The best part of Halloween (besides the extreme sugar high) has to be the creepy crafts. It is always great to get in touch with your dark side, even if you keep it lighthearted. Molly Fitzsimons styled these images for Martha Stewart and Michael’s – here is what she had to say about the holiday:
I’ve always had a special affection for Halloween, and I love styling for it. It’s especially fun to do play with the color palette and style, so you can still have an elegant, sophisticated look with just an edge of spooky. Since my birthday is in October I usually had Halloween-themed birthday parties when I was a kid. Costumes, pumpkins, leaf piles, apple-bobbing, etc. My best costume was a Master Charge credit card. I copied the graphics directly from my mother’s card, including the number. She was not amused. This year Arlo will be a chicken for Halloween, continuing a family tradition of baby Halloween chickens.
Everyone knows that the most important part of a wedding is the food. You could be on a private island in Tahiti but if the salad is soggy, everyone will go home complaining. Wilted greens, I mean what were they thinking? Scandalous.
Paul Lowe styled this story for Brides with photographer Karen Mordechai of Sunday Suppers fame, on easy ways to trim down the cost per person. But really, the easiest way too keep costs down is to just plan the wedding on an island somewhere, so the wacky extended family mooches don’t show up and clean out the buffet. Tahiti sounds nice right about now…
Molly Fitzsimons has new promo in the mail – a cool little story shot by Tara Donne. Keep an eye out! And if you didn’t get one – email us and we’ll add you to the list!
Molly Fitzsimons brings pumpkins to life for the Woman’s Day special issue – Halloween. Check out their crafts section. I think my most cherished childhood memories all revolve around sugar-fueled mischief on All Hallows’ Eve. Last year my daughter took a spin around our block in Brooklyn and it was as if the entire neighborhood was animated with kids in costumes and elaborate setups of crazy characters like those pictured below. In fact I can’t think of a more community-oriented holiday, where neighbors all throw open their doors for a bit of spooky fun. And candy. Don’t forget the candy.
In the Big Leo month of August, Mason and I embarked upon a small city-wide adventure, taking Sweet Revenge on a number of our favorite clients. Some of you we got, some of you we missed, but rest assured if you were not able partake in the apricot-glazed deliciousness that was our wrath, we’ll be sure to get you next time! Please enjoy the video our wonderfully talented designer created to showcase our sweet August 11th journey through publishing.
And, here are some photos taken by Hector Sanchez, who documented our assembly line!
Like most people, we were bummed to hear that Gourmet magazine was no more. And then, out of the ashes, it has risen again in a new form, Gourmet Live. As with any new announcement, it was greeted with immediate skepticism.
Yet another iPad app? Using repackaged content? While the general internet consensus seems to be that they’re just trying to cash in, I spent the last few days thinking about the relaunch and what it might mean.
Imagine that you’re Conde Nast. You have these two amazing plants growing side by side in large pots on your rooftop terrace at 4 Times Sq. They’re both very similar plants, of the same species, and they both produce a comparable amount of fruit. They’ve been sitting up there for a long time, and have survived many winters even while other plants have withered. But the forecast for this winter is grim. Really grim. The whole climate of publishing is changing. What to do? You take one of your plants inside – choosing the oldest one with the strongest brand – and you repot it. Shake off the roots, trim the branches, add some new soil and then genetically re-engineer the plant to thrive off the nutrients of the internet. Gourmet est mort, vive Gourmet!
Gourmet Live isn’t a redesign – it is a carte blanche. That kind of thing never happens. And yet, here we are. The iPad strategy of most magazines these days is to cram everything into an app. But then the designers and art directors are doing 3x the layouts – print, web, app – and its a ton of work, and I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the process, from photographers all the way up to EICs. Carte blanche means that everything is turned upside down. Design for the new media one time only, then let the content proliferate out through the web of followers.
The team behind the new Gourmet is creating an architecture to support a new kind of magazine, possibly the first of its kind. And the team members are like a who’s who of new media design.
“He’s one of those clever people who can take history and the future and merge them into the present,” said Platon, a New Yorker photographer who has won two consecutive National Magazine Awards for photo portfolios and credits Mr. Dadich for giving him his start in America. “People have done that before in other genres. Miles Davis did it, Frank Lloyd Wright did that. And I think Scott has the capacity to do that.”
“With a talent like Scott, magazines will never die,” said George Lois, the legendary former art director of Esquire.
“He just has it,” said David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker.
“He will be the spark that ignites a conflagration,” said Tom Wallace, Condé Nast’s editorial director.
And these are just the people I found with a small bit of research. They’re going to make an amazing platform, plain and simple. And the best part about it, they have 60+ years of the best food writing and photographs with which to populate their new creation. And I’m sure that is just the beginning. Soon we’ll get new commissions for the best writing, the best photos.
