RIGHT, THAT’S LUNCH SORTED…
Just add olive oil, lemon juice, black pepper, hunk of bread & a glass of red.
Only one question now remains. Why is it still so bloody cold?
I WON AN AWARD!
Yep…I won an award, for the second year running at the ‘Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year’ Awards, and had a second picture nominated for the finals.
I am now officially the ‘Errazuriz Wine Photographer of the Year’! and am steadily drinking my way through the ‘years supply’ of Errazuriz wine that I won!
I have to send a massive THANK YOU to my beloved partner who (exactly the same as last year, when I was the only photographer nominated in three categories…winning in one and coming second in two) chose the pictures.
Have not been too well since the rather swanky prizegiving in London, hence the lack of posts on here, but rest assured, I’m now fighting fit again and normal service is resumed…
NEW LOVE, A SPELLING CONUNDRUM & JIMI HENDRIX
As my relationship with meat fades (see previous entries) I find that my love affair with the chilli goes from strength to strength. So my joy when this little bundle of spiciness dropped onto my doorstep the other day was unconfined.
They were a present from my friend Monica Shaw, who had been telling of her wonderful Salsa Macha on her blog.
The smell as I was taking this picture was amazing, a spicy, smoky aroma which hit me smack in the face and got my tastebuds positively zinging. They are, from top left clockwise chilli chipotle, chilli pasilla, chilli guajillo, chilli de arbol & in the middle, chilli ancho…and I’m looking forward to all of them. One of the things I find people saying to me when they find out that I’m almost totally off meat these days is that it’s so difficult, without meat, to get ‘depth of flavour’ in your cooking. Well try some of these babies because, if you ask me, if you can’t get ‘depth of flavour’ without using meat, you’re just not a very good cook.
Incidentally, I had a bit of a problem when it came to spelling these chaps. I guess, as they are Mexican I should have used the Spanish spelling ‘chile’. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the English spelling is ‘chilli’, the US spelling is ‘chili’ and the Spanish ‘chile’. Only problem is, as a Jimi Hendrix fan, I don’t want to ruin one of my all time favourite Hendrix tracks, the wonderful, life enhancing ‘Voodoo Chile’ by thinking of it as ‘Voodoo Chilli’ as it would lose some of its impact, so, as I am, for better or worse, English, I stuck with ‘chilli’…
CHILLY
This is not, despite the way it feels this morning, a picture of the weather in South East England.
It is a picture from my column in this month’s Black+White Photography magazine. This is from a wonderful trip we took in the Carpathian mountains in Western Ukraine a couple of years back.
I’m getting more and more excited about exploring Eastern Europe and I will be running a lot of very exciting workshops in some great locations in 2014, and this year am running 2 in Bulgaria, in the amazing town of Kotel. Check them out here.
NEW PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS
Very excited to announce the venues for this years photography workshops.
I’m running dedicated Food Photography workshops & Food & Travel workshops in Andalucia, and Portraiture and Travel workshops in the amazing town of Kotel in Bulgaria. All with the added bonus of learning all the tricks of the trade in the minefield of post-production.
You can find out all about them HERE
So, if you want to solve the riddle of such professional secrets as keeping your hair out of the lens, the importance of standing on tables and how to keep your feet out of your pictures…Let this internationally renowned, award winning photographer help you out!
Go on - you know you want to…
HEALTHY
I am not a vegetarian. Neither am I a vegan. Yet.
However, since we returned from the Balkans in January, I have been 95% vegan (the 5% being mainly honey, which I can’t give up…and a pork pie from Boxley’s of Wombourne, which was great, but I just don’t want another one).
Now, before you sneer (which, I suspect, the majority of you already are), bear a couple of things in mind…a) I love my food, and b) I’m a very good cook.
We have been eating some delicious food, I’ve lost a LOT of weight and despite the fact that I’ve had my fair share of health problems over the last few years, I’ve not felt this healthy or energetic since my teens. It may not work for you, but by golly, it works for me, so, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.
These funny looking things above are Hunza Apricots. They look, and feel like small dusty pebbles, but, soaked overnight in cold water (and gently poached if you want) they turn into nectar. Sweet and caramelly, all they need is a small squeeze of lime. They are now a staple of mine, along with a few other things that I’ll probably bang on about in the future. Give them a go, they’re wonderful, and don’t be put off by how ill that man or woman in your local healthfood shop where you go to buy them looks. They’re hippies, and it’s all that dairy…
So doubting chums, engage brains and listen to THIS , read THIS, make yourself something from THIS, and ask yourself, as you overtake yet another lorry full of terrified sheep or pigs (or, dare I say it, horses) on their way to the slaughterhouse…is the taste of a bacon sandwich REALLY more important to you than spending happy, healthy time with your family and loved ones?
