Imaging Essence

A Sunny Afternoon in Barcelona…introducing Calcot

admin — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:44:01 +0000

While enjoying a relaxing weekend in Barcelona with my husband recently we went to visit the Sagrada Familia on Saturday afternoon, enjoying some welcome sunshine and fresh air. The queues were round the entire square so we decided not to wait, but to explore what the music and crowds were over the road. We walked into what appeared to be an “anti-cuts” demonstration, but far from being an angry mob, the groups of people dancing and the amount of trestle tables being set up indicated that this was to be a civilised and organised affair. We wandered around, the welcoming atmosphere and people smiling was infectious, so we bought a quick cerveza each and sat down to enjoy some people watching. The smell and smoke of a fire wafted over, something was being cooked and the smell was wonderful so we walked off to the end of the space to investigate more, and we were both confused. A huge barbeque style fire, with what looked like thousands of leeks on it was the centerpiece, and there were a lot of people working hard in the heat. I wondered if this was the base to then put meat on to cook in order to keep it away from the flames, as the smell was wonderful, like cooking onions with a sweet taste mixed in to it. The vegetables were all on wires so could be carried onto and off the fire in bulk, and further looking showed once they were cooked they were being divided into batches of 12 and wrapped in paper, obviously to eat later. All the locals around seemed not to be paying attention, while all the tourists were taking many pictures and asking questions as to what vegetables these were. They are a speciality of the Catalan region called Calcot. Like a mild onion and looking like a leek, it is a foodstuff that is prepared and eaten in bulk at festivals and parties in March, cooked on open fires and eaten with bread and sauces. The volumes that were being prepared showed that this was going to be a long, hot and strenuous day for those working on the production side, and a treat of a meal for all those attending the demonstration. Another example of how many cultures and traditions around food survive today, despite the restaurants offering a sanitised and cleaner version, it seemed half of Barcelona was converging on this small square for their afternoon meal cooked in the traditional way, and eaten in a party atmosphere. [nggallery id=10]

Dartmouth Crab Festival – August 5th 2012

admin — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:41:39 +0000

A fabulous day in Dartmouth on August 5th 2012, dodging the showers to celebrate lots of fabulous local crab (not to forget fabulous Manna from Devon brownies!) Mitch Tonks and Nathan Outlaw provided "cracking" entertainment (sorry couldn't resist) with a crab picking contest. The Dartmouth Street party was part of Visit South Devons week long South Devon crab festival. Enjoy the highlights of the day, click on the link to start the gallery.

Thame Food Festival 2012 Kick Off at Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons

admin — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:33:49 +0000

I've been delighted to be part of the organising team for Thame Food Festival for the last two years, and this year we've just kicked off 2012 activity in earnest with an amazing coffee morning and garden tour courtesy of the fabulous team at Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons. Hot off the press are some of the pictures from the morning, which, despite the weather, gave us a real flavour of the amazing work of the whole gardening team all year round! You can see the pictures here

Deconstructed Egg?

admin — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:54:34 +0000

Being a keen viewer of "foodie" tv such as Great British Menu and Masterchef, "deconstructed" food seems to be very fashionable at the moment. During a shoot this week for a local food business in Aylesbury I snapped this whilst the food was being made, my take on a deconstructed egg!

Artistic Integrity – to do or not to do?

