Summer Grilling Recipes & Latest Photo Work

Can you believe it? 2013 is already half way through, our heirloom tomatoes are starting to ripen and Summer feels like it’s arrived in full swing. Every day we’re taking time to live in the moment because before we know it, we’ll be sourcing our Christmas tree. What a scary thought.

From a photographic perspective, Summer started back in December 2012 for us. When we’re shooting and styling editorial and advertising campaigns, we’re on a different clock. So in Summer we’ll be cooking and planning Thanksgiving shoots, and on Thanksgiving we’ll be planning Summer recipes. We actually love it because we’ll get turkey and mashed potato feasts at least twice a year. Not a bad day job! But the hardest part is always sourcing seasonally specific ingredients and props when they’re not readily available. Need a pumpkins in July? we have a source!

So back in March we were planning this big Summer grilling campaign shoot with La Brea Bakery for their new recipes and it was a blast being able to test and eat grilled bread with all the classic Summer bbq dishes. La Brea Bakery wanted to showcase America’s backyard scenes, with all the classic accompaniments that make each region unique.  And of course, their beautiful bread was part of the showcase.

We photographed 6 different grilling scenes Deep South BBQ, West Coast Brunch, New England Clambake, Americana Classics, Fresh Pacific Fare and Urban Rooftop Picnic.

You can see all the scenes, cooking tips and recipe inspiration on the LA Brea Bakery Site!

The New England Clambake was one of our favorites. But we do love all the scenes and recipes. The recipes on  new campaign on their website are fantastic and we love how they added lots of entertaining tips and useful information about the history of each regions unique flair and flavors to go along with the recipes. It was another great day at the office for us when we were shooting the scenes for them.

As always, the best part of the job is being able to enjoy the food and the grilling recipes!

The Carolina Pulled Pork Sandwich was to die for. And the mop sauce recipe? We wanted to drink it all.

The heirloom crostini is the perfect Summer appetizer! Make sure you add extra cheese. It’s magical.

The Double Cheddar burger was life changing. Cheese makes everything better.

Gazpacho is the perfect Summer soup.

The Urban Rooftop Picnic scene has so many awesome tapas style dishes. You’ll have fun serving these. And there’s so much more to explore on all the backyard vignettes, so have fun perusing the site to get more entertaining inspiration!

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Photo Workshops for Food, Styling, Crafts & Video of Bi-Rite Creamery Cookbook!

Happy Sunday everyone! Now that were home for 10 days straight (yes!), we’re finally able to finish off some details of our upcoming photography workshop announcements. We have much to share with you today, but let’s start with the cookbook promo video we produced for Bi-Rite Creamery’s new cookbook!

 In our previous post, we mentioned that we produced the cookbook trailer video for Bi-Rite creamery. It was such an honor to be able to work with the amazing Bi-Rite Creamery team and Ten Speed Press folks.

Chef’s Anne and Kris produce some of the best ice cream in the country. Now they’re sharing many of their terrific and special recipes in their latest book , Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones. We’ve had the book in our possession for the last few weeks and it’s hard to not put it down.

The recipes are made with love, great ingredients and local pride. You can now make their ice creams right in your own home.

Enjoy the video! And take a close look at all the food blogger cameo appearances. Do you see them in the video?

iphone shot- Thanks to friends for joining us at Bi-Rite shoot: John  FoodWishes.com, Michelle SFQ bbq sauce, Darya SummerTomato.com,  Jenna EatLiveRun.com , Anita DessertFirstGirl.com, Irvin EatTheLove.com, BenYouFedABabyChili.com , Kirsten Bi-Rite Market, Jessica SodiumGirl.com 

Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones Cookbook Promo Video 

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Photography Workshop Preliminary Details: 

So many of you have emailed, messaged and asked us about our next workshops. Sorry to make you wait so long, but we’ve been planning this so that we can properly organize and structure the workshops to make them the best that we can! We’re almost ready to launch and announce those dates next week. Thank you so much for all your patience.

We’ll be offering a variety of dates and different types of photography workshops, specializing for the needs of food bloggers, craft/design bloggers and portrait/lifestyle bloggers. Each discipline of photography has different and unique techniques and methods, so we decided to divide our workshops into different categories so that we can focus on each of your specialties.

Here’s a sneak peak at  what we’ll be offering & announcing next week: 

1. Food Photography & Food Styling Workshop  & Business of Food Photography– Hands on- 2 day workshop at our photography studio in Orange County, CA.

Learn both the art and business of food photography. This exciting 2 day, hands-on workshop will empower you to share your food photography and food stories in the best way that you can.

Topics during this 2 day workshop:

Food Styling & Prop building and making! : learn how to style food, prep it and prop it for the camera. Play in our prop room!

Make your own prop boards/surfaces: learn how to make your own prop boards & surfaces. We’ll have material for you to make, paint and create your own surfaces to keep and take home! (those traveling from out of state must ship your own props back home)

Food Photography: learn your camera, gear, basic principles of natural light, composition and workflow

Food Story, your voice: learn how to share your food story and define your own unique voice with your photographs

Photo Editing, Workflow & Tethering: learn the value of both free-hand and tethered shooting. Learn how to edit and manage your files and create a workflow that best fits your business. We’ll help critique one another’s images.

