California's Nutty Food Photographer

A world without good foods is chaos. That's the motto of Good Foods, a major nuts supplier to Trader Joe's.

I had the help of the wonderful Randy Mon, food stylist on these. We averaged one image per hour, meticulously arranging the nuts based on composition of color, angle, shape, quality and texture.

The food photography & lighting are creatively setup with only two lights. Who needs more when we can add, shape and remove the photons to whatever direction, quality and quantity that I desire. ;-)

The image on the right (to be used as their brochure cover) is carefully taken with a tilt-shift lens, manual focused with the help of an angle finder C. Only the two middle bowls that are not on the same focus plane, are in focus. This is to create an artistic look that that leaves the front and back bowl out of focus, melting into the foreground/background.

Good Foods is owned by Sara Tidhar, the owner and a great chef. Her dreams are beyond imagination and she plans to takeover the world using her political prowess in her fast expanding nut industry. Yee Haw!

She found me via Tom Lauck of Creative Ops, a local eMarketing company. "I absolutely love your cupcake image with the little girl", she said. I guess what completely convinced her to use me are really the images I did for Monterey Bay Spice Company that packages & supplies tea Peet's Coffee & Tea.

I have strong confidence in her success in the near future. This woman has the drive and marketing brains to go with it. She was telling us the story of her son and daughter, helping her pack 160,000 packages and labels for delivery when they first started out. Gawd! I genuinely feel that she is heading towards a great path in her life with all the resources she needs to make it prosperous. God speed, Sara!