A quick story (fun fact?) from our shoot for the Culinary Mistress at Saffron. Sameh Wadi and his brother Saed told us about a piece of unfinished business of their father’s that they intend to finish for him: an encyclopedic cookbook of Palestinian cuisine. Their father’s manuscript – which he had finished but was never able to have published – rests in wait until Sameh and Saed can make their contribution to it with contemporary recipes and techniques. Sameh clearly draws a lot of joy and meaning from his relationship to his family’s food traditions, at once honoring them and expanding them. Not everyone has such a strong rationale for how or why they cook, and I have a lot of respect for the amount of personal meaning Sameh puts in to his livelihood.

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!

In case you missed it, earlier this week, The Culinary Mistress, a cookbook I photographed last November and December, was successfully launched into the world. For Geri Wolf, the author, the book is a tribute to some of the Twin Cities’ top chefs, and the quickfire completion of a long held dream. For me, it was the perfect opportunity to combine two of my core photographic specialties – portraits and food – and a chance to spend a little quality time with some of the most creative, gutsy people in town. Now that the book exists and is ready for sale, I’m SUPER excited to be able to show you some of my favorite images collected for the book.

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.

I’ve understood for a long time that my strongest images are usually made while documenting subjects that interest me. That’s why I headed downtown last week to document what I feel is the most compelling time of the day: lunch.

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!

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted on the status of The Big Project – not because there’s been no progress, of course. I’ve just been a bad blog friend. Sorry about that.

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 Hill has been around the Minneapolis food scene for a long time. After starting out in New York, he moved to town and worked at Goodfellow’s. Then he opened Cosmos. Then he opened the Red Stag Supper Club. Now he’s Executive Chef for W Hotels in the Foshay Tower, running Manny’s, Prohibition, and the Living Room.

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.