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

Here is another update on the most recent shots over the past few months for the In Store Displays for Safeway.

One fun concept on this round was a soup bowl made to look like a little sports car screeching though the scene. Another was an alphabet soup shot with letters in the spoon that read “YUM”. The Ice Pops were a fun idea as well – you’ll notice we did one with mixed juices. I really like the iced tea shot we did with a slice of peach on the rim – it feels very “Summertime”. The shake glass posed some challenges and required a bit of computer magic to get the glass to look so “slim”, but came out nicely in the end. The shot of the Citrus Cleaner with orange slices was done using mostly traditional photo techniques – not a lot of Photoshop – can you guess how we got the orange slices and the bottle all together in one shot?

“Mademoiselle Nuri Candies” is a family-owned, small business that makes these amazing tasting nougats… they are fluffy, chewy, and crunchy at the same time, not too sweet, with pistachio highlights and an overtone of honey throughout. You might find these on your next visit to Whole Foods.

For more information about Mademoiselle Nuri Nougats, visit: http://www.mynuricandies.com.

“Soofoo” is derived from “Super Food”. It is a grain and legume combination created by inventor and entrepreneur Maurice Kanbar – something he used to eat himself, then decided to market to the general public. SooFoo is supposed to serve as a more healthy alternative to something like white rice which doesn’t have much nutritional value. It is being carried in a variety of super markets and in a few other countries. For this project I was hired to make a series of recipe photos for their website.

To learn more about Soofoo please click the following link: http://www.soo-foo.com.

I have included two rounds in one again for this installment of the In Store Displays for Safeway.

There were a few shots this time that had interesting challenges. The fist was shrimp and veggies falling from a Wok onto a bed of rice… getting all the individual pieces to end up where we wanted them proved to be a task, but was very rewarding once we achieved our goal.

Speaking of goals, the pretzel shot was a fun one. The Food Stylist magically (not easily) created a goal post with pretzel sticks – great concept for the sports fans out there.

The soda shot was our most elaborate, involved shot. Carbonated drinks with condensation and ice are already very hard to get right, then we added melting, dripping ice cream and a swirly straw in the mix just to make the day more “fun”.

I am a huge fan of traditional music and dance forms from all over the world. I have participated as a student and performer with many different types of groups over the past 20 years. In recent years, one of the styles I have been drawn to is Tahitian drumming. When my teacher told me she was coming out with a new CD and needed professional packaging, I agreed to help out. I called my good friend and professional colleague, Czelena Stovall, who is an amazingly talented Creative Director at Carol H. Williams Ad Agency, and she agreed to take on the design.

Aside from being a highly regarded teacher of Tahitian and Hawaiian traditions, my teacher, Kumu Mahealani Uchiyama, is also interested in, and pursuing, other music and dance forms. This new CD is a great example of this. She has spent many years learning to play the Mbira, an instrument from Zimbabwe, and this CD is her debut playing solo Mbira.

I had to draw on much of my eclectic photography experience to shoot this project. I shot landscapes and the Moon, and studio shots of the Mbira and Mahea… all to spec to fit the design Czelena had come up with.

For those who are interested in the technical details of photography, here are a few tips I learned, through trial and error, on how to shoot the moon. The moon is very, very far away – so far that you need the biggest lens you can find. I was intending to rent the perfect lens, but the weekend I was planning to shoot turned out to be a weekend lots of work was being done on the Bay Bridge, so all the extreme telephoto lenses were already rented out… all that was available was a 70-200mm zoom with a 2x teleconverter that would bring the total magnification to 400mm. I did a little research and found that people were saying this was the minimum magnification for shooting the moon and it should be fine. Well, they were wrong (IMHO). That lens was all I had on the actual night of the Full Moon and those images were unusable. The next day, I called a friend who is a fanatic Bird photographer. He owns a 500mm with a 2x and a 1.4x teleconverter. He graciously let me borrow his gear and I shot again that night with a lens combo that brought me to 1400mm… now we were talking – I could actually fill the frame with the moon. I felt like I could just reach out a big toe and take a quick step on the moon’s surface! Two things I noticed that hadn’t occurred to me before – the day after the Full Moon (or the day before) is the perfect day to shoot the moon because instead of a flat surface with no shadow detail, you get a sliver of shadow along one side of the sphere, which gives it a sense of being 3-dimensional, as well as some shadow detail in many of the surface craters which really makes them stand out. The other thing I noticed was how amazingly fast the earth is spinning. I would get the moon centered in the frame and shoot a couple frames, pause, and before I knew it, the moon was already out of the frame – within about 20 seconds! This is old news to an astronomer but I was amazed by this.

To hear tracks from the CD “Ndoro” or to purchase a CD, please visit: http://www.thesacredforest.org

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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!

I worked on another fantastic project with the folks at Ten Speed Press. They needed supplemental shots for a cookbook all about Ceviche called “The Great Ceviche Book”. They are issuing a revised version with some new recipes and wanted some fresh images to accompany them. I happily agreed.

For our second round of In Store Displays for Safeway, we shot a very elaborate composite with lots of cookies “flying” at the camera as if they’d just been kicked by a young boy playing soccer. We also did a few cookies for a different shot that were supposed to depict popular ways of eating those cookies: twist, bite, dunk! The third shot was an overhead of a hearty bowl of soup full of noodles and veggies.