We’re really not into the whole fake/inedible food-as-a-prop photography. We want it to be real.

For those who do enhance their foods for pictures, it doesn’t have to be paint or noxious products. You can use all sorts of little gimmicks, glazes, colorings, gels, and nameless other Edible products to enhance a food to make it look more appealing. “Food Stylists” do this all the time. But still, put the two next to each other, and the real thing will be a bit of a let down. And that means you won’t get (read can’t) to eat it after the shoot!

Think about the latest fast-food commercial you saw. How great do their burgers look? Now think about the last time you ate one…it was squished, wasn’t it? The lettuce and tomatoes really didn’t look that fresh, did it? Most all of it, the burger included, was hidden beneath the bun- it’s not overflowing, filled with the freshest, grandest ingredients, is it? Lets face it. If they advertised what their food Really looked like, who would would impulsively say, “I’ve gotta go get one of those!”

April Sweets stopped by with a new Pecan Coffee Cake to shoot the other day. Still piping hot and gooey from the oven. It was the end of a late day, a day we hadn’t really eaten dinner. Can you say special torture?

April Sweets Pecan Coffee Cake (1)

April Sweets Pecan Coffee Cake (2)

April Sweets Pecan Coffee Cake (3)

April Sweets Pecan Coffee Cake (4)

As always thank you for reading and sharing! Please contact us for all your photography needs (714-699-4397). Driftwood Photography Studios is conveniently based out of Orange County, California.

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

I made popcorn today. Giants are leading Green Bay, and will hopefully come out on top. Desperately craving a snack, but knowing there’s a serious amount of leftover pork roast to tackle for dinner, popcorn seemed perfect.

How long do you put popcorn in the microwave for again?

I seem to remember 2 minutes/1o seconds, or maybe it was 2:30. We had a system growing up. A never-fail time that yielded the optimal kernels popped, no burning. I really think it was 2:10…

The house reeks. The dog is sneezing. I had to open the doors and get a cross-breeze moving through.

Yes, I burnt the shit out of the popcorn.

I’ve had this microwave since freshman year of college. Over nearly 12 years it’s been to Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, and California. It’s gotten some serious use in that time. You’d think I’d have made enough bags of popcorn to do it right.

2:10 failed me! I’ve since looked, and the damn thing actually has a “popcorn” button. Can’t say I ever remember using it, though. Not once. Maybe this time I should have.

To top it off, this was to be a ridiculously good bag of popcorn. For the holidays we got a bacon lovers gift pack. Not to be confused with the bacon of the month club (which we will gladly accept and eat from any loving fans/readers!), but in essence a package of everything bacon, but bacon itself. Five different flavors of bacon salt. Bacon croutons. Back popcorn. Bacon mayonnaise (don’t know if I’ll personally be using this one…). Bacon flavored sunflower seeds. A lot of bacon flavored products. Sadly, I destroyed that bacon popcorn. It smelled so good, too…before it burnt.

Popcorn Fiasco ©Benjamin Ginsberg/Driftwood Photography Studios

Luckily our commute is often to the beach! When the destination includes soft sand and breaking waves, it’s a good thing. Not an every day thing, but a frequent thing, because it’s worth it.

Yes, more often than not the reality will be to get up and shoot an hour or so after sunrise (better light for freezing the motion of fast moving waves and surfers). But, if a bit of a road trip is in order, a fine-art shoot/low-light shoot, because the waves are epic, or because it’s time to drive into the mountains for some snow, we gladly do it!

Morning Commute...

This week’s Morning Commute down PCH, driving from Huntington Beach to Newport Beach, quick pit-stop, then on towards San Clemente and Trestles!

For one we’ve got a new web address we’re going to start pushing soon. DriftwoodFoto.com. Shorter, simpler, no dashes involved. Hey, what’s your website? DriftwoodFoto with an F. That’s easier than Dee Double-U Pee (yes, we wrote pee) dash studios, or Driftwood Photography Studios, or Driftwood Dash Photography, etc.