I did a shoot in the wonderful restaurant ‘Terre a Terre’ in Brighton a while back. The food there is always delicious, beautifully cooked and presented with skill and love. It regularly wins awards and was the Observer Food Monthly’s Vegetarian Restaurant of the year for several years running. The owners themselves are not vegetarians, and they summed up their philosophy to me with the phrase ‘It’s a Restaurant…it just happens to be vegetarian’
So…I’ll take the flak and, for the time being, enjoy eating my delicious vegan food…or, as vegans call it ‘food’.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT?
This is a picture from my column in this month’s B+W Photography magazine.
To be honest, it’s an image that should be filed in the ‘I’ve taken this picture before’ drawer. In fact, if I’m honest, I’ve probably taken this picture hundreds of times before.
Just as in the day’s when I was shooting mainly interiors, there came a point when I had to ask myself ‘how many more ways are there to photograph a bloody sofa?’, there comes a point in food photography when you have to ask yourself ‘how many more ways are there to shoot a sausage?’
I don’t know is the answer…but I do know that I still like this, and, again, if I’m honest, as long as I keep on liking it, I’m pretty certain that I’ll shoot it again.
I also know that me and sofas, at least photographically speaking, are pretty much through…
FROM THE VAULTS #1 - KYIV, UKRAINE
I’m feeling a bit down at the moment. Probably because it’s ‘That great, grey beast, February’.
Started having a huge trawl through and clean up of my archive and realised that there is a whole lot of stuff in there that, for one reason or another, has never seen the light of day. So I shall be ressurecting a few of them on here from now on, starting with one of our trips to Ukraine a couple of years back.
My beloved partner lived for 3 months in Kyiv, Ukraines capital, in the late 80’s whilst studying Russian and Soviet studies at SSEES. She had told me about the giant statue ‘Rodina Mat’ that dominated the city skyline and, waiting for a train connection with a few hours to kill, we decided to go and take a look.
She’s impressive. VERY impressive. 102 metres tall and made out of stainless steel she shone and glinted in the spring sunshine. There’s a lift inside her that takes you up to a viewing platform inside her head (which, sadly we didn’t have time for). Her sword alone is 16 metres (52ft) long!
The sculptures around her base which form the entrance to the Museum of the Great Patriotic War are massive and awe inspiring.
They say the Devil has all the best tunes. That may or may not be true, but in my mind…the Soviets definitely had ALL the best sculptures.
Just to show how big she is, that’s her on the hill in the bottom left of this picture shot from a bridge over the enormous Dnieper River that flows through Kyiv.
One of the amazing sculptures at the foot of ‘Rodina Mat’ by Yevgeny Vutetich.
no doubt about it…when it comes to sculpture these guys are simply the best.
and here, to complement my foul mood perfectly, is some bleak, Soviet era concrete.
BLACK+WHITE PEARS
This is a picture from my regular column in ‘Black+White Photography’ magazine. This month I write about the picture that inspired me to become a photographer.
To find out what that picture is, either dash out and buy one now, or subscribe to the app HERE.
It’s really a jolly good read.
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER…WHY?
We’d been in the village a long time. Snowed in for some of it. Days had passed when we had only ventured a few metres from our front door. A lot -almost certainly too much rakiya had been drunk and the endless games of Scrabble had got scarily competitive. So, at the first sign of a thaw we decided on a trip.
The city of Ruse on the Danube is Bulgaria’s fifth largest city, and only a hundred kilometres from our house. Our destination was decided.
After a fairly grim drive in the frankly useless hire car along what is the main road between Bucharest and Istanbul and full of huge, thundering trucks plying their trade between the two cities, we arrived, smelling strongly of woodsmoke like the gumby elves of Mindya village, blinking shyly into the bright lights of the big city.
Only we didn’t. You could hardly see the ‘bright lights’ due to the dense fog and relentless sleet of what was, by far, the worst day of weather since we arrived.
Our visions of exploring this magnificent Austro-Hungarian city and gazing out over the banks of the Danube slightly dented, we set about finding a Hotel for the night. And here, in a rather bizarre way, is where the story just gets better and better.
The Danube Plaza Hotel is a Soviet era concrete palace smack bang in the middle of town on one side of Ploshad Svoboda (Freedom Square). Ugly just doesn’t do it justice. A huge room for the three of us (me, beloved partner and 19 year old step-son) was procured at a very reasonable, out of season price and we duly installed ourselves.
I have no personal experience of this, but my beloved partner studied Russian and Soviet Studies in the 80’s and, as we wandered around the hotel a strange thing happened to her. She started sniffing the air and becoming slightly emotional. She explained that the smell (to my olfactory senses a mixture of concrete dust, mysterious cleaning products and cheap foreign tobacco) took her straight back to the hotel she lived in for six months in Yaroslavl’. Against a background of brown and beige 70’s décor, we all began morphing into parodies of George Smiley, lurking furtively in the fourth floor ‘lobby’ and darkly muttering things like ‘Have you got the dossiers? Good…I will meet you in the bar downstairs at 7.45. Come alone. Make sure you are not followed’ and hiding furtively behind the tired pot plants when one of the cleaning ladies came along.