Business of Food Photography: Discussions on how to make an impressive professional portfolio, platforms, how to sell your images and the food photography business.

Breakfast , Lunch and Dinner will be served for both days.

2. Craft, Design and Lifestyle Product Photography – Etsy & Pinterest inspired! 

This workshop is created for craft, design and lifestyle product bloggers. Define your creative style! Want to learn how to photograph for your craft and lifestyle products to for Pinterest or your Etsy store?

Join us for an intensive 1 day, hands on workshop and learn how to make pretty pictures for your Etsy store or Pinterst.

You will learn basic principles of natural lighting, camera, composition, gear, editing and photographic techniques for your crafts.

Styling- knowing how to style and prop your crafts and products is equally as important as the technical part of photography. Learn how to prop and style your photographs to make them visually stunning.

Bring your crafts/products! ( limited to 2-3 small, hand held items only please) : with time and space permitting, bring your crafts to photograph and practice with.

Location: Our Photography studio

3. Portraiture- Life Faces . Captured.

The people in our lives nourish us with joy and beauty. Documenting those special people, their faces and personalities  are important to remember those valuable moments.

Learn natural posing techniques, camera, gear, composition and lighting. Understand the value of the imperfect  image and the strength of storytelling.

Location : TBD

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Asian Tofu Update: Second Pages and Photo Proofs!

Asian Tofu Update: Second Pages and Photo Proofs! - Viet World Kitchenwindow.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init( { apiKey: 'a279adbe87e2b3c505e777af99a5260d', xfbml: true } );};( function() { var e = document.createElement( 'script' ); e.async = true; e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js'; document.getElementById( 'fb-root' ).appendChild( e );} )();Viet World KitchenHomeArchivesRecipe IndexVWK StoreClasses + EventsFavorite SitesAbout MePermission and CreditWelcome to Viet World Kitchen where I explore the culinary traditions of Vietnam and the rest of Asia. Join me to learn, create, and contribute!

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Asian Tofu
Release date: Feb. 28, 2012
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Asian Dumplings
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Enhanced e-book with how-to videos now available!
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Available at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooksRecent PostsAsian Market Shopper app in action! (video)Asian Tofu Update: Second Pages and Photo Proofs!How to Make Vietnamese Coffee (video)Tolerance Test: Are Gluten-Free Asian Ingredients for You?Refrigerator Gold: Leftover Corn Cakes and Chile SauceMoon Cakes: Love or Hate Them?New Crop of Asian Americans in FarmingFurikake Caramel Corn RecipeBarley and Asian Herb SaladAsian Tofu Update: Cover EvolutionAwards + Praise
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September 27, 2011Asian Tofu Update: Second Pages and Photo Proofs!

On Monday afternoon I sent back the second round of proofs for the Asian Tofu cookbook to my editor at Ten Speed Press. It’s a part of the process that always puts me in a low-grade state of panic. The first set of proofs seemed like a cakewalk because I knew that there would be a second one. But the second pass on the book pages is more or less the last look.

You may ask: What happened with the first set? Why does Andrea keep re-reading stuff? Why isn’t Asian Tofu out yet?

Well, just because you write something doesn’t mean that your words are printed verbatim. Publishing is akin to fine tuning a car or sanding a piece of wood. You keep tweaking – adjusting the screws until things hum smoothly or making a few more passes with sand paper until the wood feels silky. At a certain point, you’ve done enough and move on.

That said, after I sent back corrections on the first set of page proofs, Editor Melissa Moore reviewed them and combined them with her own edits and that of a proofreader. (Before I got the first pages, a copyeditor and I had already made an initial round of edits to the manuscript.)

In addition to making changes to the text, Melissa and I decided to move several photos and recipes. We wanted to tinker with the layout to ensure a nice pacing of images and text. Though the text and photos fit just right in the number of pages we calculated, we wanted to rearrange a few things to craft a more engaging cookbook.

Among the changes was the new title page that you see at the top of this post. It’s different than the one you saw in the post on first pages:

I like the new one because it’s upbeat in color and captures the vibe of the subject. The first photo we tried was stunning and artful, albeit the pewter background on the title page seemed severe for  the "Welcome!" part of the book. Plus, a door is a great opening metaphor for a book, don’t you think? (If you recall, we made a similar call on the book cover.)

The new title page was part of a PDF file that Melissa sent along with the second set of page proofs. It was terrific to review Asian Tofu on paper and on screen.  

In the past, I’d only had the printout to work with, but with the electronic version in hand too, I could review the colors of the images and recipe flow to best approximate the reader’s experience. I scanned and read the book to catch typos and make another round of edits.

