I love me a good reuben. Are you with me? The tang of the pastrami, the sour of the kraut and the sweet of the russian dressing, it’s a beautiful thing. I decided last month that I needed some behind the counter photos of a real deli, and visions of reubens were what spurred me on. And while there is definitely room for debating the best pastrami in the Twin Cities, my long standing favorite is The Brothers Deli, downtown Minneapolis.

The Brothers has been around for a long time, in several incarnations; I remember eating at one in Southdale Mall when I was a kid and my mom was a secret shopper for Dayton’s (speaking of old school). Regardless of the location, The Brothers has always been the kind of place that serves bowls of pickles on the tables and slow roasts its pastrami and corned beef on the premises. Which is the only way to go when it comes to a deli, as far as I’m concerned.

I talked to Jeff, the head brother, by phone a couple times to set things up – telling him that I’m a big fan, that I’d love to shoot some during a lunch rush sometime. Our two phone conversations lasted about 15 seconds combined (Jeff’s clearly a guy who has 14 hours of work to do in an 8 hour day), and next thing I knew my assistant TJ and I were there ready to shoot.

Jeff’s crew is a well-oiled machine. All of his employees have been with him for years – many for more than ten – and they know how to get a lunch rush fed. As I tiptoed around everyone, it kind of blew me away how calm everyone was, even though the line was out the door and down the skyway for much of the lunch rush. Each person had their station, and everyone knew exactly what was needed. It was beautiful to watch.

Salad station

Soon-to-be Corned Beef Sandwich

The Grill Captain

Jeff surprised me by asking if I’d be interested in shooting some food shots to put up on the walls of the restaurant. Based on our amazingly quick phone conversations I figured he would have his head down and would forget about me a minute after I was done shooting. But as it turns out, my photos now hang over the deli bar and behind the counter, and there may be more coming shortly. You gotta love it when personal work turns in to paid work.

Next time you’re in the skyways, keep an eye out for a two foot by three foot reuben floating over The Brothers deli bar – that’s my work. Sweet!

My wife Johanna gives me grief on a regular basis for not taking more pictures of our life. She gets incredulous about the fact that, on the one hand, I’m a professional photographer; on the other hand, I hardly ever document family events.

I don’t have much of a defense, and as of right now I’m going to make a half-resolution to be better about it. As a warm up, I’m delivering a couple photos of our breakfast.

Last month Johanna and our friend Carrie decided they needed to make marmalade. Which prompted Carrie’s husband Anders and me to decide that that would require scones – to provide something to put the marmalade on. Now, for the past month, our two households have been on a little bit of a scones race. Not a bad development at all.

Anyway, these are the most beautiful, fluffy scones I’ve ever made. So beautiful that they forced me to use the cooling period to document the occasion. Here’s to home cooking, Saturday morning deliciousness, and to pointing the camera back on my own life in ‘010.

I have this tendency to hang out with people who like to push the envelope when it comes to food. The kind of people who order three pizzas when in reality we only need one, just for the variety. Who order one – of each – whatever the choices may be.

People like my friend Kelly, who cackle maniacally about something like. . . the Bacon Explosion.

Never heard of the Bacon Explosion? It might be best for your health that way, but now that you’re here I’ve gotta tell you about it. First you take yourself some bacon and you weave yourself a mat. (How’s that for a start?) Next, you take some pork sausage and layer it on top of the bacon mat. Then comes another layer of cured pork – could be fried bacon, could be pancetta, whatever you got. Throw in some barbecue rub spices, a pepper or two, then roll it all up and throw it on the smoker.

The Bacon Explosion is one of those things that you know you shouldn’t do, but you can’t help yourself; you know you should turn away, but you just have to look. It is, after all, made first and foremost of the tastiest food on the planet. It’s basically pig crack.

As I learned, the Bacon Explosion makes you do some nutty things. When I first asked Kelly if he’d be up for a day of bacon and photography, he got really excited, and proceeded to spend the couple weeks until the shoot day honing his menu and refining what would go in to our explosion. When the time came, the menu for Kelly and his wife Liz, my wife Johanna, and me, included:

• Brown sugar bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers, filled with cream cheese, coconut milk, and pineapple
• One rack of ribs
• One beer butter sauce infused whole chicken
• Twice baked potatoes (topped with bacon. . . duh)
• One bacon explosion

Everyone was more than a little incredulous about the ribs and chicken on top of the main event, but as Kelly said, “I thought the Bacon Explosion was gonna look so small all alone on the smoker.” The last thing you want to do is give the Bacon an inferiority complex.

before

after

Huge thanks to Kelly and Liz for their willingness to take Johanna and me on an epic food adventure. Kelly’s prowess on the grill and in the kitchen is perfectly matched by Liz’s good-natured response to seeing Kelly unload 10 pounds of meat for dinner. The bacon hangover I suffered the next day did nothing to take away from the deliciousness, or the experience of pushing my personal bacon boundaries.

This expression says it all.

The finished goodness

Update: in the giving-credit-where-credit-is-due department, check out the BBQ Addicts site for a look at the original madness.

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.

This month is on track to be the wettest October in Minnesota history. From most perspectives it’s been miserable: cold and damp, constantly overcast. A tough time for people like me who think of fall as the best, most beautiful time of the year, as all the rain has kept me indoors and caused the premature dropping of all those beautiful leaves. Not to mention how hard the weather has made things like fall harvest and yardwork.

But a couple days ago we had a one-day respite from the clouds, so I sped down to the vineyard before the clouds swallowed the sun again to check in on Nan and V in the fields.

These days the task is pruning back the vines of the one variety of grape that gets buried for the winter. Most of the varieties grown by Alexis Bailly stay on the trellises year-round and get pruned in the Spring. But one gets snipped in the fall, then buried as protection against the cold. As Nan explained to me, pruning is one of the main tools she has to impact the character of the grapes: the shape of the canopy, and the direction that the vine takes along the trellis directly shape a grape’s flavor profile. Pruning is an art built on years of trial and error, and it takes constant evaluation.

It’s interesting to watch an expert make her way down the a line of plants and quickly and efficiently sculpt vines in to shape. Pruning takes many quick decisions and movements; grape vines are such prolific growers that each one takes tens of snips. And there’s the medical exam part of the process, looking for small injuries in the vine that are all that soil-borne plant viruses need to take the entire vine down. And at the end of a growing season that started with a harsh winter, the medical exams can end up coming back. . . not as good as you’d hope.

But as Nan told me, many times she’s predicted the vineyard’s demise, and it keeps hanging in. All you can do is keep nurturing.

Grape vines, after the leaves fall

Pruned

A small but terminal injury

More of the Alexis Bailly story available here, and on the Alexis Bailly site.