Episode Transcript
Don Mock 0:19
All right, we’re back everybody at episode 87 and we’re back with Cuyler. Hello, Cuyler.
Cuyler 0:25
Hello. Hello.
Don Mock 0:25
It’s not like I say hello to you all day. But we are being formal on the radio now, I mean podcast
Cuyler 0:33
This is digital.
Don Mock 0:35
It’s whatever we want it to be wherever we want it to be sure, how about that? All right, Episode 87. Here’s what I thought we would talk about today on an excellent suggestion from Mike since we are working on a bunch of Food packaging.
We’re doing a lot of food products for a delicious hamburger product, Angus beef burgers, the idea is lots of photoshoots, lots of dressing of food, nothing flavor triggered more important than beautiful food photography. If you want something that looks delicious. Can’t fake it, right? Some brands are not as contingent necessarily on imagery but when we’re talking about food.
Cuyler 1:25
Food is super important.
Don Mock 1:26
Food and beverage, yeah. It’s gotta look good. It’s gotta look bang on man, it’s gotta be delicious looking.
Cuyler 1:32
It’s gotta look always a lot better than the actual product.
Don Mock 1:35
Exactly. So the joke is is it real? What’s the deal with food photography in general? Why does that Big Mac look so much better than the actual Big Mac that you get in the back.
Cuyler 1:38
Because it’s not an edible Big Mac.
Don Mock 1:52
Yeah, exactly. Food styling matters, right? That’s today’s topic. I’ve done a tremendous amount of photoshoots over the years. So most of it as a photographer. I’m gonna start going if that’s cool with you.
Cuyler 2:09
Yeah.
Don Mock 2:09
When I think about my journey of food styling and food photography, it has come a long way my friend.
Cuyler 2:16
Yeah, you will know this a lot better than I do.
Don Mock 2:18
Okay well, I’ll do the heavy lifting on talking. We can start back in the dark ages, pre-digital photography. I remember one of my first gigs, early, early on, still probably had dinosaur shit on my shoes, so way back in the day. You’ve heard that expression?
Cuyler 2:37
Man, I’m gonna use it now.
Don Mock 2:39
Yeah, so old you got dinosaur shit on your shoes.
Cuyler 2:41
I like that.
Don Mock 2:42
Yeah, so pre-digital on most any photoshoot you would shoot Polaroids. Are Polaroid even a brand anymore? I mean, it’s a brand for like hipsters now.
Cuyler 2:52
I think you can still get fujifilm because they brought back
Don Mock 2:55
Those little disposable things, shaking that Polaroid picture and all that thing. So what you would do was get all your lighting… You’d be shooting black and white Polaroids, nothing in color, everything black and white just to make sure your lighting was going on and things are happening, then we would shoot two and a quarter transparency, the old school two and a quarter actual transparencies, you would shoot everything, you have no idea what you’re shooting because you can’t see anything, then you roll up your film, seal it up, bring it to the color lab, they develop your film, which is little transparencies, you got your little loops and magnifying glasses, and so you get all those sleeves back, hang them up on the window or use light table, you’re looking at everything to determine which of those photos you’ve selected to enlarge, to spend the money because this one’s better than that one and see what it is, then drum scan those transparencies to give yourself a digital file that maybe you could manipulate, pre-photoshop layers. I remember I used to do a lot of pet food stuff back in the day, it’s funny how I’ve worked with pets so much in my career. We’d shoot dogs all day and you would have no idea if any of these photographs were any good or not.
Cuyler 4:13
Yeah, before I was here, did you shot the dogs that are on the little ROI pack?
Don Mock 4:13
Yeah we shot all that stuff, but that’s recent.
Cuyler 4:21
I know that that’s recent.
Don Mock 4:22
Yeah, a million years ago, I did a project, I’ll name drop, I did a project with a company called Cryovac, Sealed Air, a lot of people know them. I’m not going to go into it but they make tons of stuff; they made a resealable, they did’nt make the dog food itself, they made the bag that the dog food goes into. You know that big 2550 pound bag were you pull the string, open it up and by the end of that the food is stale or whatever the case may be. Cryovac made this pet food packaging, they would sell to Pedigree and Purina like hey put your dog food and your cat food in our packaging, it keeps the food fresher; we did an entire ad campaign all about the sealing and keeping things fresh. We shot everything two and a quarter, we shot nothing with digital, we spent an entire day shooting dogs and I remember this photographer who would use cheese, he would put his lens cap on his camera, rub his lens cap with cheese, get the dogs to sniff and start licking the lens cap then take it off and click click click then cover it back up again because you don’t want the dogs licking your actual camera. I was like, man, what a great idea.
