Kosher Style

Kosher Style - Amy Rosen’s New Cookbook

I recently had the pleasure of working on Amy Rosen’s new cookbook, Kosher Style. This is my third book i’ve shot with her and it’s quite different from the other books we’ve done together. Previously we teamed up to shoot Toronto Cooks and it’s sequel Toronto Eats. Both books focused on Toronto’s Restaurant scene and it’s chefs. This time around it’s all about Jewish food hence the funky title: Kosher Style.

Our goal here was to give a modern look to traditional kosher foods. This was a really fun learning experience for me and I got to try all kinds of foods i’d heard of but hadn’t had the chance to try like Gefilte Fish, Knishes and Blintzes.

I was fortunate enough to shoot this cookbook with an incredible team. Michelle Rabin handled the food styling and Madeleine Johari was the prop stylist. I couldn’t be happier with the results. The book doesn’t come out until later this fall, but i’m happy to be able to share a few of my favourite images with you.

Breakfast

Inspired by David Hockney’s photo collages, I wanted to take a similar approach and apply it to my world, food photography. This series was quite fun to shoot, and a bit of a challenge to pull together in the end, but I’m pleased with the results. I’ve always been attracted to photographing the most simple food. It’s just more relatable, more honest, more real. So this breakfast series is the simplest of the simple breakfasts: egg, toast, and grapefruit.

Dark Matter

Staying with a minimalist approach, the next series I created is Dark Matter. Here my intention was to use darkness as a key component in the shots.

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.”

— Albert Einstein

Shadows have always been something I’ve enjoyed working with to create a sense of depth and mystery. I love how they creep into every little contour.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

— Leonardo Da Vinci

Steam Bath

New Year, new resolution. Stay on top of updating my blog. I haven’t been very good at that lately. So here goes.

Most of the work I do here in my studio is food focused. I shoot mostly with commercial clients and my specialty is food photography. One of the things I try to do at least quarterly is to take some time away from the more commercially inclined work I do and carve out some time, typically a week, to shoot creatives that give me a chance to try out new techniques or creative concepts. Sometimes this work falls under the category of food photography, other times not. The main goal here is to play around, and create work that I typically don’t get to do on the jobs i’m working on.

I think it’s really important for photographers to make time to do this, especially when they are busy and running a successful studio. If you don’t, it’s easy to fall back into a certain creative complacency and your growth can become stunted.

The first series I shot is titled Steam Bath. The goal here was to create atmospheric shots while maintaining a minimalist approach. I think we achieved this quite nicely. Really the only propping elements in these shots are reflection and atmosphere.

I’ll be posting more shots from my creative week in the coming days. All of these shots were done with stylist Madeleine Johari, my wife and creative collaborator.