El Jardin Mexican Cuisine San Diego CA Photographer

I loved photographing El Jardin, mexican restaurant, for San Diego Magazine.  Their food is vibrant and beautiful and most importantly, delicious! The presentation is a photographer’s dream come true… very graphic and full of texture. I decided to play off  the bright look and feel of the ambience of the restaurant and food, and photograph some of the dishes on a bright blue background in order to give more pop to the overall image and make the viewer’s eye go straight to the food. Sometimes less is more with backgrounds. For lighting, I decided to do something a bit more harsh to play with the shadow’s and texture a bit more. I never want them to distract away from the food or beverage I photograph, but instead help complete the image.

Thanks for stopping by. Did you catch my last post on spa interior photography?

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Casino Photoshoot California Logistics, Logistics, Logistics

The logistics of a professional photoshoot for a casino might surprise some of you. You might see a nice image like this one in an advertisement and think “oh, the photographer caught a nice moment”. For this image, we had a very tight shooting schedule and had a few images/angles/setups we needed to accomplish before the salon opened for the casino customers. We needed to photograph the inside areas first so we had a very early call time that morning. The last image at this location was this image.. the models exiting the salon as if they just had a wonderful time at the spa, pampered, happy and on their way.

Between the salon manager still needing to run the front desk (answer phones, etc) and setting up lighting against a very specular and reflective background (can we say marble facade, glass doors and glass waterfall feature), we had to act fast and we had to act well.

This final image is the culmination of my assistants sneakily hiding lights, moving lights in different areas for multiple exposures, having the hotel manager duck behind the desk while on the phone, the models moving 2 inches “pretending to walk” and give multiple facial expressions and looking at multiple exit locations, and finally blending the best of all of those scenarios in one.final.image. Sigh. Phew. And on to the next.

A solid take away… when choosing a professional photographer, don’t underestimate their working knowledge of tight shoot schedules, a great team, and pro knowledge of lighting for every scenario.