My Modeling Photos

Should I put some oil on that to make it glisten? Are those too big for the photo? Do you really want my hand on that?

Ah yes, nothing like a good photography session to get the juices of life flowing again. Sort of. Anyone who knows me clearly knows I'm no model, but boy I can craft some sexy pasta - which was precisely what was being photographed. On April 6th, I had the pleasure of driving to beautiful Jefferson, ME for a food photography session with accomplished photographer, Kim Fenn, of Fenn Fotography and her associates (aka her mom & dad).

I have done food photography a few times before, and each time it sounds so simple, but somehow everything becomes as chaotic as a tourist-filled rotary. Demanding photographers, forgotten equipment, poor lighting, and the obligatory malfunctioning flash are the common ingredients for my previous shoots. Needless to say, packing up ALL of my pasta-making equipment, which currently occupies two-thirds of the square footage of my house, and driving an hour-and-a-half north was a bit trepidatious.  But I was certainly motivated by Kim's mother's promise to me that she would bake some of her infamously delicious scones - she grew up in England and knows what she's doing, unlike Dunkin' Donuts.

Anyway, oh wait - a quick aside. As much of a tangent as this is, it's analogous to my drive. Now, up in Jefferson there are many rolling hills and small little streams dotting the landscape. Being April, a few of my favorite things are coming up soon: fiddleheads and ramps. I'm always looking for other locations to forage for these ferny delights and their garlicky neighbor. So similar to a little child at Disney World, I couldn't keep my focus and kept stopping on the side of the road and running a little ways into the woods/stream/bog/etc to see if I could find any signs of fiddleheads or ramps from the previous year. Half of the locations I checked were rife with the treats (now just the patience is needed for them to show themselves). Naturally, I checked a couple others on the way home. In the rain. Happily. I love spring.

Back to photography. So we got everything set up in Teresa's (Kim's mother) large kitchen, which she ostensibly rents out for events and functions (inside joke, sorry). We quickly went through the itinerary while sipping coffee and eating scones and then got to work. Okay, not really. We ate a little bit more again.

The funny thing about food photography is that the camera quite frankly doesn't care if the food tastes good or not. It's a very difficult paradigm to go along with as a chef because there are moments when you add/subtract ingredients or cook things differently than they should, because no one is eating them. In our case though, there's not much you can do with pasta to make it look differently than it normally would, so we only made a small adjustment by adding a couple extra yolks in the dough to create a more vibrant yellow dough. Which, by the way, is certainly not out of the norm for me nor is it for the people in the Emilio-Romagna region (very yolk-rich dough). 

We took a plethora of pictures of all different shapes: filled pasta, tubular pasta, ribbon pasta, etc...We arranged them, re-arranged them, and moved them again. The itinerary we created earlier really fell to pieces, because pasta has its own schedule. Some pasta needs to dry before being shaped (garganelli),  some can't dry (cappelletti), and some needs to dry a little but not too much (ribbon pasta). The schedule became every pasta shape for themselves. Thankfully, Kim was quite flexible and worked with what was coming her way.

Lastly, I think my favorite part of the whole day was having Teresa and Herb there during the shoot. I don't think you could find nicer hosts who were also very inquisitive about the whole pasta-making process. I even got quite a few "ooohs", "ahhhs" and some "so that's how you do it" comments when I produced different shapes (which were oddly great confidence-builders). They would both help move the pasta to a different table, hold long strands of pasta, or anything else that their daughter would ask them to do (who am I kidding - tell them to do).

We figured after about six hours that there really couldn't be much that we forgot. So now we wait for the photos to be developed and we'll post a few of them. It's clear that modeling is not easy work. Thanks again to Kim Fenn, her parents, and our good friends Michelle & Poncho (and Maria)!