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Community Corner

Notes from a Food Diva: Scrumptious Shots

Carol Brock relays stories about her years on the sets of yummy photo spreads.

Food photography is big business and food commercials are even bigger business. The challenge is greater. In food photography, you choose the most delectable subject and try to make it more delectable. In commercials, you are given something that is not necessarily delectable and must make it seem so. That's where the “magic” comes in.

I know food photography very well - 35 years of it. When I went to Good Housekeeping in 1944, the era of the close-up was just coming in. Hi Williams, our photographer, was on the cutting edge.

A food photo began with a showing of the dishes being considered to the food editor, art director, photographer and stylist (back then it referred to the setting). Recipes developed on that month’s chosen topic were displayed using props in-house. This, known as the food show, I initiated. It is now standard procedure.

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The chosen one is taken to the studio on an appointed day to be used a dummy. 

Once the dummy was set in place, the photographer and his assistant worked with the lights and the camera angle. I was taught never to be involved in that part, except to occasionally put my head under the black cloth and give my opinion. If you're a novice, everything is upside down. But, with practice, your brain automatically gives it the proper orientation. 

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The stylist checked the angle of the food and every detail, moving an item a quarter inch to the right and a quarter inch to the left and back again. Once, our stylist had spent an eternity moving cherries here, there and everywhere. But, out of frustration, he gathered them up and tossed them.

Hours of work went into getting the dummy perfected and ready for the star to be set in its place. Only then would the camera go click.

The Polaroid camera came into being. Now the dummy could be shot and fine tuning done, if necessary.

While we were in the kitchen preparing and styling the presentation of the final food to be used in the shot, Hi Williams would sit under a mobile in the corner of the studio and work on a creation of his own. The moment the final replaced the dummy, hands off. Shoot. Williams was adamant that the picture be taken the moment the final food was set down - hot, moist, delicious.

Usually, it took the whole day to do one shot, whether it be a single or double page spread. So lunch was served in the corner of the studio we called the Kasbah with a low table and the tallest, biggest wine glasses that I have ever seen before wine glasses ballooned.

We were very true to the recipe. We followed it exactly with few exceptions. One was the Thanksgiving turkey or any roast, for that matter. They often presented a problem. We would undercook them slightly and, if necessary at the last minute, brush them with a bit of Kitchen Bouquet for a richer brown. 

Brushing hot foods with oil, but not too much, was standard procedure for a hotter look.

The other was ice cream. We made a thick butter cream frosting with Crisco for the dummy and used it for a sundae or pie alamode. Lights were far hotter then.

As far as following the recipe, the food editor would come to the studio to approve the stand-in dummy and stayed through the photographing of the actual dish. One day, just as the camera was about to go click, she shouted, “Stop! There’s no salt in it.”

I was always comfortable with any recipe that I had to prepare, but one month I was to go to the studio for a step by step on sectioning grapefruit. In my family, we never went around each segment to loosen it. And I panicked. The shots were taken - and approved - but I’m still doing grapefruit my way.

During my years at Good Housekeeping, we also did an old-fashioned series with Paul Domes studio that included a basket of white turnips by a cellar door with cheese in a rustic table setting.

Then, we did a very modern series with Bauman Greene in which a carrot went through the air like a rocket ship.

At Parents Magazine, there wasn’t a stylist, so the art director came to the studio. Edgar de Evia was one of the photographers we used. His mother owned and lived in the building that now houses Ralph Lauren on the corner of 72nd Street and Madison Avenue. De Evia lived on the top floor and we would often have a pre-photographing session there.

It was food photography that brought me to the Daily News. I left Parents and was doing consulting when their food editor had a heart attack and they needed someone to produce the November Supplement, which was all color and the hottest thing in advertising.

I was given the list: Cherries Jubilee, Beef Wellington, brioche, etc., and was responsible for the development of the recipe, including the styling, the propping and photography, which meant going to Hammacher Schlemmer and Tiffany’s for borrowing.

It also meant returning the borrowed items and taking care of the accounting right down to the cab fare.  That proved bothersome. I was asked to stay on when the food editor retired and take over her Sunday Magazine and weekly Thursday food columns.

That’s when I started propping from home. I'd go down to the old Victorian Douglaston railroad station with bags bulging My husband, Emil, tried to look in another direction to disassociate himself from the bag lady.

At the Daily News, they had constructed a six-feet-by-six-inches table that was two feet off the floor. It was standard procedure to place the dish on it, climb the ladder, work on the lighting and shoot. It took a while to teach the techniques that I had learned over the years: close-up, drips and crumbs, an overhead shot, another shot looking straight down and shooting the minute the food is set in place.

I submitted the food section to the Newspaper Food Editors Conference. And I won first place. The long-time editors were surprised - a first timer! But I wasn’t a novice. The next year I won again, and then the year after that. And then, with three wins, I wasn’t eligible any longer.

Since his lighting made the food sparkle, the head photographer took the food photos. “We have solved all the technical problems. Now, we can go as far as our creativity takes us,” he told me after nine years.

That was almost the last photo we did together. The Daily News rented out the space and the photography department was moved to the sixth floor. Only the food photographs were done on the third floor, adjacent to the test kitchen.

In a class I gave on food photography at Queens College, the question came up concerning food in ads of that era: “Why doesn’t it look good to eat?” They were trying for perfection. Perfect food looses its yumminess. Just as today’s overly done presentations loose the food. In 2011, drips and crumbs are an art form.

Delores Custer is an internationally known food stylist who has been working for magazines, advertising agencies, public relations firms, television, feature films and food companies for 30 years. She believes that digital photography is greatly changing the business of food styling. "Simple" and "easy" are the buzzwords. Natural, not pristine, food presentations are desired now, even in advertising. 

For those intrigued by the subject, Delores, a long time foodie friend who gives courses on the subject at the Culinary Institute of America, has recently written the definitive book – “Food Styling: The Art of Preparing Food for the Camera.”

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