Moving along, for those of you who have visited our current website, blogs (blogger/wordpress), tumbler page, twitter, and facebook fan page, you’ll have noticed a progression of logos over the years. And you may have noticed that our website has stayed static despite those new/revised logos. We started out with our namesake (literally). A piece of driftwood photographed on the beach in Barbados.

The story goes: after a winter living in Boston, fattening up a little too much riding the T or driving to work, drinking lots of beer (Harpoon is better than Sam Adams, but both breweries are worthwhile going to, especially to Harpoon for their 100 Barrel Series), eating out, etc, a trip to Barbados was in order. This of course involved plenty of more beer drinking and food gorging, amongst other things. On our second or third day a little swell filled in. Paddling into the first couple sets was an awkward endeavor at best. Turns out a beer belly is not a stable paddling platform. After a bit of floundering around, the comment was made: “I felt like a piece of driftwood out there!” Lo and behold, later that day the fateful piece of driftwood which would become our first logo was discovered and photographed.

We loved that logo, but it made a bit of an awkward watermark. It was such a unique piece of wood. Clearly some sort of tree that had once toppled and found it’s way into the ocean (yeah, duh we all know all wood was once part of a tree). This wasn’t just a branch or small log, but clearly a part of the main tree truck, complete with remnants of branches. Washed up on the shores of Silver Sands Beach, it was partially submerged in the sand well below the high tide line. Various sea grasses had begun to grow on it, which at low tides (when exposed) hung down with gravity. Branches stuck out at odd, alien angles, trapping seaweed. The sun bleached the top. Pounding wave action smoothed and tempered the wood, that classic driftwood look and feel. Half the people out there recognized it for what it was, while unfortunately the other half had to ask, or just shrugged their shoulders. We were asked for a cleaner, simpler logo for collaborative projects, where all our logos would be watermarked onto the image. So, the designing and redesigning began.

Our latest rendition is the light blue on dark brown wave logo, which for those who will allow a little creative license doubles as a lowercase “d” (note the continuing line curving to the upper right). We like it. Fun aside, it takes it’s general shape from a Maori carved jade (green stone) necklace we brought back from New Zealand; not that we expect people to know that! One of our graphic designers (more specifically a graphic designer we consult with/review with, as we do all our own graphic design in-house), hates this logo. We’re disappointed in her. Overall it’s been widely well received! Of course now that we have a set logo and color scheme, our website is a bit out of date, both in color and logo.

Web design, for those of us who were not computer science majors or idiot savants of the digital age, is a daunting task. Especially when designing/coding a site from scratch. There are many, many templates out there, but when a layout idea takes root, sometimes compromising to a template just wont cut it. Though then you may be left with awkward, unintended spaces between graphics, images or text that can show in one browser, but in another might just be blank, or worse a little gray box with a question mark in it (signifying to everyone that there’s been a fuck-up somewhere in the process). We’re currently looking into various templates. Our current site looks nice and is functional (we created it in InDesign Dreamweaver), but it lacks the bells and whistles.

On the surface, web templates seem like a good idea. There are so many out there now, and so customizable, it’s hard to justify stumbling through the coding yourself if you’re not a web developer. Though truthfully they’re really not so simple, are they… Most outstanding photography web templates utilize flash. They’re clean, effective, and have a bit of pizzazz. But they’re not compatible on the Mac mobile iOS -namely iPhone and iPad. That’s a real pain in the ass, because so many people have an iPhone or iPad. [Despite using a MacBook Pro, we have a Samsung Galaxy tab. It's great. It has Flash. It doesn't sync up to our Mac. We can't directly transfer files (pictures, music, whatever). We might just switched to the iPad]. Yes, there are certainly HTML templates out there geared for photography. Unfortunately more often than not they’re significantly more expensive, and/or part of a coding package from a company that primarily offers flash sites, with lesser options in pure HTML.

