Santa Fe, New Mexico-based editorial and commercial photographer Gabriella Marks made her cookbook debut in May, and she did it with flying colors. The 20th Anniversary edition of Smoke and Spice, a James Beard award-winning book that has sold over a million copies in the last 20 years, is the first edition featuring full-color photography throughout the book as well as the first cookbook to feature Gabriella’s work.
I caught up with Gabriella on all the fun and yummy details of such a complex project. Enjoy!
How did you get involved with this cookbook?
I’m not entirely sure how they found me! I believe it may be because the authors are very well known New Mexico food writers, and I have often photographed stories that Cheryl and Bill Jamison authored for magazines.
What was involved in planning and preproduction for the cookbook?
Preparing for a food shoot of this scope requires a tremendous amount of planning — primarily between me and the food stylist. We needed to determine the number of recipes we could reasonably produce and shoot in a day — often on different days. Weeks ahead of time we created a very precise schedule for ingredient shopping, food preparation and shooting in order to complete the shooting schedule. Fortunately, my stylist was an ace, and it went amazingly smoothly.
One other aspect that was fun was the opportunity to partner with local vendors in cases where we needed large quantities of certain things. Although I’ve been photographing food and restaurants in the area for nearly a decade, this was much more “behind-the-scenes” than I’ve been in terms of the inner machinations of working kitchens.
Through word of mouth and local community, I was also able to locate some interesting home smoker setups. Those were fun to find.
Were there any challenges involved with this project?
There were a few. The overall feel of this book is intended for the passionate home chef and casual BBQ-er; this is not about incredibly complex molecular gastronomy. The book should become one of those books that gets dog-eared and stained by sauces and prep. It should have a homey, comfortable look, even if the dishes are professionally styled and prepared. Because we want the images to support the experience of the actual home chef, my stylist (and great chef comrade, Stacy Pearl) faithfully reproduced the recipes for the images. In some cases, the “home style” preparation didn’t yield the right intensity of color or smoke, at which point we had to improvise and troubleshoot to create the right textures or colors.
Maybe the biggest challenge was the smoke, actually. We wanted to produce the images in camera, and not just composite smoke elements in post-production – that was in keeping with the authentic look and feel of the images. Smoke is remarkably finicky to work with! It’s not something you can just turn on and off with a switch — we literally had an actual “smoke wrangler” creating and sustaining the right kind of smoke for the images. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having help on hand capable of those pyrotechnics.
The final challenge was that I was working primarily with natural light, enhanced when needed, and even with the amazing quality of light and long summer days we have in New Mexico, that quality of the light can vary throughout the day.
What is your favorite part about shooting food?
I love every aspect of shooting food! For me, it’s about the story of a recipe, or an ingredient, or even the original source: the farm where the ingredients are grown. Here in New Mexico, we have unique regional ingredients, like Chimayo Red chile, and the famous Green Hatch Chile, and recipes, like Sopapillas, and holiday tamales, that tell a story about the landscape and the cultural heritage of the region. In addition, so many innovative chefs are striving to create their own signature dishes that reflect the local flavors, while celebrating classic traditions like fine French bistro cooking, or Spanish tapas. The stories of how chefs develop recipes, the emotional responses we have to them — that’s what really inspires me about food photography.
Do you have any tips for food photographers?
Don’t go to work hungry … mostly, I recommend thinking about the personal experience of interacting with the food — don’t think of it as “product,” but as a moment out of your life, even if you aren’t actually preparing the ingredients or sitting down to enjoy a dish.
I have been thinking about this quite a bit because I’m teaching a combination cooking/food photography workshop with a local chef in the fall at the Santa Fe Photography Workshops, and have been trying to articulate what makes a strong food photograph, and what techniques are helpful.
Surprisingly, it was Instagram that really opened my eyes to our global love — if not obsession — with photographing our food. I follow Instagrammers from more than 20 countries, and no matter which continent, which culture, which language, the universal subject is our food — the food we cook at home, the ingredients, the preparation, the plating, the tell-tale crumbs on the table cloth at the end of great meal. But a lot of those images suffer from awkward composition, poor lighting and inattention to detail. Learning to pay more attention to light and framing can infinitely improve images.
Did you learn anything through the creation of this cookbook?
I’ve taken to calling myself a “farmer and chef” groupie because I’ve spent so much time photographing farm to table stories, and I have such respect for the work they do. My appreciation for chefs, cooks, food stylists was amplified after this experience — it’s a tremendous amount of physical work, often combined with long hours.
Mostly, this book was a wonderful opportunity to work with a good team over a sustained amount of time, and in contrast to the hustle-bustle and smaller scope of deadline driven magazine editorial schedules, I really enjoyed having the time to produce a series of images all in the same context, or “story.”
Purchase the book here.