Cuyler 5:43
Yeah, when I take a picture of my dog, I’ll hold a treat just right over the lens of the phone.
Don Mock 5:50
Okay, that’s cool. Yeah anyway, this is a weird tangent, I don’t even know how I got under this, point being is that that’s how we used to shoot things pre-digital, pre digital photography but the workflow was digital, we’re still on Macs and everything. How this relates to food photography is a couple things. I got a couple of funny stories. One was for soup, I won’t name the company but a soup brand and one was for cereal. There’s only two big cereal companies so take your bet. If you think about cereal in the 80s and early 90s it’s all about the photograph of the bowl of flakes or whatever the cereal is with the milk splash, that was it, I don’t know what the rules are now because we’ve actually done a big sea change. I can talk about that later. The rules back then was that the only thing that had to be real in any food advertising was actually the product that you were selling.
Cuyler 6:56
So the milk doesn’t have to be real.
Don Mock 6:59
You picked up on that immediately, so the agency I was at hired a sculptor, the milk was fake, the milk was a sculpture.
Cuyler 6:59
Oh wow, the splash? It was plasters?
Don Mock 7:06
Yeah, the actual splash was just a sculpture.
Cuyler 7:09
So you could just get the same splash everytime, different angles.
Don Mock 7:18
Exactly and you don’t get the sogginess of the milk. I was a lowly, borderline intern, so you would dump out 20 boxes of frosted flakes or whatever the scenario was, and then you pick through all of those to find the 100 or 200 most photogenic flakes and then you have somebody with a pair of tweezers placing all of that.
Cuyler 7:43
In a bowl.
Don Mock 7:44
Yeah, totally insane, right? That was an interesting fun fact about how food was shot. There’s also soup, were it’s all about the warm cup of soup, the steam coming off.
How do you fake that?
Well, here’s how it was done. It’s an ice cold boss, cover your ears children, but everybody’s smoking cigarettes off camera.
Cuyler 8:15
So you’re just blowing it?
Don Mock 8:15
Blowing the smoke through a straw, you exhale through a straw to direct where you wanted the smoke and then you pop up a bunch of Polaroids to see if that’s even working, you gotta find whoever is the right guy
Cuyler 8:32
Gotta get the right tune of the smoking.
Don Mock 8:35
Yeah, it was all about creating that steam. This wasn’t in the 80s but in 80s ads, it’s very synonymous with that black background white title.
Cuyler 8:47
Right. Right.
Don Mock 8:48
So we’re still evolving out of that, you still had a dark background in scene, so yeah, it was all cigarettes smoke.
Cuyler 8:55
It’s interesting because, it kind of makes sense, because I feel like, I’ve never shot steaming soup before. Yeah, but I feel like the steam that you see in a hot coffee or a bowl of soup is visible to you in the real world, but it probably won’t show up very much on a photograph, whereas smoke, you would think that maybe that’s too much, too heavy, but probably for a photograph it comes off looking fine
Not huge, you don’t want a Humphrey Bogart
Don Mock 9:27
Yeah, it’s really more of a puff. It’s like get it out there and let it do its thing
Cuyler 9:34
Let it dissipate
Don Mock 9:36
Yeah, exactly.
Cuyler 9:37
Wow, interesting.
Don Mock 9:38
Yeah, that’s kind of weird.
Kicking along the food photography was cereal. I did work on Kellogg’s for 5-7 years, something like that, I will say that what’s interesting as we evolved that, in most cereal scenarios with cereal and milk, all of the milk now is Elmers glue, t’s all because it’s super white and you can again, take a straw or take a toothpick and blow in and get the bubbles, you know how when you pour a glass of milk you get those little bubbles along the edges for either the cup or the bowl or whatever, you can get those really, really well with Elmers glue.
Cuyler 10:16
Interesting.
Don Mock 10:16
Again, we’re selling the cereal we’re not selling the milk, but you can get the flakes and whatever the cereal is to come in at angles, you could manipulate everything, if that makes sense.
Cuyler 10:29
Interesting. Well, that brings me to my question, which would be if you’re looking at a fast food cheeseburger commercial, that’s probably when I think of food styling, that’s the first thing I think of, the sheen of the bun, all of that, so you’re saying that because, call it Burger King, or whoever is selling the burger and the patty, they’re selling the patty, the lettuce, everything. All of that is real.
Don Mock 10:56
It’s all real.