What to do, what to do! We’re currently experimenting with a few different templates, both Flash and HTML. There are many cheap, or even free flash templates, but the biggest problem with these is their file management. More accurately complete lack there of. Say you want to create 5 galleries with roughly 50 images in each. That’s 250 images. Not too bad. But, these cheaper, though beautifully laid out, flash web templates/galleries more often than not have only one level of file management. Meaning all 250 images will be in the same upload folder, and unfortunately more often than not in random order, despite being sequentially named. Oh, and they’re only viewable in the file manager as small thumbnails with incomplete names displayed. Good luck getting all 250 images into their respective galleries, let alone in the desired order!

As you can imagine, this has taken up a significant portion of our time. Not to mention we still have to be out there taking photos, processing/editing, delivering to clients, submitting editorials, hunting down new commercial contracts/ad placements, marketing, and so on.

The biggest thing is that while we often talk in the plural form, day-to-day we’re really just me. I. Ben. I do this. There is an amazing team of people to draw on. Need some specific web coding, sure, our team has a guy for that. Need some business advice or strategies, take a meeting with one of two. Blogs getting stale, or not generating the hits expected? -we’ve got a girl on the team for that (an aspiring writer and college english professor, we can always rely on honest critiques and discussions of what we’ve put out there -what I’ve put out there- and advice/suggestions on how to improve it, or a myriad of authors and bloggers -not necessarily mutually exclusive sets- to investigate, read, and be inspired by), and a guy for the SEO side of things. Creative review on new work? A team of readily opinionated compatriots. A new project or trip, a whole crew willing to jump on board and act as assistants, guides, gofers, and traveling companions. So it’s a team, but it’s also an I. And as that I, there’s a lot to do!

Photography is a creative endeavor. Posting a Fine Art Weekly image with an entertaining story every Monday just doesn’t flow. What if we’ve gone out trekking and shot some amazing photos, posted Monday, but after reviewing more photos want to post again that following Tuesday? What if we’re away on a shoot and don’t come back until Wednesday? How about if we don’t review/get images ready to post from that mid-week shoot/trip until Friday? Or, what if like a magpie we’re distracted by something bright and shiny?

So, we’re considering altering our weekly fine art series to just a photo series…not necessarily weekly, but as the muse inspires us. Or me, however you want to look at it. The idea is to throw some clever name on it that suffices for any and all photos we’d want to share. At any time. For example Surfline.com has (in addition to their surf-news postings) what they call F-Stop, where they show the best submitted images not used in their news stories. F-Stop is a photographic term, indicative of aperture controlling the depth of field, and therefore the potential artistic quality of an image (*after having first found that artistic scene or element in the first place). Surfer magazine calls their rendition Exposure. Sci-Fi writer/blogger John Scalzi entitles his “Whatever,” in that it’s whatever strikes his fancy: a picture of his cat, some political tirade or sage advice, thoughts on parenting, notes on a new book, a poem, new short story, character development; literally whatever. Video guys love to call their versions “off the cutting room floor,” eluding to a time when you had to splice strips of negatives together from different reels, showing different angles, scenes, takes, etc to complete a whole movie. The resultant scraps, which could actually be gems in their own right but just didn’t make the final theatrical cut, are what they’d then share, or make bonus scenes from. What to call ours? It’d be nice if it was photographic in origin, but doesn’t necessarily have to be. Rest assured, there’s a team working on it.

So, to all you pining away for our weekly fine art series -don’t fret, they will resume! But they very well may be under a new, modified heading that allows us the flexibility to show images how/when we are creatively inspired on a non-linear path.

*bg/dwp-studios (driftwood photography studios, driftwoodfoto, etc, etc, etc!)

San Fran’s a great city to be sure. A little dicey on the late night taxi’s to odd corners of the city, if truth be told. But we’ll chalk that experience up to a good story and part of the city’s charm!

After a gluttonous meal of Dim Sum from Yank Sing (you must try their pork soup dumplings), we needed to walk off some newly added weight. Starting at the Ferry Building Market we slowly made our way along the Embarcado up to Pier 39. Truth be told, we didn’t get too far at first!

Storefronts and vendors were just opening their doors and setting up their booths inside the Ferry Building. A woman was selling these fresh pastries from a little stand in between two storefronts… Even though we’d had near our weight in dim sum we just couldn’t resist!

