Here are some more behind the scenes images from a La Figa shoot. We did two different ingredients – apples (really really tiny ones), and Zucchini. Most of the lighting we have been doing lately has been very low key (in the technical sense of the phrase) – black or dark grey backgrounds, and very sparse shadowy lighting set-ups, usually with just a couple lights. This time we decided to mix it up, so I put together a very high key set-up. We used the white seamless paper, swept down to the floor, then up and over a table (actually two tables put together so it would be as wide as the 9 foot paper, to avoid creases).

There are four lights. Two softboxes just on the background, set to overexpose it to pure white. Usually when I shoot white paper I try to keep the paper visible - white, but not pure white, so this is a bit different. When the paper is visible you need to think about keeping it evenly lit, which can be a bit tricky. With it overexposed like this, you don’t really have to worry about it too much. The key light is a large rectangular softbox turned sideways and put about eight feet high in front. There will be a little bit of bounce coming back up from the paper as well. There is also a kicker/hair light up high and behind. Since one of our strobes is in the shop,  I used a Nikon SB-800 flash unit in SU-4 remote mode (so it slaves to any flash) here. This worked very well, and it had no trouble keeping up with the studio strobes. Since it is only a providing a little bit of highlight I wasn’t too concerned about whether the color temperatures matched.

Here are a few shots that show the set-up…

As usual, I am not going to show the final images we got, as those are being saved for publication in the book. However, here is a sample image that shows the results of this lighting set-up…

The next set-up - Zucchini Lingerie - was almost the same. The only difference was that we pulled the table out, and had two models standing on the paper. Here is Tiberio putting together the Zucchini Lingerie…

Here are some shots from the latest round of photographing ingredients for La Figa: Visions of Food and Form. You would think working with inanimate food items would be easier than working with the models, but definitely not. Some of these ingredients have been really tricky to make look good - after two attempts we still have not gotten any avocado shots that we like. And photoshopping out the individual dust specks on the plexiglass is starting to get a bit old. But it is certainly worth it once it is all done - we really love some of these images.

Click on the images for larger versions…

The La Figa: Visions of Food and Form book is going to involve photographs of the ingredients we use just by themselves, as well as on our models. To that end, we have been doing a lot of food photography lately. These are taken on black plexiglass, with a black velvet backdrop – the real life version of the reflection on black special effect that is starting to become quite prevalent these days, especially in Mac software. Though the reflections are real, there is a lot of Photoshop work on these – when shooting close-up like this, especially with the backlighting I was using, every last microscopic speck on the plexiglass would show up in the images. Despite our best efforts to keep the plexi clean and polished, there was always some amount of particles on it, so I had to photoshop it all out.

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Continuing to revisit some of our favorite ingredients, we did our second strawberry shoot this weekend (18 months after our first one), with an absolutely stunning afro-korean model.

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No strawberries in this shot, but it is one of my favorites from the day. It would be perfect for a cellphone advertising billboard, don’t you think?

One of our very first shoots with the La Figa Project was a woman covered head to toe in cucumber slices. The book is going to be structured around the individual ingredients, so we are starting to revisit some of the ones we have already shot in order to have more variety for each one. To that end, last week we did a new shoot with sliced cucumbers, this time on a man. Here are some behind-the-scenes images from this shoot. Click the thumbnails for larger versions…

As Tiberio and I have shown our book prototype for La Figa: Visions of Food and Form, we have noticed that people really really like the two pages of “making of” photos that we have in the back. So I thought it would be fun to use this blog as a way to share some of our behind the scenes shots from the work we have been doing.

One of the funnest shoots this summer was when we went up to Dog Mountain Farm in Carnation with two beautiful sisters and a case of blueberries. There we found the two biggest horses any of us had ever seen in our lives. Luckily the sisters grew up on a farm themselves, so the model was not averse to being partially buried in compost (which actually is sterile).

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The final images from this shoot are not currently online, so you will have to wait until our book comes out to see them.

As you may know, my primary photographic project right now is La Figa: Visions of Food and Form, a photographic exploration of food and the human body that I am working on in conjunction with chef Tiberio Simone.  A couple updates on that:

First, I have just put up a brand new site for the project – www.lafigaproject.com. There are a some new photographs from the series that have not been online yet, and a separate La Figa only email announcement list you can sign up for. However if you are on my photography announcement list you will receive all the La Figa information.

Secondly, we have been talking to the organizers of the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, and we can now confirm that Tiberio and I are going to have a major presence at the 2009 event. This is a very exciting development for us – it is probably the preeminent erotic art festival in the country (at least it comes to the top of a google search for “erotic art festival”).

I am going to post a few highlights from this year’s La Figa shoots to this blog, so keep an eye on the rss feed.

At this point we are cutting down on the shooting and working on putting together a solid book proposal to start sending out. So if you have any good connections to literary agents, please let us know.