Our director of photography Sean Stone may be well known for being Wonderful Machine’s resident portfolio guru, but he’s not the only one that knows his way around a book. Our photo editor Paul Stanek was recently commissioned by our New York food photographer Adriana Mullen to edit and design her a new food portfolio. Paul was happy to take on the assignment and the finished book has been met with flying colors at our reviews. Since he’s the one who slaved away creating a book that looks good enough to eat, I’ll let him take it from here. Enjoy!
With the flurry of innovative, bar-raising food/drink photographers joining the ranks of Wonderful Machine these days, I was elated to have the opportunity to work on a book for a personal favorite of mine: Adriana Mullen. My enthusiasm grew after our initial phone conversation, where I found her to be incredibly pleasant and open minded. After weighing the options of a non-linear edit versus something of a more cohesive narrative arc, we opted for the latter. Adriana presented me with a few hundred images that provided the perfect means for an edit. I planned on starting with raw elements, moving on to preparation, and then presenting mouth-watering dishes followed lastly by artfully captured desserts.
Within the body of images Adriana provided, I found another conceptual layer to help guide my edit. While a vast majority of the images were of the portrait format, perfect for pairing, there was a beautiful landscape of unopened raw oysters, and another landscape of a raspberry tart—the beginning and end of a tempting culinary journey.
At this point I envisioned the entire structure of the edit as a visual sandwich, with the landscape images providing the perfect slices of bread to fill with layers of tasty pairings in between. After all, what’s more appropriate inspiration for a food book’s structure than a classic composition of the food universe? Perhaps it wasn’t quite on par with Kramer’s coffee table book, but I was pleased nonetheless.
Sean pointed me towards the book bindings of Adorama, which lay perfectly flat and provide for seamless panoramic spreads. I utilized these panoramic spreads only for the opening image of the oysters and the closing image of the tart, which also served as the inner covers. However, I found the seamless binding to provide quite an enjoyable viewing experience throughout the book. The cover design was minimal: I generated a subtle gradation of a grayish/bluish shade I “eye-dropped” from Adriana’s oyster shot, then garnished the darker bottom with her title, info, and some props to Wonderful Machine.
Finding pairings in a sea of imagery was by far the most engaging stage of the process. In fact, Adriana was kind enough to shoot this wine image mid-edit to custom match with a hearty marinara and ravioli shot that begged for proper libation.
Beyond such pairings with more literal contextual relevance, I utilized more formal aspects of composition—shape, hue, repetition, and symmetry, to name a few. I also strove to make diptychs that represented two individual images yet lent themselves to functioning as a whole composition.
Adriana ordered two copies of the book from Adorama—one for her, and one for us to hold on to for portfolio events. Our copy has made it to New York and returned with much positive feedback. Adriana herself was pleased enough to order another three additional copies!
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