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Announcer: Aroma TV presents, "How They Do That?" Where we explore the world

of professional photographers and share their techniques with you.

Here's your host Mark Wallace.

Mark Wallace: Welcome to another episode of, "How They Do That?" I'm Mark

Wallace. Well, this week we catch up with Rick Gayle. Rick is a

food and product photographer. And he allowed us to come into his

studio and watch as he shot some food photos. And he walks us

through all the equipment and how he does it. So, here's Rick

Gayle. Well, thanks, Rick, so much for letting us...

Rick Gayle: You're welcome.

Mark: ...hang out in your studio. First of all, let's talk about this

studio. How long have you been here?

Rick: I've been in this space for three years. Prior to that I was in

another studio for 22 years. And then we and then we could keep

going back in time.

Mark: Back and back. And you've been shooting for 35 years together?

Rick: Yeah, 35 years.

Mark: That's awesome. And, so, what kind of work are you doing these

days? So, in a normal month or so, what kind of photography are you

doing in the studio?

Rick: Well, I specialize in still life, product, and food photography. I

love things that don't talk back. [laughter] And I've been doing

that my whole career, primarily. You know, some people work, but

mostly people look at me and see what I do, and they hire me for

still life, food, and product.

Mark: This funny how you usually tell people that if this one talk to me,

I don't want to shoot it. You're the opposite. [laughs]

Rick: I'm the opposite. We'll get along great.

Mark: Exactly, that's awesome. Well, in a minute... We have behind us,

you set up this nice still life set up. We're going to walk through

sort of how you do, the tools you use, all of those kinds of

things. But, before we get, I really was amazed of this studio that

you have, because our staff, we were looking around at the studio

and saying, this is so much clean and more organized. It looks just

so spectacular. Tell us a little bit about that, because you were

mentioning that there's a reason for that.

Rick: Well, as a still life shooter, you have so many small little tools

and so many little gidgets and gadgets and props that if you're not

organized and you want to look for that pair of tweezers or a

little dental tool, and it's not put in the right place, I mean

you're pulling your hair out, you can't find something.

Mark: I've done that. Yeah. [laughs] Exactly. So, what's the method to

all this organization? Is it something that you just sort of fell

into, or is it something you've learned from somebody? Give us some

tips for non-organized people like myself.

Rick: Really, I'm not that organized of a person. I think what it helps

is just that you have good assistants that you work with that have

seen wonderful systems in other studios. And I'm pretty open and

free with my assistants. If they think something works better than

what I'm doing, I'm all for it. So, this kind of open shelving set

up was inspired by one of my assistants and it works great, because

you can see everything. You don't have drawers. You don't have

boxes or cubbyholes. You can simply find stuff.

Mark: And look at everything.

Rick: And we just put it out in the open. Yeah.

Mark: That's awesome. OK, well, we've got some... product demo stuff that

you're going to do for us, so, you're actually going to show us how

you do some still life photography. You're going to talk about your

gear and things like that. So, let's not waste any time. Let's dive

right into that.

Rick: OK. I'm ready.

Mark: OK, Rick. Well, here's the set up. So, walk us through, show us how

you have everything set. Looks like you're shooting some brownies,

nuts, and some eggs. Very delicious food. So, walk us through what

you're doing.

Rick: OK. Well, first of all, I shoot with Cannon's 1DS Mark 3. I'm using

a pocket wizard. I'm tethered to my computer. And Dynalight is my

light equipment of choice. I used to use Norman quite a bit, and I

found these things amazing because they're so light to haul around.

Working with some grids. Working with medium soft box. A scrim.

This is tough Ross stretched onto frame, suspended by a C stand.

And I shoot tethered and my files open up in Bridge. So, my client

and I can just jump on over, take a look at it and make changes.

Mark: And are you using Live View when you look? And, so, is that instant

or is it a delay in your camera?

Rick: No. I don't use Live View, because the challenge with that is that

I can't look through the camera. So, that's basically my equipment

and my set up. We are photographing some brownies. And for the

purpose of this demo, I'm just recreating a shot that I did for a

client of mine that we work for. It looks messy, but everything in

here has a purpose. For me, lighting still life and food, you're

obligated to try to tell a story. Not only are you selling a

product, but you obligated to tell a story, a mood, and that

happens with lighting.

Lighting is not only pouring light on something, but it's taking

light off of stuff. I've got a variety of cards in here. In the

front, I have some silver cards which are placed to kick in some

ambient light from the strobes to highlight edges. This black card,

I'm using that to take some light off of the eggs and the butter.

Everything about food photography specifically is about texture,

color, highlights and shadows.

You really want to get that food just to look like it does in your

mind's eye. Very simple tools. A clamps from Home Depot to hold up

my cards, lead weights wrapped in white tape to keep my A clamps

from shifting around. One thing I think is kind of fun, I have a

little container of crumbs that the food stylist made for me, that

I will place into the shot here. Everything has a purpose in the

still life shot or food shot.

