The Photoshoot Diaries III
A smooth finish/Hobbling towards the end
This post has been sitting, empty, in my dashboard since mid-January. That’s when I started the post, giving it a title and subtitle, figuring I’d get back to it as soon as the cookbook shoot for Classic German Cooking was over and I’d collected myself. But I didn’t end up being able to collect myself at all and then a bunch of other things happened and I had to step away entirely and now it’s April 23rd and I feel like I really should tie up loose ends! “A smooth finish” turned into something more like “hobbling towards the end."
Where did I leave things? Oh, right, with The Photoshoot Diaries II. (Part I is here.) The last few days of the photoshoot were a bit of a blur. We had so many dishes to shoot and so very little light (January in Berlin is bleak as hell). Also, I was running on fumes, with a case of bronchitis and my recurrent insomnia having roared back with a vengeance just days earlier.
One dish that ended up being a real pain in the neck was Reis Trautmannsdorff, which we accidentally plated in a too-small footed dish, seen above. Despite it looking cute, we decided to make it again, but thanks to an annoying copper mold, the second attempt came out busted. Wasting precious photoshoot time on making the dish a third time stressed me out to no end, but the team was amazing and we got the shot in the end.
Ah, the amazing team. I got so, so lucky with these incredible people. This photo really just encapsulates the madness of a shoot and the dedication of the people involved. It makes me smile every time I see it. Xenia, the food stylist, is on the left, painting some baked apples with a bit of plain oil to give them a freshly-baked sheen, because they’d come out of the oven while we were busy with other things and in the meantime had cooled and gotten sort of dull, while Marco, the photographer’s assistant, is pinch-hitting on the right as an alternative background. (Elena, the photographer, was probably feeding her baby at that moment, but her camera was at the ready.) Elena wanted a bit of a dark background, only a hint of darkness in the back of the photo, but the buttons on Marco’s shirt were distracting, so he had to turn his back and then of course also lift his arms, so that his fingers/wedding ring/wrist wouldn’t make it into the shot. Ha!
The table where we shot everything was in the dining room, at the front of the apartment, and it was relatively calm there. Marco had his computer set up on my desk and we had a table by the window, for maximum light exposure, where Elena shot the food as it came out. By contrast, the kitchen felt like a buzzing, slightly demented (but in a good way!) beehive. Elena rarely went into the kitchen with her camera, because the light back there was rough and there was no available counter space to shoot on, but on this day, the second-to-last of the shoot, we wanted her to shoot the process of poaching Kartoffelklöße on the stove, which is why she and Marco and Xenia and B are all in there together.
All of the effort was worth it: the photographs turned out SO beautifully. I am excited for you all to see them in the book. It is not easy to make this kind of cozy food look good, but Elena, Xenia, Marco and B nailed it.
I dedicated Classic German Baking to Hugo (that book was published before Bruno was a twinkle in our eyes), so of course I had to dedicate Classic German Cooking to Bruno. On the very last day, Bruno came home early. By this point, he felt pretty comfortable with all of these people in the house every day. (Elena’s baby, partner and mother-in-law were usually there in the afternoons when Bruno was home, too.) I’m not quite sure how it happened, but Elena was shooting the Topfenknödel and for some reason, no one was completely happy with the way the photos were looking. For a bit of levity, I guess, she let Bruno climb up on a stool and try out her camera. So now he gets to say that the book is dedicated to him and that one of the photos in there is his. ;-)
Once the last photo was taken, a certain quiet settled over the apartment. Marco was processing images, while Xenia and B were cleaning up the kitchen. I started bringing the props back to my neighbors and friends, washing the linens and slowly bringing my house back down to normal. At night, we all walked over to a pizzeria in the neighborhood and had one last meal together. I was absolutely fried, mentally and physically, but I was also so grateful. All in all, it had been a wonderful week. Writing can be a lonely experience and it was so gratifying, at the end of all that lonesome toiling, to have so many lovely people in my house for those eight crazy days, bringing these dishes to life. I am so grateful to them.
And that’s a wrap on The Photoshoot Diaries! Classic German Cooking will publish in exactly 6 months and 6 days. And there will be much more on the book to come soon. Next up (in a week or two) is the cover reveal! Stay tuned and thank you for reading.
Wow! Talk about a stress inducing project. I cannot imagine the process of bringing forth a cookbook like this. You are deserving of a get away complete with Margaritas or the like. I will just love having this book in my hands. Congratulations!
Bravo! Looking forward to holding your book in my hands.