing their next restaurant: Stewart Woodman prior to the opening of Heidi’s, Stephen Trojahn during the Gastro Truck off-season, and Steven Brown during the lead up to the newly-opened Tilia. Since these chefs didn’t have restaurants for us to invade, they opened their homes to us. And since there wasn’t the crush of responsibilities generally pressing down on an executive chef in the restaurant, we were able to have some great conversations.

Steven talked about the gastro-pub trend of the past several years, and about how the public’s growing embrace of craft beers has mirrored his own shift toward a cuisine that is much more approachable and affordable, but still well thought out and crafted. Based on Zimmern’s review, it sounds like Tilia is a perfect realization of Steven’s latest food thoughts, as well as exactly what tons of people (me included) are looking for these days in a restaurant.

Earlier this week it was announced that 20.21’s run at the Walker will come to an end this Spring, which is too bad. 20.21 is a place that, under Asher’s guidance, crafted flavors beautifully, and created an atmosphere of hospitality and artistry that will be missed. But I can’t wait to see where Asher lands next; I hope that Puck doesn’t pull him out of town, because that would be the true loss to the Twin Cities food scene.

Chris’s recipes, prepared by Sea Change Executive Chef Erik Anderson, reflected his cool, and went perfectly with author Geri Wolf’s art direction: vivid reds and oranges in all three of his dishes, giving a very contemporary, saturated look to each plate. The carrot broth in particular, being poured from above in the book photograph, photographed beautifully.

Diane Yang, of La Belle Vie fame, is one of the top, most talented pastry chefs in town. She’s also particularly nice and easy to work with. In fact, of all the chefs featured in “The Culinary Mistress,” Diane was one of the toughest to get to not smile. But just like any chef, she can kick ass when necessary, so we got through our shoot with some great images.

As a portrait photographer, one of the main challenges I’m continually faced with is how to break the ice with my subjects and create some semblance of a relationship very quickly. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it doesn’t happen. But with Lenny I had a perfect in. The shoot was two days before Thanksgiving, and the next day I was co-hosting a pre-Thanksgiving party. I didn’t exactly know what I was going to make for an appetizer, but as I was checking out at the coop a few days prior, the cashier had seen my container of buttermilk and mentioned she was going to make a parsnip pie. Now I was mulling that idea over, trying to think of how I could make parsnip pie in to an app. And what better giver of advice of one of the true champions of local ingredients and deliciousness than chef Russo?

Lenny joined me in the dining room and as I took a few test shots, I told him about the recipe I was trying to come up with: phyllo cups filled with pureed parsnips and. . . what? To my surprise, Lenny gave it some real thought. Not that I didn’t think he would be courteous; I just have a lot of respect for him as a chef, and not a lot of respect for my own culinary talents. But he said, “Hmm. Interesting. Was this your idea?” I conveniently forgot my conversation with the coop checker and claimed it as my own. But after the initial interest, he proceeded to pretty much shoot me down. First, he wouldn’t use parsnips so early in a meal. Second, phyllo cups are clearly way too bush league. “What you really need to do is come back here and get some high quality lard from the Farm Direct Market and make yourself some proper crusts.” Points taken.

As it turned out, I didn’t get any pointers on my recipe, but our conversation definitely got Lenny in a good place for photos. And if you ever see a parsnip pie on the Heartland menu, think of me.

By the way, if you want to cook like Lenny Russo or any of the other chefs I’m highlighting here, you’ve got to get your hands on the Culinary Mistress. You’ll find the recipes for the dishes pictured, and more fun personal facts about the people behind the food.

A couple other things to pass on. The serious portrait poses fit beautifully with Geri Wolf’s art direction for the overall aesthetic of the book, but when you meet Sameh you sense immediately that he is FAR from as serious as he looks here. No one portrait can reflect every facet of a person’s personality; Sameh has an easily-accessible serious side that we explored on these portraits, but hopefully I’ll have a chance to reflect his other sides on another shoot someday. Also, we got to sample the small plates pictured below, and if you think all hummus and baba ghanoush are created equal, think again. Sameh’s subtle spicing took dishes I thought I knew and transformed them completely.

Congratulations to the Wadi brothers for all the accolades that they have recently received!

To kick things off I thought I’d start with Stewart Woodman, in honor of the opening of his latest creation just yesterday, Heidi’s Minneapolis. Since Heidi’s was weeks away from opening its doors, we used Stewart’s dining room for the shoot. Led Zeppelin was on the stereo, the living room was wallpapered with various restaurant opening-related lists scribbled on white butcher paper, and a team of four chefs churned out the sea bass recipe Stewart contributed to the book.