Cuyler 10:57
But there was rubbing a little Vaseline on the bun. Is that kind of the approach?
Don Mock 11:02
Yeah, you oil everything. Now, I will say, as I foreshadowed at the beginning of the thing, how things have changed dramatically with digital retouching, but also with just the emphasis on food styling and how fast you can capture things with a digital camera, the workflow is so much faster, now when we shoot with a food stylist you’ll have a stylist that will do what’s called a “Make ready” like make a plate or make a burger or whatever, throw it on set so it’s sitting there, that’s not the hero image, they get all the lighting and get everything done, the food stylist and potentially that team is still rocking back in the kitchen getting all the cooking, all the different burgers, they are a bunch of different ones, then creating the hero image and then you can bring that on set, manipulate that for an hour. So shoot it a bunch of different ways.
Cuyler 11:59
You hit click and it pops up on the screen. We can sit there and say move it.
Don Mock 12:05
Yeah, yeah, move that sesame seed over a quarter of an inch. Move that thing here.
Cuyler 12:09
A little bit more spread, whatever it is.
Don Mock 12:11
I’m very well known for, everybody gives gives me shit for tangents. It’s always about like, where are the tangents? Oh, the fork is just optically touching where the napkin is. I’m always looking at tangents.
Cuyler 12:23
You’re viewing it from a compositional standpoint. Which a lot of photographers are too.
Don Mock 12:27
Yeah, exactly. I’m no expert, I just have my experience but I think it’s funny how at the beginning of my career, most of the stuff was fake and now everything is real, like everything we shoot for every product on everything, whether what we’re selling or not, almost everything is real. Now, there are some tips and tricks that we still use , if you think about the beer can or the coke can or the bottle and the spritz.
Cuyler 12:57
The sweat, the condensation.
Don Mock 12:59
Yeah, I would say most of the time that actually is real.
Cuyler 13:02
You think so?
Don Mock 13:03
Well, because nowadays you get you it running.
Cuyler 13:06
Tha’ts what I was gonna say sometimes in the commercial you will see it running it, it can only be real.
Don Mock 13:11
But they’ve got glycerin, where you can spritz the outside of a glass or a can or a bottle or whatever like that and then it’s like spray paint, it’s bubbles that just stick and it’s permanently there, so that’s fake. One of the things we just worked on was a liquor shoot, right? I believe it was Bourbon rise, things like that and you noticed something about that shoot, right? What did you notice?
Cuyler 13:37
Yeah, the food stylist was using this like, I don’t know what it was made of silicone or something, but the ice cubes were like some kind of gelatin.
Don Mock 13:46
Yeah, it was like a gelatin.
Cuyler 13:47
When you cut it, it looked like one of those large squares that you would get at some fancy bar that goes in your old fashion. Yeah, but you could like touch it and it was squishy, it was very interesting to me becausewhen you start to think about it, you’re filming there all day with hot lights, that picture is going to change rapidly as the ice melts, between the spritz and the ice, you end up with a consistency and you’re able to continue and move it.
Don Mock 14:15
Yeah, almost universally all ice is fake. So ice is either, they actually make like fake ice cube glass because it has that transparent quality or plastic, but plastic is not as
Cuyler 14:31
Realistic?
Don Mock 14:31
Well, it’s not as easy to work with because if you want the floating glass that’s why you use the plastic were ice comes up to the top. What you were talking about it’s not cheap dude, it’s like 400 bucks or 300 for like a block like a 9x9x9 cube of this gelatin thing.
Cuyler 14:50
We should start making gelatin. 400 bucks for that.
Don Mock 14:52
But then you can cut your ice cubes into whatever shape so you think about how now with got all these fancy ices and drinks We’ve got the
Cuyler 14:54
The sphere, those things are fancy.
Don Mock 15:07
So you can do that or the huge ice block that’s in your bourbon, all that stuff pretty much is fake, which I find pretty interesting.
Cuyler 15:15
I’ll tell you what, I’m a little bummed out when I get the real, a real ice cube like that, cause I swear if you take that out, you get a glass full of bourbon
Don Mock 15:26
Exactly. Another fun one from the past, I’ll turn the thought here, it used to be like, hey, a lot of things were fake and we had all these interesting tips and tricks, now for the past 10 years or so, almost everything is real. I mean, there are a few little tips and tricks here and there, like Burger King, or McDonald’s or whatever like that you’ll see the grill marks on the grilled chicken and things like that.
