For the latest cover of Seward Coop’s Sprout! magazine we did a faux apple harvest. Faux because of the fact that our location – a small apple stand at the Dowling Urban Environmental School – had plenty of apples, they were just rotting under our feet, not actually on the trees. But when you’re trying to illustrate the fall harvest, and you’re about a month too late to harvest (and it’s about 80 degrees, but when the issue comes out it’ll be 50), what are you gonna do? You’re gonna fake it, that’s what.

Photographing kids is always an attempt to organize sheer chaos, but these guys did a pretty great job pretending to be cold and pick pretend apples (they did actually eat the apples – that wasn’t a problem).

For those of you photo lighting aficionados out there, an explanation of the first shot above. As you can see in the first shot, the sun was pretty low in the sky when we did the shoot. I knew that there was going to be some action going on, and that it would need to be frozen for the main shot of the family at least. Given that the natural light was fading, and we were in and out of dappled sunlight, I knew there would be some lighting happening.

I love using the sun as a backlight – even putting the sun in the frame to get the nice rings of color – then pumping something in as a key light in front, so that’s what we did here. I had my assistant TJ climb a tree camera right and direct a Quantum Q-Flash towards the family. When combining ambient and strobe lights the main question is what exposure value do you want to give the background in relation to the subject, being lit by the strobe? I really wanted a bright background to give the scene as much warmth as possible, so I adjusted my exposure to give the trees in the background plenty of detail, and to blow out the highlights. Then I adjusted the Quantum to give a good exposure on our family, and blasted away.

First time I’ve ever asked an assistant to climb a tree for me. . . hopefully it won’t be the last.

About a month ago the snack series made a cameo appearance on City Pages Hotdish Blog, which was great; it’s always nice to get some work out in to the world. But the other benefit was the call for snackers included in the story. That led to an email from Annie, a native Minnesotan currently in grad school in NYC. As luck had it, she had a visit home on the books, and was up for some photos.

Her favorite snack? Pickles.

What intrigued me most about Annie was that in our email conversation she called pickles a nostalgic snack; when she eats them she can visualize walking through the Minnesota State Fair, where you can buy ginormous pickles on a stick. So we went to the fairgrounds for our shoot, and I brought a couple jars of Gedney’s State Fair award-winning pickles upon which to snack.

But our timing was off: the fairgrounds were closed off to let the fair vendors get ready for the throngs. So we had to make do with one of the entrance gates.

Of all the snack subjects, Annie showed the least pain at eating her snack for the duration of the shoot. I told her to pace herself, but still, she took down almost an entire jar of Norwegian Dills. She’s got snack dedication, for sure. And after our time together she was even going to have lunch with her boyfriend’s parents (second meeting), but she showed not restraint.

Annie told me about a couple of her favorite pickle hook ups in New York – storefronts that deal exclusively in pickles. Annie, could you elaborate in the comments if you read this? And how did lunch go??

One of the better things to happen in the past year for my wife and me has been the relocation of our local grocery store, the Seward Coop. Not only is it only three blocks from us now; it’s also twice as big, with amazing all-Minnesota meat counter (with the best hand made sausages in the city), a great deli, amazing selections of the whole world of organic and sustainable food. Basically it’s everything we want in a place to buy our food.

Which is one of the reasons I’m so excited to be working with them on their imagery – you can see the first newsletter I shot for them in PDF form here. The other reasons to be excited: great people who are fully willing to collaborate on the vision of a story, a mission that I wholeheartedly believe in right in my backyard, and amazing layout and branding provided by Spunk Design Machine.

Our first project was a backyard barbecue to highlight the August Eat Local promotion.

For you photog-types out there, a note on the lighting. I was absolutely excited about the evening sun blaring in from behind, but using only natural light would either have blown out the background and washed out the vivid color on the table, or left everything not the sky way under-exposed. So I set my base exposure to where I wanted the background to be, then I set two speedlights back from the near corners of the table to provide fill. The sweet spot was an exposure that gave highlights from the strong backlighting, with just enough fill to give detail and max color on the table and on peoples’ faces. The two speedlights were set to identical power, providing an even field of light over the table and subjects, giving me the ability to change my angle and not have to worry about resetting the lights. Then I could concentrate on composition and directing the subjects.

This past Sunday was the Birchwood Cafe’s annual Earth Day Dinner, and it was phenomenal. Seven courses of creativity, each paired beautifully with very different Minnesota beers.

I’m really not embellishing when I say that I loved each course, but I did have favorites. Like at the Valentine’s Day dinner earlier this year, I thought the BW’s Executive Chef, Marshall Paulsen, did an amazing job with the early courses in particular. This time around a beet and chevre terrine with tangelo and melted leek sauce had a great mix of flavors. The pairing with Lift Bridge Brewery’s Farm Girl Saison was perfect as well.

Beet and Chevre terrine

The next course was spot on as well: trout with coppa cured at neighboring Craftsman Restaurant, fiddlehead fern, sunchoke chips, parsley almond pesto, and wild ramps, paired with Lake Superior Brewery’s Kayak Kolsch. Beautiful mix of textures, and I couldn’t get enough of the coppa.

Fried Fiddlehead Ferns

Trout with Craftsman Capa, ferns, parseley pesto, and wild ramps

As with all events at the Birchwood, this one put all the emphasis on the local, the creative, and the communal. When owner Tracy Singleton got up to speak, it was to draw attention to the farmers in attendance who supply the restaurant, Peace Coffee, and Eureka Recycling – who composts over 90% of the Birchwood’s waste. Just a super fun, delicious evening, liberally lubricated with great Minnesota beer.

Marshall Paulsen and his kitchen crew cranking out the plates

Plating of the Bison Ribeye

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