This is a larger issue, over 100 pages of old recipes from the archive. It will be sold at select locations and not carry ads. It is less like a magazine per se, and more like a Special Interest Publication. Those are very profitable and not subject to things like advertisers and subscribers. You don’t have to print as many, they don’t go to the newsstand – they have great margins. But its a red herring. People arguing about whether this particular issue is the ‘return’ of Gourmet are not aware of what is really going on. It took well over a year for the successful Wired iPad app to finally come out, and even then it was neutered by the Apple/Abobe scuffle, since all the content was designed in Creative Suite but forced to use a clumsy workaround in order to function on the iPad. Safe to say the new Gourmet app, when it finally is released, will not have the same problem.
It is a lot to think about – but the main point is that we haven’t really seen what is cooking in Conde’s test kitchen. But judging by the new media chefs, by the pedigree of the the Gourmet brand, and by the collective vision of what a magazine will be 10 years from now, it smells really damn good. My mouth is already watering.
Scott Horne styled these images shot by the always-masterful Con Poulos. If you think that we’re posting too many pictures of ice cream, that we’re just marketing shills for your local ice cream truck driver, well, that could be true. Give me ice-cold payloa on a cone with sprinkles, ethics be damned. It is going to be 90 degrees every day this week, so make sure to cool off with these photos. Oh and eat some ice cream, too.
Ever felt like a kid in a candy shop? You would if you were at our office today where we received a basket of vintage sweets reminiscent of the days of roller skates, skinned knees, and real arcade games like, Galaga, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and Super Ms. Pac Man.
Pop Rocks, Bazooka, Charleston Chew, Jolly Ranchers, Good n Plenty, Pixy Stix, Big League Chew, Sugar Daddies, Fun Dip and yes even candied necklaces. It’s in there!
The candy came to Big Leo courtesy of an awesome client who spent the day shooting with our very own Björn Wallander, whose work and stellar demeanor simply inspire this sort of sweetness.
A good friend sent me this article from PDN, about the General Mills Photography Studios in Minneapolis, with the comment:
“We try to get the best food photographers we can, then we have our poorly paid staff photographers ‘learn their tricks’and emulate them all year! Everybody wins! LOL We always give our favorite photographers a lot of free ice cream to show them we appreciate their efforts!”
That was my initial read as well (without the thinly-veiled sarcasm), and I’m sure a lot of photographers feel the same way. But the situation is much more nuanced and it reveals a lot of truth about the nature of commercial photography.
In-house studios are an easy target because of this perception that they take work away from freelancers. Well, sure they do. But that’s because they employ full time photographers who themselves are looking for opportunities. And some clients need a lot of photos of the same thing. Products and more products. It isn’t glamourous work, in fact it can be downright crushing to do the same variations every. single. day. They’re also shackled to the client’s vision, and are forced to use a muted style. And using the same lighting setups for each shot, there isn’t a lot of room to grow. I don’t envy in-house photographers – they’re essentially technicians. All the negatives of commercial photography but none of the freedom.
So here’s the setup: freelancers come in and shoot, while the in-house team watches over their shoulder, takes notes on their lighting, equipment, technique, etc. Then the client never calls the freelancer again. This actually happens all the time. The nuance is in how much everyone agrees that this is an educational process. General Mills was very upfront about the whole thing and the photographers were (I imagine) happy to be in the spotlight. They were paid standard rates and usage. To me, this is the main issue. A teaching experience like that is worth waaaaaay more to the client than any images they get out of it. Presumably it will pay dividends the rest of the year, with staff photographers putting new tricks to use. They should have charged a lot more as a consulting fee for an event like this. In the end it is a great idea – the most effective studios do this regularly, assigning the staff to work as a digital tech to more established photographers. And if you do that often enough you don’t create ill will because a) it is expected and b) you’re still hiring the freelancers. The MSLO studios come to mind – they’ve produced some talented people already, but still call in the big guns for the important features/covers.
Last year Big Leo’s own Susan Spungen spent a week on set for a client, who had brought in freelance photographers and stylists to do the same thing, as a teaching experience for the staff. But the entire time she was there, she never felt like anyone was looking over her shoulder or taking notes. The main reason for that is because what she does as a food stylist goes beyond technique – it has more to do with the craft, and the art. You can’t write those things down. If all you are as an artist is a bag of tricks that can be made obsolete by a few staff photographers taking notes – you better learn some new tricks. It all comes back to developing a visual voice, a style that is entirely your own. Something to set your work apart.
In commercial photography there is always going to be the pull to become just a technician. But you have to resist that urge, no matter how many bills can be paid with that one product shoot. Sure, those are great, but then you’re just one small part of a team of people that are asking you to recreate their vision; in the arch of a long career, that is unsustainable because you’re competing with everyone who can learn to be a technician. But an artist? That takes creativity. And you can always charge extra for that.
Big Leo Productions represents artists for commercial projects. We take pride in our team's individuality, professionalism, and craft. Our clients agree - BLP rocks. Give us a call anytime! 212.625.3861Mary - Maria - Mason - Willie - Karen