Cuyler 15:33
You’ll have like a heated thing,
Don Mock 15:36
You’ll have a heated thing and you’ll burn in the grill marks, there’s a lot of dyes and things you can use to like darken food or lighten food, things like that, but it still is an actual bun
Cuyler 16:11
Still a real tomato.
Don Mock 16:12
Yeah, it’s still a real tomato, and the cheese is right, that type of thing.
Cuyler 16:16
It’s if you were to see the back angle of that burger, everything would be squished towards the front so you can kind of see a layer of each thing.
Don Mock 16:24
Yeah, depends on how you’re shooting, since we’re talking about burgers, we’ll pick on burgers, if you’re kind of coming at it straight on, like hero angle, or you’re looking up at it, it’s almost like a wedge, like the front of everything is hanging out of it looking gorgeous and the back of it is almost pinched in
Cuyler 16:42
Like you’re fanning out a deck of cards.
Don Mock 16:44
Yeah. What was that movie? Where, God, I’m going to totally ruin this, where it’s Bill Murray’s over in Japan
Cuyler 16:52
Oh, Lost in translation.
Don Mock 16:53
That’s it, remember he goes to the bar and he has all the clips on the back of his jacket
Cuyler 17:00
That’s kind of the back of the burger.
Don Mock 17:02
Yeah, that’s the back of the burger exactly, the rule of thumb is if it feels weird it probably looks better in camera sometimes or if it’s a little unnatural it probably looks better in camera, right? It’s like slouching is what we all do but you gotta stand up straight, that type of
Cuyler 17:21
That’s why when we all look at ourselves on pictures we go Oh is that what I look like?
Don Mock 17:25
Exactly. I’d used to do a bunch of ice cream stuff in the past, I know that all that stuff is real now, but Filo dough used to be what ice cream was made of, I did a bunch of ice cream toppings and like chocolate sauces and things like that, when you think about ice cream you think it’s gonna melt immediately.
Cuyler 17:47
Right.
Don Mock 17:47
Well, I don’t really know what Filo dough is but I’m telling you, you need it together in terms of like, oh, it looks like gold metal ribbon or chocolate chip or whatever, use an ice cream scooper.
Cuyler 17:57
Oh you scoop it?
Don Mock 17:58
Yeah, you scoop it like an ice cream and it has those ridges and those folds. It looks exactly like ice cream but it never melts and you can pour chocolate sauce all over it, you can pour caramel, strawberry
Cuyler 18:10
Now when I think of like a commercial where you can see them, like a Blue bell commercial, were you see them rolling the scooper through the ice cream, I think of how many times did they shoot that shot?
Don Mock 18:21
A lot.
Cuyler 18:22
And then how much ice cream, like you’re done with it after one pass and then you got a whole bucket of ice cream that someone needs to go eat.
Don Mock 18:30
Yeah, it’s great for the studio because they take home treats, right?
Cuyler 18:33
Yeah, I couldn’t handle that job
Don Mock 18:36
Yeah, there’s a lot of food banks usually get a lot of support from all that.
Cuyler 18:42
That’s true.
Don Mock 18:42
We used to shoot with a studio, well, we still do shoot with the studio that had a lot of restaurant groups and it was like hey, surprise, it’s lobster day, I mean, no one can take home 60 lobsters
Cuyler 18:42
You wouldn’t want you, your car would never recover.
Don Mock 18:58
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yikes. Not in Atlanta.
Cuyler 19:01
Well with the bourbon company, we had to have a bottle to photograph unopened and then we had to make all the cocktails, shoot the cocktail. We ended up with
Don Mock 19:11
20 bottles
Cuyler 19:12
An army worth of bourbon. I think most of us don’t drink hard liquor anymore.
Don Mock 19:17
Yeah, not so much but some of those bottles are hard to find. Nobody drinks this, we got to hold on to this in case we need them.
Cuyler 19:18
I mentioned that company to a friend of mine and he was like, oh, yeah, that’s tough to find or I only have one of those.
Don Mock 19:31
Yeah, small batch bourbon stuff, it’s good, it’s exclusive.
Oh yeah, it’s a good gift.
So yeah, food photography, maybe we should have a photographer on the pod
Cuyler 19:40
That’d be cool.
Don Mock 19:40
To sort of chat through or whatever but, yeah, it’s a fun day in the studio, it’s always a learning experience and it is really interesting, at least for the arc of my career, how it used to be kind of all fake just because workflow was so slow, and a little bit of a leap of faith to now where boom, your instant digital high resolution imagery, you can manipulate little things here and there, and there’s a certain amount of I will fix it in post, because like we don’t have to worry about the crack on that bun, we’ll just brush that out
Cuyler 20:17
Boom, easy peasy.
