The 2 things that I love are both in Chris Ford’s blog. 1) Behind the scenes photos. As some of you may know I’m a little obsessed about that. 2) Big giant images. Beautiful images are meant to be shown as big as possible. That night I ended up going through his entire blog and I believe you will also.

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos?
A. I want to capture my love and appreciation for that particular product. I think it’s the love in the details that tells my stories through photos, you see what I see, bad or good.

Q. Have you always been interested in photography? If not, when and why did you decide to start taking photos?
A. I have always been a creative person. Drawing and painting have always been a great passion of mine, which I still use in pastry today. Although photography is my true second love. From a young adult I decided I wanted to capture my life through a lens, never to forget an experience or food I ate. One day I can look through them all and re-live those amazing moments.

Q. Do you see any similarities between dessert making and photo taking?
A. In a way yes. It is the creative drive and inspiration part that binds them both together for me. I will see something and it will inspire me to make a dessert with it or see something I want to take a photo of and tell a story.

Q. What is photography to you?
A. Photography is a outlet for my story, ideas and talent. I have always said that food is my passion, photography is the outlet for that passion.

Q. What inspires you as a chef and as a photographer?
A. Creativeness inspires me, doing something that I haven’t seen or eaten yet. I love the sound of things that don’t make sense, like brioche macaron. They are two complete different things, yet a simple idea brings them together. I am a very visionary person, whether its planning a photo or a dessert, I usually have the end product’s picture/taste in my head.

Q. Best meal you had so far in 2012?
A. I had the chance to enjoy an amazing meal in early January, meal of desserts that is! Killed By Dessert, brought together a group of seriously talented pastry chefs, 12 courses of sweet 7 savory. It was such an amazing meal and so inspiring at the same time!

All photos courtesy of Chris Ford from Butter Love & Hard Work.

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos.
A. Beautiful light and rich shadows.

Q. You fell in love with photography when you were 16. What did photography mean to you then and what does it mean to you now?
A. At 16, I enjoyed the artistic and technical challenge and the trance it could put me in. Plus, I seemed naturally good at it. At the time, I wasn’t good at what kids were meant to be good at. I wasn’t good at schoolwork or sitting still for too long. I was good at photography and baseball. Photography is as exciting to me today as it was back then.

Q. What inspires you?
A. The people I work with, film and well made television. In fact there are times that the light, composition and set design in a show like Boardwalk Empire can be so distracting that I’ll miss entirely what the characters have said.

Q. Best meal you had in 2011?
A. I was fortunate to eat at Per Se in 2011 and it was excellent. It wasn’t necessarily about the place, it was more about watching Nikole’s face light up as each course was presented. For me, that made the meal magic.

All photos courtesy of Michael Graydon.

Scrolling through the blog, it’s difficult to not to jump at the screen. Like I just want to munch on these Baby Chimichangas or these Baked Egg Boats now! Besides the delicious looking photos, the whole site is so well designed. The colors of the titles match the colors of the foods/images and who said animated gifs are out?

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos?
A. I like to capture a mood and feeling. To create a space where someone would want to be in while eating that food.

Q. Do you approach a food photo differently than non-food photo?
A. Totally. Food doesn’t talk back, like people do. Its easier to interact with the food for me because its just totally visual, about pairing colors, and finding an angle that best fits the dish. For interior shoots its more about the big picture, so I try to take the same sensibilities I use in food, and use them in that area as well. Regardless of the subject, for me its still about creating a space and feeling I want to be in myself.

Q. What inspires you?
A. Literally anything. Colors in nature, patterns in clothing, shapes in plants, and of course, food magazines. Graphic design is also a big influence, I try to draw compositionally from that. Also, movies. That is a big one. For instance, the color temperature in the movie A Single Man, or the Kings Speech. The Kings Speech also has some amazing nuggets of composition genius.

Q. Do you still shoot with Polaroids? What is it about Polaroids or instant photos that attracts you to them?
A. I don’t so much anymore. I used to a lot when it was more accessible. I have not tried the new film from The Impossible Project. I think I fell in love with Polaroids when I got my Sx-70. If you are unfamiliar with that camera, it fold down nice and neat, and is metal and leather. So it feels really heavy and nice in your hands. I probably like Polaroid for the same reasons everyone else does. The instant satisfaction of an image. You get something you see, locked in your memory, into something tangible. Its small, and cute, and has a frame already. So that’s pretty cool.

Q. Any food photography heroes? If not any photography heroes?
A. Oh yes. I might go on and on right now. Non food – Irving Penn. He will always be amazing. Diane Arbus, Rineke Dijkstra, David Hilliard and Sally Mann. Andrea Gentl of the awesome photography duo Gentl and Hyers just posted this series of photos: which reminds me a lot of Sally Mann. So so so pretty its almost spooky.

For super creative manipulated photography that makes my brain shake, I go look at my Gregory Crewdson books, or a Kahn and Selesnick, Teun Hocks, or Parke Harrison.

Food Photography, I think everyone can agree Con Poulos, he is so good it makes me want to vomit. As I mentioned above, Gentl and Hyers, the textures and colors they capture are so beautiful. I am also in love with Ditte Isager.

Q. Best meal you had in 2011?
A. I think its a tie between these two restaurants in Los Angeles. One was Son of a Gun, followed by a magnolia cupcake. OR this pasta tasting menu I had at Mozza. Unreal.