Golden Creme - Fine Art Weekly Series

Sugary Pillows - Fine Art Weekly Series

These images are now available as prints, canvas, and metals, as are all our Fine Art Weekly series! Please contact us to place an order, pricing inquiries, or for any other questions/comments you might have! Driftwood Photography Studios is based out of Orange County, CA.

But you’ve got to get to San Fran first…Last Friday we set off from Orange County up to San Francisco for a little exploration, adventure, good food, and friends. A quick night at a friend’s in Santa Barbara (ended up a little too drunk), speeding ticket the next morning (oops), and roughly 450 miles later we roll into the city. Do the tourist thing (good to see, don’t need to do it again), get some dim sum in China Town (yum!), post a dozen or so snapshots from our rapidly deteriorating camera phone (what the hell happened to that thing?), make some calls, check some maps, and game plan a shoot or two.

We’re in San Francisco, so of course we’ve got to get a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. A night shot. Maybe sunrise… It’s already 7:00 PM, so night first. Dinner before that. With dinner over it’s time to hail a taxi and get our asses out to the Golden Gate.

First off, odds are the taxi driver wont know where you want to go. It’s a big ass bridge painted bright red…how can they miss it?? But even if they’ve been there before, lets face it, who asks a taxi to drive them from downtown to a Civil War era fort under the bridge at that time of night? So you head out, generally aiming for the bridge, but once the taxi gets off the last exit of Route 101 before crossing the bridge, they’re not going to know where to go.

Here’s how our little adventure went: our little group got in a taxi at the corner of Webster and Geary. The taxi driver must have been Israeli.  He certainly had the look and accent, but that could really be a few different middle eastern ethnicities. The clincher was his driving. If you don’t know, as a whole Israeli’s are bad drivers. Small, windy city roads, an insistent on being right or getting the best of everyone, and frequent terrorist scares makes for some overly erratic driving. Of course their taxi drivers are even worse. Slam on the gas. Stomp on the breaks. Every half block be prepared to either hit your face against the seat in front of you, or get slammed into the seat backs as if your in a NASA shuttle launch. Do your best to keep dinner down!

Up a hill. Down a hill. Swerve to avoid a pedestrian. Stomp on the breaks for a red light. Floor it at the next green. Open the window to get some fresh air in the car, try to convince all yours senses that you are moving, despite sitting stationary on a padded bench seat. Above all try not to look down too much while searching your phone’s GPS for directions for the cabbie, because he doesn’t really know where the hell you want to go at 10pm on a Sunday night.

Well, we didn’t know where to go either! First trip to San Francisco and all… Turns out the park completely shuts down at night- there aren’t even any street lights! What would we do without smart phones and GPS? Thankfully we found the right road and stopped along the waterfront without getting lost or vomiting.

Turns out park rangers block off the final stretch of road heading to Fort Point itself, but you can still get right to the water’s edge. It’s dark. There’s nothing around. Nothing nearby. The only light is from the taxi’s headlights and the distant Golden Gate Bridge. Our original plan was to hop on down in a taxi, spend in hour taking photos, then flag down or call another taxi and head back to the hotel. That now seemed a bad idea. No way we’d find a taxi, and who knows if we called one if they’d ever find us.

Our cabbie was willing to hang our for a short while. Meter running of course. That put a little pressure to get some quality photos, and quick. Headlights off, tripod set. What the hell is wrong. Twelve batteries later (yes twelve), we can finally take a shot. At this point it’s better to not think about how high the meter has run.

Click. Click. Click. One more for good measure. Time to go. $45.00 plus tip later we got our shots, got back in the same cab who took us there, re-fought the urge to loose our dinners once more, and found our hotel.

Worth it? You be the judge!

Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point, San Francisco, CA ©Benjamin Ginsberg

This image is now available for sale as prints, canvas, and metal (as are all our weekly fine art series images!).  Please contact us for to place an order, pricing inquiries, or any other questions you may have! Driftwood Photography Studios is based in Orange County, CA