Stewart, aka Shefzilla, has a certain reputation around town as a man whose passions for his craft sometimes spill over onto the spicy side of the thermometer. But sadly, I can’t add to the legend; true, I was only around for a few hours, but what I experienced was a confident, friendly, cohesive bunch of people. And the sea bass? Holy crap, it was delicious.

Nothing too tricky about these photos, just people accosted in public by a stranger with a camera while eating their midday meal. As you can tell, some were only too happy to share in their moment of respite, others not so much. I’d put my success rate (success being defined as allowing me to photograph them) at right around 50%, which I feel is a fairly good representation of the state of Minnesota Nice in the Minneapolis area these days.

Down the hatch!

But here I am now to give you some of the scoop! First of all, branding. Maybe you caught my announcement of the new wedding portfolio site, where you can see the wedding version of my new logo in action. If not, let’s put a spotlight on the logo, because I for one have a hard time getting enough of it.

Man, I am so. . . stoked. . . about the job Andrew Voss has done so far on design. (And by the way, I never use the word stoked.) He hit it out of the park, as far as I’m concerned. It’s modern but authentic, sophisticated yet hand-hewn. I love it, and I feel like it speaks to my photographic style perfectly. Big props to Mr. Voss for the logo and the layouts he’s come up with for my print portfolio, postcards, letterhead, business cards. . . the whole works. I can’t wait to unleash the green side on the world in the coming weeks.

The wedding site was accompanied by a new print portfolio book, housed in a spectacular hand made slip cover and cover made by the immensely talented Scott Mullenberg. If you’re in the market for a custom book maker, you couldn’t do better than Scott. His product is absolutely top notch, he’s creative, responsive, and professional. I’ll be using him for my non-wedding portfolios, and for all high end wedding albums I produce.

Once the wedding site and book were wrapped up, I moved on to marketing my wedding business. Compared to last year in particular, the rate of bookings for 2010 has been gangbusters so far, and I think a lot of the credit for that should go to Andrew’s beautiful design and Selina Maytreya’s editing and sequencing of the images used. I’ve had nothing but fun working with these guys, and I feel like I’m projecting a much more true idea of my capabilities to the world, which feels great.

In other wedding news, I will be the preferred photographer for events at Solera Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, which is particularly exciting because I have so much respect for the food they put out. I photographed a wedding there last June and had a great time using their bright colors and wide windows and views of Minneapolis as my backdrop. Hopefully I’ll be there lots more in the months to come.

Most recently, this week Selina and I have been at work editing my non-wedding work. They’re still in a bit of flux, but here are the sequences for the three galleries I’ll be relaunching my site and print portfolio with as they stand today.

Portraits

Foodies

Sun City

Having this new edit is super energizing; working on your own portfolio by yourself, it’s easy to get bogged down in your attachment to certain images and your own individual artistic sensibility. Working with another person you trust – especially someone like Selina, who has a ton of experience in the industry – clarifies the work you do, and how it holds together as a whole. I really like the way these images flow one to the next to lead a viewer through some of the best of what I’ve photographed so far. It’ll be fun to package it all up and throw it to the winds in 2010.

Josh is one focused dude, like the other chefs I’ve met this year. He’s organized, straightforward, always moving. And man, can he cook. For last night’s Sample Circuit in the Living Room he sent out a huge assortment of dishes, forming a huge spectrum from comfort food (beef tamales, pigs in the blanket with Fisher Farms pork), to gourmet (curried king crab sushi roll, crostini with rare beef, roquefort, and smoked tomato marmalade), and points in between (truffled deviled eggs, scallop and kobe beef sliders).

Aside from actually eating and photographing all this amazing food, my favorite moment from the night illustrates another side to Josh. It was getting to the end of the evening, and the pigs in a blanket had run out. They were, after all, delicious, and made of pig. My friend Val noticed the absence of the pigs, grabbed Josh, and pretty much demanded more. (You’ve got to know Val to understand that this isn’t particularly surprising behavior.) It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Josh to blow her off, say sorry, how about some lamb meatballs instead? But he said he knew where there were ‘a few more,’ ran off, and three minutes later came back with a small plate loaded with pigs in blanket, just for Val.

That, my friends, is how to build a fan club.

Last image from the night: not the best picture I’ve ever taken of my wife Johanna, but we just had to get a shot of these Diva Glass Slippers given to her and Val. Like a coozy, but for your wine glass! Brilliant!

Johanna really wanted an Obama one, too, but all that were left were white Obamas, and that just didn’t seem right.