My go-to resources and tools for reviewing proofs included:

Notebooks of interviews and recipes details (I filled two big ones and two little ones)Style sheets and style manuals to keep me consistent on the nitty gritty and prevent me from going crazy. For example, it is “moderately hot chile,” “moderately-hot chile,” or “medium-hot chile”?Foreign dictionaries to verify terms, such as the pinyin (Romanized form) of Chinese characters. List of correction symbols so I can use shorthand to indicate edits on the printout, such as: “ital” = italics, “#” = insert space, “^” = insert A mechanical pencil and Magic Rub eraser in case I change my mind on an edit, which happens often. The eraser functions as my delete and backspace buttons.

If I had been on the fence about something, the second pages gave me another look. Late Sunday night, I said to myself, “That’s it. Let go.” And I did.

Photo Test Proofs

But then on Monday morning, I woke up and thought of one last thing to check. There’s always something to check on right? As I was leafing through the printout one last time, the doorbell rang. It was FedEx delivering the photo test proofs.

Melissa said that the test proofs had arrived early from Asia (where many publishers print these days) so she let me take a look. I don’t normally review the images after we shoot them, and leave it up to the editor and designer to make the technical calls. But Melissa wanted to keep me in the loop on the process. In exchange, I promised to send them back with the second page proofs!

I cleared the dining table, opened up the tofu printer proofs, and laid them out. There were two sets of 16 images total. Half of them are printed upside down. If you turn the proof sheet, you'd see a row of images as they would appear in the finished book.  

The proofs were tests that Melissa and Art Director Elizabeth (Betsy) Stromberg did to make sure that the studio shots turned out looking gorgeous on the coated paper that they’d chosen.  Betsy deemed the photo test proofs to be very good but she and Melissa wanted me to check them out too. Being privy to this part of the book making process was totally cool.

Ten Speed Press makes books the old fashioned way, with each publication being individual. A publication’s finished size (called “trim size”), choice of paper, and binding are all part of the decision making process. Most readers are unaware of those factors when they open up a book and the pages gracefully fall into place. For old- school publishers and book lovers, those little details are among the marks of a book crafted with extra care.

I’d seen the Asian Tofu images in so many ways: At photographer Maren Caruso’s studio, in black and white on the printout, on screen via a PDF. Seeing the photos as calibrated, full-color images on paper was awesome, not only because they were spectacular but also because they represented a couple of years of work and a big team effort.

Having checked the proofs and looked at the images, I was satisfied and ready to send everything back to Ten Speed Press. Onwards and upwards!

Related posts: 

Asian Tofu Update: Cover EvolutionAsian Tofu Update: First PagesBehind the Scenes of the Asian Dumplings Photoshoot (with photographer Penny De Los Santos and stylist Karen Shinto)Creating Ethan Stowell's New Italian Italian Kitchen: Interview with editor Melissa Moore (for more details on how cookbooks are made) Posted in Asian Tofu, Books | Permalink

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Comments

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Amazing! Looks gorgeous. Congrats!

Posted by:Monica Bhide |September 28, 2011 at 09:56 AM

Looks gorgeous. Haha, I had that same tiny Chinese dictionary for YEARS. Saved my butt in classes.

Posted by:Tami |September 28, 2011 at 11:12 AM

Everything looks so awesome, Andrea. It makes me realize the process doesn't end with the manuscript;)

I'm looking very forward to your finished book!

Posted by:Marvin |September 28, 2011 at 01:39 PM

Thanks, everyone! It means a lot to have your support. :)

Posted by:Andrea Nguyen |September 28, 2011 at 03:37 PM

I had that same tiny Chinese dictionary for YEARS. Saved my butt in classes.It makes me realize the process doesn't end with the manuscript..

Posted by:web design bangalore |September 28, 2011 at 10:21 PM

Though we haven't met, I'm a long time fan of yours. The book looks great. I just preordered it on Amazon. It will be a long wait until February!

Posted by:Jane |September 29, 2011 at 12:47 PM

Jane -- Thanks so much for pre-ordering the book!

Posted by:Andrea Nguyen |September 29, 2011 at 06:10 PM

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EventsONLINE LIVE Q&A
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Monday photo: Sack of bread, Aix-en-Provence

I have hundreds if not thousands of photos of food (and food-related subjects) taken over the years. Most do not warrant a full recipe or such, but may still be worth a story. So I’m hauling them out of the archives to give them some air here.

In July, we stayed in a small apartment in Aix-en-Provence while our house was uninhabitable due to major construction. Once in a while, my mother, who was staying with us, would drag me out of bed to accompany her on her morning walks around town. My mother at almost-70 has way more energy and pep than I do.

We spotted this mysterious sack of bread propped up on a wall outside a bakery. The sack was a 25 kilo (about 55 pounds) flour sack, crammed full with baguettes and other types of bread. We didn’t touch it, but we surmised that it must be stale bread from the day before.

It was not put out with the regular garbage, which is collected every day except for Sunday in Aix, and is usually enclosed in plastic bags. Flour sacks are thick, and waxed on the outside. Unless it rained, the bread was well protected.

We kept on walking, and somehow circled around to the bakery again about 15 minutes later. (It’s rather easy to circle around in Aix.) The bag and its contents were gone.

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