Friday, August 31, 2012
Beet Salad at the Rhumb Line

More beautiful food from the Rhumb Line Restaurant in Ventura. This is the Beet Salad. I'm told it's one of their most popular dishes, and if it tastes as good as it looks I can sure see why! Once again this is right out of the camera, no fakery, and no inedible food here. This was right out of the kitchen, and ready to eat!

Friday, September 23, 2011
Toro de Oro Pepper Reflection

The Golden Bull pepper... or Toro de Oro. This amazing beauty is from the Santa Barbara Farmers' Market. I picked it out on State Street this Tuesday for a photo shoot for a couple of upcoming Fine Art food photography shows. One show will be part of First Thursdays in Santa Barbara. The show will be displayed at the office of Casa Magazine in downtown Santa Barbara and the reception will be First Thursday (of course) the sixth of October at 5 to 8pm and is open to the public. Hope to see you there!

Friday, September 5, 2008
Curvy Pepper

So we are trying to eat a little better. We stopped at the Farmers' market today to see if they had any good fruit. (The grocery stores have been a little weak lately.) We found some good peaches and strawberries then we found the cool peppers. My wife and I were looking for really interesting ones which caught the eye of one of the guys behind the counter. He started telling us that people even used to take these really nice black and white photos of these kinds of peppers. Like he was reading my mind. Well, except for the black and white part. But maybe tomorrow!

Saturday, August 30, 2008
More Garden Goodies

I just couldn't decide which veggie photo I liked the best. So I put all my fovorites online and you can choose your favorite.

Maybe this weekend I'll get out and get some more panoramic photos. It sure is too hot to sit in front of the computer, maybe a nice beach breeze would help.

Thursday, August 28, 2008
Treats from the Garden

The tomato on the right is the same on from the other day. It's a variety called a Garden Peach The yellow one on the far left with the green stripes is a "Banana Legs".

The ones that did not make the cut for the modeling job made a delicious Chili. It's been a good season for the garden, even though the tomato plants have generally not been very happy this year.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Garden Peach

We're finally trying to get back to a normal life here. We recently had a wild fire in the hills near Santa Barbara, "the Gap Fire". We were not warned to evacuate where we live, but we did anyway when the sky turned brown and it looked like the middle of the night at 6pm. I'll get some photos online from some of those crazy days, but right now I just have to say thank you to all the amazing fire fighters and the families who worry about them when they are on the job. Thanks to them not one house was lost.

Still, through all the craziness, I have been taking the time to tinker with my camera. This is a beautiful translucent striped tomato variety called a Garden Peach. This is one of the last ones my wife coaxed off the plant and it is beautiful. It is actually fuzzy like a peach. And this one is still sitting here waiting to be the subject of more photos. But the others from the plant have been quite delicious.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Peppers and Garlic

Time for a little more food photography! Yet another of those self promotion projects that always gets bumpped by other things.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Corn Closeup

Maybe this would have been a little more fitting image for Thanksgiving. :-D

This is another low aperture shot making the the one ear out of focus. This close, the cornsilk almost looks like angelhair pasta. I like the texture in the near husk too.

Sunday, September 16, 2007
Fresh from the Garden

This was taken a couple hours before yesterday's photo of the day. This was the scene in the middle of the table that inspired the three hour photo shoot.

The cool purple garlic bulb is from a recent trip to Gilroy for their Garlic Festival, but most of the others are fresh from the garden.

Saturday, September 15, 2007
Habanero Reflection

I noticed this pepper as I was sitting at the dining room table this morning with my wife and bird. (His cage is in the corner of the dining room. He likes to be right in the middle of the action.)

We have a huge pile of peppers and tomatoes on the table from our plants in the back yard. My wife has been pointing out the cool ones to me for a couple of weeks, and I finally couldn't wait any longer it was time for a photo shoot!

About three hours later this was one of my favorite shots. But I can't take all the credit, I have a great Art Director & food stylist! The cool black tray was my wife's idea.

Friday, April 13, 2007
Stripey Season

Oh I'm so excited! It's tomato time again! (yeah I know I need a hobby! oh yeah, I have my camera!) This is one of our "Mister Stripey" tomatoes from last year. But it is time to start looking for this years varieties. A couple weeks ago we had to search all the nurseries to find only common tomato varieties, but they are out in full force now and I have lost count of how many we have.

Of course, one of our favorites is still around from last year. It is a big mass of vines that seems to be very happy and produced fruit all year even through our mild frosts here. (It was nestled against the wall under our living room window and, luckily for him, they didn't seem to have anything like insulation in the 70s when the homes in this area were built. :-)

Friday, August 25, 2006
Wild Pepper

I would tell you what kind of pepper this is, but my wife grew it from a seed and the seed was in a packet of mixed seeds. Hope they taste as good as they look. Of course, this one is particularly wild lookin'.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Tomato Worm Assassin

This is how we take care of tomato worms around here!

