Stockland Martel

I recently had the chance to have coffee and talk shop with food stylist Victoria Granof, who was a longtime collaborator of Irving Penn’s and who has also worked a fair amount with our own Craig Cutler. Earlier this year, before I signed on to write the Stockland Martel blog, I did a story for PDN on Bon Appetit’s food photography, and Craig called Victoria “the best food stylist I know of.”  Victoria’s working on a personal project (too soon to reveal the details), and in describing it to me, she really made the world of food styling come to life. The panoply of influences and inspirations, the logistics, the technical know-how. Food styling, I realized, is both a science and an art.

After our conversation, I started wondering about the behind-the-scenes of food photography—not so much the aesthetic decisions of choosing a photographer but what happens once it’s time to shoot. The new issue of Print magazine (August 2009, The Food Issue) offers some insight into the process. In a feature called “Sugar Snaps,” photographer Alex Fradkin and writer Ariana Donald document a day in the working life of food photographer Angie Norwood Browne and stock photographer Kelly Cline. The article shows step-by-step photos of Browne shooting an ice cream still life with stylist Charlotte Omnés (they have to do things like blast the ice cream with canned air to get rid of the frost), plus photos of Cline on location in a chocolate factory. (Sadly, there are no Lucy-and-Ethel shenanigans.)

The magazine is also worth picking up for its feature on designers and the stuff they like to cook. “What do designers make in the kitchen, and do they draw any parallels between cooking and design?” the piece asks. If you’re a photographer looking for a peek inside your client’s brain—and their, um, stomach—this is a place to start.

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