admin — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:07:32 +0000

I've actually agonised quite a lot as to whether I should write this blog entry because the last thing I want to do is criticise how people make their living (particularly photographers and chefs!). Sponsorship is an accepted reality for anyone in the media spotlight, not just for celebrity chefs. However, some recently launched ad campaigns featuring Marco Pierre White has really got me thinking about how pictures can be taken out of context years later. In a previous lifetime, I was extremely fortunate enough to meet, and spend a half day, in the studio of photographer Bob Carlos Clarke. Bob was looking for some sponsorship support for an upcoming exhibition. That single day stands out as one of the most amazing of my working life, Bob's absolute, and I mean absolute, passion to the artistic integrity of what he did was mesmerising. And I can genuinely say, with no intentional pretentiousness, that that meeting, and his work, had a profound effect on what I now do now. During the course of our meeting, the conversation turned to how a household name photographer had "sold out'' by endorsing, shall we say less reputable photo technology, (for those of you old enough to remember, there was a big TV campaign at the time) and Bob was so visibly distressed by this concept, that the industry (which was then in it's very early stages of digital) could sell out in such way. I remember being quite taken aback at the voracity of his response. Bob's book "White Heat" about Marco Pierre White is one I frequently cite as being the starting point of my inspiration. Having done a number of photo shoots in working kitchens myself, the gritty intensity, heat, rush, buzz, adrenalin is so wonderfully captured by him, and to my mind spills out of the book. And it's tandemed by visually capturing the ferocity and intensity of the young Marco Pierre White. I have never personally met Marco, but judging by Bob's pictures, I'm pretty sure that they were kindred spirits. As a commercial photographer (and a marketeer), I genuinely believe every commissioned picture should have a purpose, as the opening page of my website says "a picture speaks a thousand words". For me, I explore artistic interpretation in my personal projects, but when you are shooting for a client the commercial brief always needs to be met. Today I received this sponsored marketing message which tipped me over the edge in favour of writing this blog entry. I'm pretty sure that these pictures weren't used without licence for such a high profile marketing campaign, but I can't help wondering what Bob Carlos Clarke would have thought. For me, seeing one of his most iconic pictures with a commercial logo on it, made me feel very sad.

The Welsh Cake – Childhood memories from an unpronounceable village

admin — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 17:21:07 +0000

Troedyrhiw - go on, for all you non Welshie's that is your pronunciation challenge of the day! Its significance? It's the name of the village in a South Wales valley where my grandparents lived, and where I spent many a weekend, school holiday and new year. Today I suddenly had a desire to make some welsh cakes, the first batch in my twenty years of living the wrong side of the Severn Bridge, and it really struck me how many memories can be evoked from a humble food. My nan used to make the BEST welsh cakes in the world and it really was standing next to her in her kitchen that ignited my love for baking. My nan and I had the same sweet tooth so sweets, cakes and bakes were a common love. Today in my kitchen, I was thrown back into my 7 year old self, desperately trying to rub butter into flour to make it look like breadcrumbs; it always seemed to take AGES and my little hands used to ache from the amount of effort I put into it. I can remember splitting the mixture in half so we could add fruit to one lot and leave the other plain so you could always choose which welsh cake you wanted, with "bits" or "without bits". Nan used to roll out the mixture and then I'd jump in with a glass, ready to cut out the mixture into rounds ready for baking. Her bakestone for cooking the welsh cakes was always a source of envy, a great big heavy cast iron thing which used to be her mums, and it took ages to heat up on her electric cooker. It was kept in the cupboard under the stairs which was screened by a curtain of plastic strips (you could plait the strips when no-one was looking!) and even though I could just about reach the bakestone, it was always too heavy for me to lift. Even the cooking utensils are vivid in my mind, she used to turn the welsh cakes over with an old palette knive, it had a turquoise handle which was cracked and broken at the top. My job was to cover the welsh cakes with caster sugar once they were taken off the stone and still warm, and I used her sugar shaker; I think it was a victorian one and it was made of pink glass and had a silver top with holes big enough for the sugar to come out. I took my job VERY seriously. You can't rush baking welsh cakes, if the bakestone is too hot, they burn and the mixture doesn't cook through, too cool and they lose all their moisture. You are also limited in the number you can cook at any one time depending on the size of the stone. I surprised myself today by re-igniting a familiar sense of impatience and annoyance at waiting for them cook! As I got older my nan and I struck up a deal when I'd go and stay. It didn't matter how hard I tried I never managed to make welsh cakes that tasted anywhere near as good as hers, but I had perfected the art of making Victoria Sponges which she could never master. So she would send me home with batches of welsh cakes (much to my dad's delight) and I would make sponges which she would put in the freezer, and then defrost and claim them as her own whenever she had visitors. Welsh cakes always make me think of my dad as well. When my parents used to call me when I was staying with my grandparents, he'd ask what I'd been up to, and I could hear the grin on his face down the phone when he knew that I'd be coming home with welsh cakes in a tin. In latter years he would go down "the front" in Penarth (seaside and pier) every morning and would order, without fail, a cup of coffee and a welsh cake. Sadly neither my nan and my dad are around now, but it's amazing how such a simple cake can bring back so many vivid memories and make me smile. Oh, and to my nan, if she's watching from somewhere beyond; my welsh cakes are still nowhere near as good as yours!