We really like birds in our yard anyway and it appears these guys really like tomato worms. We try to encourage them as much as possible.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Pink Grape

Our tomatoes are doing great! This is a Pink Grape Tomato and they are delicious.

We had a 'bout with tomato worms and other things trying to eat them. We are trying to keep them organic and in doing this we are getting a real appreciation for how hard organic farmers must have to work. Fortunately, we found crawling rosemary to deter the snails, cut pantyhose around the pots and tied up around the plant to keep other creepy crawlies out and something special for the tomato worms! Check back tomorrow and I'll show you how we handle them.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Tomatoes from the Garden

These are some beautiful little tomatoes from our garden. My wife has an incredible green thumb. Our biggest plant is about seven feet tall! So this is the first of many tomato dishes.

These are Pink Grape Tomatoes. They are translucent, beautiful, and delicious. The basil is from the garden too. Now we just need our own buffalo for the Mozzarella. :-D

Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Chicken Salad

A couple of days ago you got to see the ingredients. Now we have the results! Food is a tricky thing to photograph. Especially something like chicken salad. It has the very real potential to come out looking like... well, something you really do not want to eat. In examining my favorite cookbooks, I have found that lighting and garnish both play a major role in making formless things interesting and appetizing.

In the not too distant future I will be starting a new project, a cookbook, with a friend who owns a great restaurant downtown. I have to practice because his food is so good I really want to do it justice!

Sunday, June 18, 2006
Ingredients

Another shot from yesterday's food experimentation. BTW, The tomato is supposed to be orange. The normal tomatoes in the store are bred for ease of shipping, shelf life and durability. But, sometimes I like a little flavor too. Fortunately most good stores are starting to get interesting little variants like these.

Saturday, June 10, 2006
Tomato Blossom

This one is called "Mr. Stripey"!

No! I don't name my plants...

Ok, well yeah, maybe I do.

But, not this one, he came with that name! Really! And, when this beautiful blossom turns into the HUGE tomato I know it will, you will see why!

Wednesday, June 7, 2006
First Tomato of the Season!

I am sooo excited, this year is our second attempt to grow tomatoes in our small back yard. And I think my wife has figured out the secret as you can see. This guy is beautiful and smells perfect! (smell is one of THE most important things in picking a good tomato IMO) It is a "Pink Grape Tomato" it is only about an inch long, which is about how big it is supposed to be. And as you can see there are more on the way.

Sunday, June 4, 2006
Peach... err Tomato Fuzz

The sun was beautiful this evening. My wife and I were playing with our plants in the back yard when she pointed out a few new buds on this tomato plant. (the little round things in the upper right)

I'm so excited! I just love tomatoes Most of the ones you get in the store are tasteless. But this plant passes the first test, it smells just like my grandfathers garden. (that is the way I pick a good tomato) It was my job to help him find the ripe tomatoes on his plants when I was visiting.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Chinese Toon Trees

This is a beautiful pink tree at Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens, in Santa Barbara. There was no name on it like most of the plants in the gardens, and every time we go lately we see people trying to figure out what it is. Thanks to the Internet we were able to track it down.

Apparently the bright pink foliage is a springtime thing. If you look closely at the plants you can see them starting to fade to green at places.

This plant is actually used as a vegetable and in traditional Chinese medicine. 'Course that would not be the woody parts. They use them as young shoots, or even smaller, like bean sprouts.

Monday, April 3, 2006
Yellow Bells

I love Gelson's! Their produce looks like a farmer's market. They even stack everything with the stems pointing in the same direction. Particularly nice since we went there to find subjects for some still life food photography.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Leek Soup

So if you have been around the site for a while, you know that I recently married my best friend. Well it turns out, SHE CAN COOK! (not like I did not know that already, we have been friends for ten years.) But she has been quite creative recently. This was the scene in the kitchen when she was experimenting with Leek Soup. We must be newlyweds I can still get in the way in the kitchen with my camera! :-D

Saturday, July 23, 2005
One from the Pepper Patch

This is one of my little pepper plants living in a hanging basket in my back yard. One of my favorite restaurants (Los Arroyos, on Figueroa in Santa Barbara) makes, among other things, some incredible salsas. One of which is made from Habaneros, one of the hottest peppers. After getting used to eating their blazing salsa I decided I loved the flavor of this little pepper as well as the kick it gives things. So I had to start a little pepper patch in my back yard. Trouble was, I did not want my muse to get into the plants on one of her evening perimeter checks of the back yard. So they are safely tucked away well out of her reach in a hanging basket.