Everything is meticulously placed in there. I've got a tray here

where I keep a lot of my tools. Exacto knives, dental tools, dental

mirror for putting in little highlights, brushes, tweezers, these

are all tools that you need to create a shot that looks ultimately

like you walked into someone's kitchen or into a bakery, and you

saw it set up like that.

Mark: Awesome. Well, can you take a shot and show us the results really

quickly?

Rick: Yeah, I can do that. Every time I shoot, I'm usually making some

kind of tweaks and changes. This is rough end. So, let me just go

ahead and focus a bit, shoot one. The things that I look at are

certainly composition, my depth of field. Currently, one of the

styles that I really enjoy is using the selective focus to bring

foreground really tight and sharp and let the background fall off.

I would probably adjust the walnuts down here. Maybe roll the edge

of this paper up a little bit more. Certainly, put in my...

Mark: Spend some time getting it all locked in.

Rick: Yeah, getting it all locked in, exactly.

Mark: And let's talk about this tripod because it's a nice base. So is

something that you would, you know have you started with a

traditional tripod and then moved to this 'cause obviously this has

a lot finer control to it or?

Rick: The beauty of a monopod and certainly I come from the film years

where we would be shooting something like this on eight by ten

film.

Mark: Right.

Rick Gayle: So the eight by ten camera makes sense on here,

Mark Wallace: You're right.

Rick Gayle: But a little 35 doesn't, but the beauty of this is that I can raise

and lower the camera instead of tripod legs, this is on wheels that

are lockable so I can move the camera anywhere I want.

Mark: Right.

Rick: With a tripod I'd be going crazy, I'd be.

Mark: This is a Gitzo head, it looks like. It's a ball head and then

you're using a 24 to 105 macro lens, which is really, really nice.

Rick: Exactly.

Mark: Let's talk one more thing before we go, food styling. So we know

that you have a food stylist that comes in and does a lot of things

and you have a table set up so let's look at that really quickly

before we're done.

Rick: OK, sure.

Mark: OK, well now we're here and we're here with Kim, say your last name

because I don't know how.

Kim Krejca: Krejca.

Mark: Krejca. I tried it so many times and I messed it up so thank you

for joining us. And you are a food stylist.

Kim: Correct.

Mark: Alright now we have a bunch of little tools here, actually some are

big, some are small, you've got your pan, you've got Dust Off, so

what are some of these, because this one right here actually this

is a dental.

Rick: Dental.

Kim: Dental tools, which I rely on heavily.

Mark: Tell us about the dental tool, what's that for.

Kim: Well, for someone like Fairy Tale Brownies, which is one of our

accounts, because they are manufactured, they'd like them to look

like they're hand cut. So I usually just go in and I rough up the

sides and make them look a little more natural, maybe pull some

chocolate chips out or whatever it takes and this is like the

perfect tool, who knew dentistry, to do some of the finessing on

some of the food items.

Mark: And WD-40, what's that about?

Kim: That I use, not all stylists use that, I like the way that the oil

applies itself, it doesn't separate or bead up and it seems as food

sometimes has condensation, it just keeps a really even layer of

sheen.

Mark: So what kind of food will you spray that on? I mean, granola bars

or eggs or?

Kim: No, any kind of protein. I do it on some baked goods.

Mark: Bacon?

Kim: Bacon has usually got enough grease on it.

Mark: Got a nice sheen on it.

Kim: So we don't have to enhance that in any way, shape or form.

Mark: You can tell I really know nothing about food.

Rick: This kind of stuff really helps in what we were talking about

earlier about texture and color helps really describe the food and

give it appetite appeal, so this helps in generating highlights.

Kim: I was just going to say that.

Mark: Ah. So specular highlights come from those types of things?

Rick: Yes.

Mark: What about these three bottles right here? I can't really see.

Kim: We have glycerin in one, we have water in one and then we have

Freshinol, which is just a food stabilizer. It helps with things

like lettuce not wilting on set.

Mark: Oh, got yeah.

Kim: And a lot of that has to do with just, there's no exact science to

it, depending on how warm a room might be, what the photographer's

needs are to just kind of mix and match and make some of this stuff

work.

Rick: So the glycerin, water, typically for shooting a drink, a cold

drink, depending on what we want the condensation to look like, we

might spray the glass with Scotch Guard and then hit the glass with

a combination of water and glycerin. The Scotch guard helps the

water bead up so it stays there for awhile and then you've got this

drink that looks really refreshing with the water on it.

Mark: So help me out here because I have not done food photography, but

it sounds to me like a couple of things. First of all, you went to

school to learn how to do this, correct?

Kim: Actually, my background is in art direction and then I went to

culinary school and kind of blended the two talents, the science

behind food and then the art direction.

Mark: So it's not something you just wake up one day, walk out and go,

"I'm going to become a food stylist." You have to do some things to

get there. And then the second thing, so when I'm working shooting

beauty or fashion, I wouldn't dream of doing that without a

professional make-up artist, hair stylist, wardrobe stylist, you

know a team of people that can come in and do that for me. Is that

the same thing with food, you're not just going to walk in and

shoot without Kim or somebody?

Rick: Oh definitely because first, just in terms of how to make something

look good for the camera, that's what it's really all about. You