Eating Like a Local (Photographer) in New York City

As an editorial food photographer in New York City, one of the best parts of my job is, well, eating. Best case scenario: I get to adventure to restaurants around the city to photograph new and interesting flavors.

Food Photographer New York, Indochine Restaurant and Eat Like a Local Food Guide

Fortunately, I was asked to do just that for Bloomsbury Publishing‘s Eat Like a Local guide for New York City (which just came out this week on Amazon!).

Shooting food and restaurant photography for the book’s 100+ locations took me all over the 5 boroughs of New York, to subway-tiled butcher shops, tiny pizza hideaways, and historic dim sum destinations…

Food Photographer, New York City, Bar Primi, Indochine

I got a chance to eat (and drink) my way through New York. It was great to make it to Nom Wah Tea Parlor—NYC’s oldest Dim Sum restaurant. It opened in Chinatown in 1920, and is still a real no-frills place, complete with shiny red booths, towering snake plants, and cheap bottled beer.

Food Photographer, New York City, Te Company

Also on the list is Te Company, an impressive tea destination in the Village, and Sammy’s Romanian Steakhouse, an amazing old school Eastern European restaurant hiding in SoHo, where waiters served bottles of vodka frozen into ice blocks!

Food Photographer, Alta, Omen Azen, New York City

Shooting on location can be a challenge, especially in New York City. Restaurants in New York have to move at breakneck speed, and they don’t always have time for a photographer in their space snapping photos of steaming hot pizza and trays of cocktails. But learning how to stalk restaurants is a part of the job!

As a “local” New Yorker myself, I had been to a handful of the locations: Hanoi House, Bar Primi (their bolognese is A+), Van Leeuwen, Peter Pan Donut, and Clinton Street Bakery. Can you tell I have a sweet tooth??

But many places were new to me! Looks like I still have some eating in NYC to do.

Cocktail Photography Tips

A few weeks ago, Edible Brooklyn emailed me looking for the best tips to give for shooting cocktail photography. They interviewed another amazing cocktail photographer in NYC too – you can read their findings here!

In addition to that article, I decide to go ahead and pull a couple images to add another couple of tips. Anything you would like to add? Comment below!!

The first shot is all about the condensation. You can notice the focus point begins there and starts to fall off towards the back of the shot. I wanted the melting drink and the cool freshness of the drink to come through. Sometimes adding these additional ingredients on the side can be overdone. However, for this shot, my focus and crop is on the front cup, that I think they just add pops of color the background that nothing on the surface would make the slate blend into the black backdrop.

I think another big factor with shooting on location, is knowing your environment and what the restaurant is about. If they are a morning/brunch spot with big windows that let a lot of light into the restaurant, you don’t want a black dark background with moody lighting and vice versa. This photograph was at a late night cocktail bar. It they have velvet curtains and lots of lounge seating for the customer. I kept with minimal lighting to make it moody and even used the arm of a chair as the set-up shot. Giving the drink context is important.

Love to answer any other questions you may have about shooting cocktails?

Travel Food Photography Tip: Thailand Edition

First and foremost, I must say this: New York City spoils me. Being a food photographer, I get to eat a lot of amazing (and sometimes, but rarely, not so amazing) restaurants. And if I am not photographing a restaurant, I go to just to experience the atmosphere. I enjoy the ambiance of being at a restaurant. The decor, the lighting, the plating, the people – everything about it is why I love what I do. However, no matter where I go on the globe, I also come back to the realization that New York will probably have a restaurant that can compete.

Coffee culture in Northern Thailand is booming. Some of my favorite lattes!

New York spoils me in that way.

However, I travel to eat the culture. To experience all those ambiances in another place in the world. And while I am there, I might as well photograph the food I get to experience to share with everyone else. Instagram is handy that way. With the growing hobby of food photography and the incredible features of iPhone cameras and Instagram editing software, food porn is more popular than ever. I can’t stop people from trying to do what I do as a career with their iPhones. I can, however, help weed out the use of shooting tungsten lighting overhead of your food that creates unflattering shadows and in turn, help me scroll through a more inspirational Instagram at night.

Street food in Bangkok

So here is the first tip and most important tip for shooting travel food photography: USE NATURAL LIGHTING.

Avoid overhead lighting as much as possible. If need be, block it with a napkin and sit close to a window. Here are a couple of my favorite from outdoor and indoor locations.

Fruit Smoothie from Fern Forest Cafe in Chaing Mai, Thailand

Street food of Prawns in Northern Thailand

Seafood dish at Cafe de Nimman in Chaing Mai, Thailand.

