Chugrad McAndrews Photography – San Francisco Food, Advertising and Catalog Photography

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My father is obsessed. So are his buddies… as well as over a hundred other people who showed up on a frozen morning to the first meeting of the year for the “Incline Club”. This is a group of people with a unified, monolithic obsession – it’s not a religion… or is it? Is it mostly spiritual? Is it mostly physical? However each describes his or her relationship to the process, the end goal is the same – by next summer, late August, most of these folks will compete in a running race to the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs – that’s 14,110 ft. above sea level! I’ve driven to the top and walked up there numerous times throughout my life – the oxygen was so thin, just taking ten steps made me start to breathe heavy and get light-headed. When the race weekend rolls around, those truly committed (committable?) do the ascent and run up one day, then the ’round trip, up and down, the next day. The slightly more sane will choose one day or the other.

When my father walks out the front door of his house, he has a perfect view of “The Peak” which stares him down, challenging and enticing him. He has a personal relationship with the mountain and sees it as both a nemesis and a lover – the bittersweet siren song that draws him, almost uncontrollably, to test his human limitations in nature. He has been a nationally competitive distance runner as long as I can remember – it’s his hobby and his passion. I’m sure many others in the Incline Club share this drive.

My father is 70 years old as of a month ago. For a competitive runner, this is an exciting transition because he enters the lower end of a new age category. Theoretically, this puts him at an advantage over competitors since he’s the “youngest”. He is constantly adjusting his training routines to best be able to compete in whichever races he chooses to enter each year. When he’s going to do “The Peak”, which he does most years, his regimen includes multiple trips to the top, as well as these weekly runs with the Incline Club.

Special thanks to the founder of the Incline Club, Matt Carpenter, arguably the best mountain runner in the world – thanks for letting me shoot the opening meeting. You can find more information on the Incline Club here: http://www.inclineclub.com

I am a believer in the Mentor system. We can all learn a great deal from certain individuals who we find particularly influential – ideally in mostly good ways. Often this happens when we are at key stages of transition such as high school, and with adults who are already working as teachers… this was the case for me with Bill.  Bill was my first photo teacher. I was 17 years old and I doubt either of us knew at the time that those critical classes would lead to a professional career in photography. He treated his students with what I perceived as a high amount of respect by being very demanding and having high expectations of performance – he didn’t accept mediocrity and I quickly adopted this value as my own. I learned every last detail about fine art Black and White shooting and printing, studying Ansel Adams’ zone system concepts, and traveling around the Southwestern U.S. to shoot landscapes and people. Coincidentally, when I moved to California to go to college, Bill moved here as well and taught at the San Francisco Art Institute where I attended a few of his classes over the years.

A couple times after I graduated from college, I went back to my high school as a teacher’s assistant to go on these trips around the Southwest with the current photo teacher at the time to help keep the Mentor tradition alive.

Recently, Bill and his wife Christine bought property near Half Moon Bay and are running it as an Organic Farm. My wife and I went down for a visit and were pretty amazed at the operation. I used to fantasize about being a farmer but after our trip to Peru last year, and various other trips I’ve made, I’ve realized that being a Farmer or Rancher is just like any other career path and takes many years of trial and error, successes and disappointments to become successful… and it’s often very unpredictable. Bill and Christine have gone through their own learning curves in the past couple years, but many elements of their transition are the same as before, with a primary focus being their philanthropic work with local communities. They are doing various educational activities for kids at the Farm as well as providing Organic vegetables to a local school district, and much more. They have also been able to hire knowledgeable people who have helped ease the transition.

The “Bike Hut” has been very welcomed by the local bicycling community. Bill and Christine knew the road by the farm was a popular biking area, so they turned a little hut on the property into a self-serve snack and drink stop for bicyclists. They quickly became local heros – not just for the mere existence of the “hut” but for the simple fact that all business in the hut is done on the Honor System – there’s a cash drawer where people make their own change and each item is labeled with it’s respective price. They have had hardly any trouble with dishonesty and in these modern times of disconnected communities and distrust among fellow humans, people feel refreshed that Bill and Christine would actually have that much faith in humanity. Sometimes it’s the littlest gestures that make the biggest impact. For more information on Nuevo Potrero Farm have a look at their website: www.potreronuevofarm.org.

For this installment of the In-Store Displays for Safeway, I am including two rounds in one. For October everything we shot had a pink theme for Breast Cancer Awareness month. For November, it was more of a holiday theme.

One of the more fun shots we’ve done so far was this heart-shaped Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich surrounded by a pink gradient glow – we really had a great time seeing this shot come to life, using several old-school photo techniques (that pink background was not computer-generated!). The mini-cakes in the “Think Pink” display were beautifully created by the Food Stylist and we had fun with a variety of toppings.

Has anyone ever made this Green Bean Casserole with Mushroom Soup dish? We had all experienced this dish at some point in our lives and all recognized it as a cultural mainstay. We spent a lot of time getting the perfect cup of coffee for that warm, holiday feeling in the “Warm Regards” shot. The two drink shots looked really vibrant in the store – definitely had an impact!