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

I had the pleasure of teaching a class this summer at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. A colleague of many years now has a position at the school and asked if I’d be interested. I saw it as a great opportunity to share some of the many years of experience I have accumulated in Photography so far.

The class was to focus on Still Life Photography. I felt it was important for the students to learn about the real world of commercial photography, in addition to the technical details of creating excellent images, so I structured the class where we did a “real life” shoot every other class for the whole class period. We were shooting a faux catalog and rotating positions each time. The positions were some typical roles played on a commercial photo shoot such as “Photographer”, “Digital Technician”, “Art Director”, “Prop Stylist”, and assistants. It proved to be a very successful way of bringing the real world of commercial shooting into the classroom. My hope was that when these students start working in the real world, they will already have some valuable tools such as terminology and set-etiquette, as well as all the technical photography skills.

I was truly impressed with some of the work produced. In addition to the faux catalog, the students had weekly homework assignments that focused on technical aspects of photography, such as Composition – looking at how objects and/or subjects play off each other within the frame; Background – paying close attention to how every detail in the background can dramatically affect the foreground; Shadow Quality – playing with different light sources at different distances from objects on a surface to see how their shadows change qualities; Color, Texture, Patterns, Elements – combining all of these things in a conscious way that works well aesthetically and doesn’t get too busy and difficult to look at; Focus Slicing and Depth of Field – how to achieve precise focal planes through an image – choosing where will be sharp focus and where will be soft focus; Combine Strobes, Candlelight, and Daylight – mixing all three light sources in a balanced blend. After following precise directions on how to do the assignments in a technical way, I asked the students to do something “creative” of their choosing that reflected an understanding of the assignment.

Teaching was a great opportunity for me to reflect on the many years I have been a student of photography as well as a working professional. I never cease to learn more and stay excited about the small details and the big possibilities.

I was contacted to do a possible project for the Mushroom Council out of Chicago, and it inspired me to make some shots of mushrooms. I got together with a Stylist and we did a few recipe shots as well as a few beauty shots. Mushrooms are excellent to shoot because they have such unique shapes, textures and subtle variations of colors. I love how they absorb the light and wrap themselves in it.

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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.

One of the highlights of my trip to Peru in January was to do a shoot with a well-known Food Stylist from Lima named Cecilia Cuadra de  Zegarra. Her website is http://www.cecuze.com if you want to have a look.

We managed to get quite a lot of shots done in a day. It was great to see one dish after the next of delicious Peruvian Cuisine coming out of the kitchen. Being in a foreign country with no assistant and very little gear, I hand-made some on-set tools such as reflector cards and fill cards, and shot with all natural light… even trying to rent strobes just for backup proved to be a challenge not worth pursuing. I love shooting with natural light, anyway, so it all worked out for the best. We were all very happy with the results.

I’m looking forward to more shoots in Peru during some of my upcoming visits.