The weather and the visibility had, by this time, worsened significantly. As any outside activities were not to be had, and for some bizarre, Cold War era reason the hotel bar (where we had pictured ourselves sipping on dry martinis & regrouping for a couple of hours) had closed at 8 o clock, we decided to break the habits of a lifetime. So, at the recommendation of the charming receptionist, we ate dinner in the hotel. The restaurant was packed with some sort of sales company on their yearly jolly and so, as long involved speeches in Bulgarian about sales figures and presentations to ‘employees of the month’ droned endlessly on and on, there was only one thing for it…vodka…and lots of it. In fact, an alarming amount of it.
Now, a quick word about Bulgarian food. Almost everything I have eaten here has been extremely tasty. The freshness and different taste of the local cuisine is unexpected and delicious, and the care and pride the Bulgarians take in it is a joy. There does, however, always have to be the exception that proves the rule. And the food from the bizarre international menu at the Danube Plaza was it. I will spare you detailed descriptions. Suffice to say it was appalling. By this stage, however, it was rapidly ceasing to be of any real importance as we were drunk. Well on the way to being REALLY, REALLY drunk.
To make matters worse, things on the sales conference tables were hotting up. Speeches over and food served, the two cheery waiters wheeled out enormous trolleys positively groaning with booze! Each table seemed to have ten bottles of wine and many and various bottles of spirits, which were being poured down necks with a gusto I have hardly ever seen in the West (and remember, I once had a ten-day shoot in Newcastle). The beloved partner was getting really weepy by now - ‘Oh God…this takes me right back to Yaroslavl’, oh, I’m there!’ The boy was gazing out through bloodshot eyes at his dreadful food whilst swigging yet another vodka, and I was rapidly losing the will to live.
And then it happened.
The Disco started.
Dreadfully pissed Bulgarians in appalling ‘off duty, I’m not at the office now’ clothing were whooping and hollering on the dance floor and making utter fools of themselves in front of their bosses, and the beloved partner said, as the boy had made yet another stumbling trip to the loo ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if, when Felix got back we were on the dance floor?’
Oh dear.
Oh deary, deary, deary, deary me. It was funny. It was hilariously, ludicrously, dribblingly, embarrassingly, wobblingly, gurningly, dad-dancingly funny. To us anyway… Was that REALLY me? Dancing along…SINGING along to all those old Boney M hits? ONE WAY TICKET, ONE WAY TICKET, ONE WAY TICKET TO THE MOOOOOOOOOOOON? Were we really those people clapping maniacally along to the Gypsy Kings and getting baffled but admiring looks (so you English do know how to enjoy yourselves after all??!!) from all those nice Bulgarians as we clapped like crazy people and pretended to be bullfighters? YES! Did I really decide that after all that vodka, it would be a SIMPLY FANASTIC idea to switch to rakiya, drink loads more of it and PLAY AIR GUITAR TO ZZ TOP ‘Girls go crazy for a SMART DRESSED MAAAAAAAN’ Yes dammit it was and, do you know what? It was one of the best nights I’ve had in years! WOO!
Next morning dawned in a ridiculously over-heated room and found me face down under a duvet. Ugh. I had somehow managed to take my clothes off and, miraculously, put my pyjamas on. My head throbbed and I had a thirst from the Gobi desert.
My slight panic about the boy, who had announced in a very loud voice just after ‘Gangnam Style’ had subsided ‘Right, I’m going out!’ was put to rest at the sight of a body slumped on the sofa in the next room (It later emerged that he had got back in the small hours with a mysterious bar of chocolate, someone else’s lighter, absolutely no money left and a massive black hole where his memory used to be).
Note to self: You really are too old for this kind of behaviour.
Ruse’s most famous son, Nobel prize-winner Elias Canetti said in his autobiography ‘Every thing I lived through later in life had already happened at some time in Ruse’. That seems to sum up our trip rather well, and, despite our experiences, I feel that I must point out that Ruse is a wonderful city and well worth a visit, and the Danube Plaza is a really great place, and the staff absolutely charming and helpful. Give it a go if you’re ever up that way. Maybe give the restaurant a miss though.
Oh, and we never did get to see the Danube…
_
On a slightly more serious note, if any of my ramblings have sparked any interest in this wonderful country, I thoroughly recommend Kapka Kassabova’s fascinating and enjoyable ‘Street Without a Name - Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria’.
The view from the Danude Plaza entrance…