I think it’s an interesting subject, because I think this is one of those things that people are seeing all the time, nearly every food commercial they see and they don’t even think about it. That’s kind of the success of good food styling, all you’re thinking is I want that Popeyes chicken sandwich and not is there Vaseline on top of this sandwich?
Don Mock 20:19
Yeah, we’ve worked with some really, really great food stylists, and they are absolutely awesome, the best ones are kind of chefs first
Cuyler 20:50
Ok I was gonna ask, how do you get into that industry?
Don Mock 20:55
I don’t know because most of the ones that I’ve worked with were practicing chefs
Cuyler 21:00
Ok so they already know presentation, they already know what something ideally should look like.
Don Mock 21:06
Yeah. So there’s, here’s how you actually cook the dish but then, again, knowing that the dish isn’t going to actually be eaten by anyone, it’s not a matter of cutting corners, it’s a matter of maybe not cooking it the way it’s supposed to be cooked for consumption versus cooking it for a beauty shot. If that makes sense.
Cuyler 21:28
Right, it does. Right?
Don Mock 21:29
Now, there are certain things like french fries, we’re talking about burgers, french fries, like just cook a whole bunch of fries and then we just sit there and eat the fries and it’s delicious. We always eat the non-photogenic ones, but some of the stuff it’s like yeah, we can fast track it, or you kind of cook for shooting but I think because you have the back history of actually being a chef, you understand the intrinsic qualities of food and preparation
Cuyler 21:43
That makes sense. Yeah, it’s interesting, you could come at it from either angle, did you come from a food background or a photography background?
Don Mock 22:09
Yeah, exactly.
Cuyler 22:10
Probably coming from a food background with some knowledge of photography would be ideal.
Don Mock 22:14
I mean, those people on shoot day, they’re the ones under the gun. We’re all standing around, they are the ones working their ass off, and you’ve only got so much time in the day, you need time to manipulate, to play, to figure out composition and layout. It’s a little bit of improv comedy. They’re the ones that are like under the gun.
Cuyler 22:37
Photographers more or less setup, might have to move some things around. Yeah, if you’re doing the click of a bun and then we’re just standing at a monitor going yeah, that was a good one, let’s move this here.
Don Mock 22:50
Yes. Definitely.
Cuyler 22:51
The food stylists. They got ovens on, they’re going.
Don Mock 22:55
Yeah, when we’ll do a pre-pro it’s like hey we know we needed to do XYZ during the day, we’ll do a DAC, we’ll go over with clients, here’s what to expect during the day, here’s what’s realistic, here’s what we’re going to aim for, Prioritization, if something needs to drop off because something else takes longer, it is like improv comedy, there’s a lot of moving pieces and parts, and it’s not, it’s not a science. You got to kind of work within, with the pre pro, you set everything up as much as you can.
Cuyler 23:27
Yeah, but you got to be a little flexible.
Don Mock 23:29
Yeah, exactly, that’s where not only on shoot day, but the day before it’s recipe creation, ideation, what if you guys did this or I know you wanted this Alfredo dish but what about these capers, or this and that, I’m just making things up right now but like, all these different things, and then, it’s seven o’clock in the morning on shoot day, you’re at a grocery store, potentially buying stuff, you gotta have all your options, so they really are worth their weight in gold, for sure. I’ts always helpful to have an assistant for the stylists as well so it can go in faster and but again, a lot of that’s contingent on client budgets and things.
Cuyler 24:19
It’s an interesting field, for sure.
Don Mock 24:21
Yeah. They’re always, the good ones, you got to work around their schedule to a certain extent but it’s a fun part of the job, shoot days are always fun. We love working on food and beverage. I mean, it’s definitely one of our verticals that we play in a lot, a lot of food and beverage, a lot of stuff in the grocery store which is super fun. Well, hey, I guess that’s it for probably food photography, or weird little tips and tricks and thoughts for the day.
Cuyler 24:51
Right. But we could always do another one. Get a food stylist on here.
Don Mock 24:54
Yeah, for sure.
Cuyler 24:55
That would be fascinating.
Don Mock 24:56
That would be fun. All right, where can everybody find us Cuyler?
Cuyler 24:59
They can find us on our website, mocktheagency.com and you can find us on social @mocktheagency.
Don Mock 25:04
Sweet. All right, thanks everybody. We’ll chat with you next time.
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