Frittata Photography

Here is a recent food photography shoot for Step-By-Step recipes. The photographs were shot for social media and website use with PaperChef, a parchment paper company. As a result, we only had to worry about the text running across the middle of a few images So we had a lot of freedom with the styling of the images. Out of all the recipes shots, this one was probably a favorite of mine. It is photographed with a white background with a clean and light feel. However, all the food brings color to the imagery and makes it bold and pop. Check out more recipes on PaperChef.com

Prep shot

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon olive oil, butter, or ghee
1 medium white onion, diced
2 medium russet potatoes, peeled and diced
1/2lb of a sausage of your choice cut or broken up into small pieces
1 green pepper, diced
1 red pepper, diced
A handful of fresh-bagged spinach
12 eggs
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 cup shredded cheese

PREPARATION INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
In a well-seasoned cast iron skillet sauté your onions, potatoes, and sausage in olive oil, butter or ghee over medium heat until potatoes are soft and meat is cooked through (about 15 minutes). Add in red and green pepper and sauté for an additional 5 minutes.
In a large bowl, whisk together the 12 eggs and then add in cheese and your choice of seasoning. Next, mix the potato mixture in with the eggs, making sure the ingredients are fully incorporated.
Wipe out or lightly rinse the skillet, then dry with a paper towel if needed. Line the skillet with a sheet of Paper Chef parchment paper, taking care to press it into the pan and leave a little hanging over the edge to help you lift the frittata out of the skillet at the end.
Grease the parchment paper with a little butter or ghee for flavor and then pour the mixture into the skillet.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until eggs are set up and slightly browned on top.
Finally, remove from oven and let it set for about 5 minutes.

Hero Shot

Stop-Motion Food Photography for Paperchef

Recently, I have been asked to shoot some stop-motion food photography videos for clients. Here is a completed video that a client of mine recently put together for their website. I plan to work on more of these in the future with my food photography clients. Keep checking back for more! Check out more from this shoot with Paperchef!

Parchment 101 Lining Your Skillet from PaperChef on Vimeo.

Editorial Food Photography Assignment : Insa : Edible Manhattan

Kimchi Brine Bloody Mary.

Four-word sentence that gets me out of Queens and on assignment with Edible Manhattan in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Check out the recipe here.

The final shot of the finished bloody mary at Insa in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Pouring the bloody mary mix.

A garnished shot of the top of bloody mary.

Insa‘s Bar Manager, Shayna Cott, preparing garnishes for her bloody mary drink.

Kimichi brine secret recipe being measured out for Insa‘s Bar Manager, Shayna Cott, bloody mary drink.

Next, Cott pours the Kimchi brine into the bloody mix.

Interior Photography

Following up with my last blog post, 2016 was a year of variety for me. I got assigned a job shooting interior photography for a real estate company in New Jersey. It involved 8 full days of interior and exterior photography of 13 different buildings. Here are some of my favorite shots.

50 Columbus

70 Columbus Kitchen

Gotham Terrace

Sovereign at The Shipyard

New York City Portrait Photography

The past few months I have been working on a super-secret project with a client of mine. Okay, maybe not super-secret. To be honest, I am not sure what the full projects intended purpose will be. I just show up and take photos. While I LOVE shooting food photography, I am a true believer the only way to grow is to change up what you do all the time. Try something new. Shoot something different. Work with a range of clients, tools, and artists to expand. And this project was “out of the box” for me.

After my years at the magazine and shooting events, I started to pull back from asking random strangers to let me take their picture., New York City is filled with people who are in a rush and don’t want to be bothered to stop and have their photos taken. This project made me do just that. Capture some one’s personality and style in under one minute. After a few weeks, this project then led me to travel to a few different cities. Here is just a handful of my favorite images. Hopefully, there will be an outlet for the final project soon!!

Burger King Photography

2016 was an amazing and busy year for me. So busy, that after shooting food photography 7 days a week on end for months in a row, I hadn’t had the time to update my portfolio or take a look through all the images that I did have the opportunity to shoot. Back in June 2016, I did a commercial photography shoot with Burger King for their new Mac&Cheeto’s campaign.

Here is a Behind-The-Scenes Lighting set-ups:

Burger King Behind the Scenes

And the final images used:

Food Photography for Burger King

Burger King Photography

Here is a Behind-The-Scenes Lighting set-ups:

Burger King Behind the Scenes

And the final images used:

Food Photography for Burger King

NYC Birch Family Services Portraits

Cayla Zahoran

Cayla Zahoran is a New York editorial food photographer. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA. Cayla specializes in magazine and cookbook food photography, as well as, restaurant portraits and interiors.