Q. Name something you want to achieve in 2012 with your photography.
A. I hope to have some kind of massive creative breakthrough that changes everything for me. That would be exciting.

All photos courtesy of Teri Lyn Fisher from Spoon Fork Bacon.

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos?
A. We want to turn people on! By looking at the photograph they should be able to taste the food. We like for the food to look natural, fresh and not too contrived. The idea is to tell an honest story.

Q. How long have you guys worked as a team? How has that relationship changed since then and has it affected the way you guys capture photos?
A. We have been working together for 1 year. The relationship has been constantly growing ever since. We learn a lot from each other, whether it is creatively or technically. It’s nice to have a partner to bounce off ideas with. We feel lucky to be working together. We can definitely see the photos evolve and improve thanks to our combined skills and hard work.

Q. What inspires you?
A. Inspired people; The ones who follow their dream and passion without hesitation! They’re the ones we like to photograph. And fresh ingredients, subtle flavors, no chichi’s!

Q. Any food photography heroes? If not any photography heroes?
A. The NOMA book with Ditte Isager’s photos is definitely our favorite reference. Natural light, delicate food, and a closeness to nature. We also like Christopher Hirsheimer; she’s a lot in Saveur, and has done photos for great cook books such as “A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes” by David Tanis (former chef of Chez Panisse).

Before we started shooting food, we both came from different photo backgrounds. One (Dax) was in the fashion and editorial world, while the other (Anais) was in the fine art business and eventually editorial. For that reason we have a broad spectrum of photo references. Here are some of our favorites: Bruce Davidson, Richard Avedon, Sally Mann, Irving Penn, Peter Lindbergh, Rinko Kawauchi, Daido Moriyama, etc.

Q. Best meal you had in 2011?
A. Frenchie in Paris. Gregory Marchand has cooked in New York and London, and opened this restaurant in Paris almost 2 years ago, and it was an instant success. Fixed menu, based on local and fresh ingredients, and an extraordinary sense of imagination. Each plate was a slice of heaven for our palate. From the foie gras with drunken cherries to the smoked mackerel with spring asparagus, everything was amazing. Just talking about it makes us want to hop on a flight to Paris for dinner!

All photos courtesy of Dax Henry and Anais Wade from Young & Hungry

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos?
A. It’s a well-worn answer, but creating a sense of place that engages the viewer is one of the primary concerns for any food photographer. Often I’m in a stripped back, plain white studio building a mock environment – it’s all about the little details. The fold of a napkin, careful choice of props, subtle lighting tricks; many of these things are often only acknowledged on a subconscious level when flicking through a magazine, but if you spend a bit of extra time getting them right, a big part of the job is done. It goes without saying that an equal partner in the success of a shot is the quality of the recipe, ingredients and the way that they are styled.

Q. What does photography mean to you?
A. I worked primarily in design and illustration before I got heavily into photography; I don’t really see them as wildly differing creative processes. For me, strength of an idea always has to come first; I’m happy for them to overlap or be drawn from unusual sources. I’m a child of the digital age; if I’ve shot a picture of a box of apples and I want it to look like it’s been torn from an old sketchbook, I’ll just scan in a few bits of worn brown paper and bring the image together in Photoshop. I’m equally passionate about spontaneity and a capturing a beautiful moment through the lens; but using photography as a tool – it’s often just as exciting.

Q. From a Deputy Art Editor perspective, how has food photography changed over the years?
A. I’ve been at BBC Good Food for 5 years now; during that time the way in which we shoot and compose features has changed greatly. There was barely an overhead shot in the mag when I started, these days roughly about 50% of our photography is taken from above. I also think that the way food is styled has loosened up in recent years; it now looks far more relaxed and natural.

Q. Sometimes do you find your Deputy Art Editor self disagreeing or agreeing with your freelance photographer self?
A. I find that it’s less about a conflict between the two different roles, more a case of how understanding both sides can help develop both. As an art editor I have style guidelines and paginations that need adhering to; knowing how certain colours and foods photograph really helps when briefing stylists and sketching out features. On the flip-side, if I’m behind the camera I’ll take a shot, but then pull back/change the crop/drop background focus so that a designer has the option to run copy over the picture if needed. You learn pretty quickly that the success of a feature not all about the photographs, it’s the balance of many different elements arranged on a page as a whole.

Q. Any food photography heroes? If not any photography heroes?
A. One of my favourite photographers is Jason Evans. He’s not a food photographer, but I love the way he uses colour, texture and repetition in his work. These are certainly aspects that I’m keen to explore in my own photography – sometimes a more conceptual, graphic approach makes a nice change from creating kitchen-esque sets in the studio.

Q. Name one thing you want to achieve in 2012 with your food photography.
A. I just want to push myself creatively and hopefully keep taking photographs that people enjoy. I’m working on a book based on my Appledrane blog; I’ve three years’ worth of recipes, written pieces and photographs to gather together but it’s starting to take shape.

Q. Best meal in 2011?
A. I was fortunate to be asked to photograph a wild mushroom foray in a remote part of Scotland a couple of months ago. the chef made a mushroom curry one night – without using a single spice. Each of the seven mushrooms used had a slightly different natural flavour; one peppery, one with a subtle curry flavour, another with a hint of coconut and so on – they were gently sauted together in a little butter and served with a mini naan – it tasted amazing.

All photos courtesy of Stuart Ovenden from Appledrane.