Imaging Essence in the Bucks Herald 16th Feb 2011

admin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:03:05 +0000

Great article about us in this weeks Bucks Herald. Click here to read in full! Article by Sally Dorling at Marketing Foods, photograph courtesy of Jay McLaughlin

A Very Exquisite Birthday Cake

admin — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 19:02:24 +0000

It is always a great treat when something surpasses your already very high expectations! The Vanilla Bakery is a company based in Suffolk run by a friend of mine Gemma and her husband Mike. Gemma and I actually went to junior school together and after a 25 year gap were reunited via Facebook a few years ago. I helped The Vanilla Bakery set up their website when we were both starting out and having built the website, uploading lots of pictures of celebration cakes, and also my taking pictures of Gemma in "cup cake" making action, I knew that Gemma was clearly very good at what she did. But it wasn't until I commissioned Gemma to make a 40th Birthday Cake for a close friend of mine did I really appreciate the difference of a cake of being good and just downright outstanding - and it's all about the attention to detail! The way that Gemma works is that every celebration cake is personal to the recipient, so after a long telephone conversation, I emailed Gem photos of Sue (the lady who's birthday it was) and also a list of things that Sue liked. The email went something like this: "Sue loves everything and anything pink, fluffy and sparkly, Abba (she's a dancing queen!), she has a black fluffy cat called Bertie, her favorite foods are chocolate and cheese, she loves champagne. Oh yeah, and she is ridiculously organised and has a spreadsheet for absolutely everything!" Sue's 40th party was in a large rented house in Herefordshire, and she knew nothing about the cake. I always intended to pick up the cake en route but my sense of geography was never a strong point! To cut a long story short we ended up driving from Aylesbury via Suffolk to Herefordshire to pick up the cake (I think we went through 8 different counties!). My husband Simon raised more than an eyebrow when finding out the travel plans, and though he didn't actually say it I could tell he was wondering why on earth I hadn't commissioned someone closer to home! His face though when he saw the cake was a picture, and he was so genuinely impressed that even my ill-conceived comment of "you realise we're driving the equivalent number of miles today as going to Scotland" was overlooked! But the best reaction was that of the birthday girl herself, who was absolutely thrilled! Gemma had even managed to put the cake version of Sue in the SAME glittery Abba outfit that she'd worn the night before at the fancy dress party. So whilst Gemma really does fall into the category of friend and client, I am writing this as a very very happy customer and a very very happy birthday girl! So in my mantra of "a picture speaks a thousand words" I'll let you judge the cake for yourself...

Some recent work…

admin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:29:19 +0000

It's been crazy busy at Imaging Essence since the beginning of the year and I have so many blog entries stored up in my head, so expect a few to appear this month! We've been working both in our studio and on location and I thought I'd share some of the highlights from a recent shoot featuring lots of recipes using healthy yoghurt options. Enjoy! [nggallery id=9]

Thame Food Festival‚ September 25th 2010

admin — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 21:08:15 +0000

I was delighted to have been invited to be the official photographer for the third annual Thame Food Festival last Saturday, and spent the most fabulous day snapping lots of local food producers and suppliers, entertainment, cooking demonstrations and interesting food talks. Considering the weather had been pretty grim leading up to the Saturday, the day, whilst a chilly start, proved to be glorious. So much hard work by Alison Isherwood from Thame Council , Sally Dorling from Marketing Foods, Sally from local foodie haven What's Cooking? and Sonja Francis from thamenews.net really paid off. A huge visitor turn out resulted in the overall feedback from all the stall holders about how busy and successful the day had been for all. Thame in Oxfordshire is such a lovely market town and is surrounded by all sorts of independent food suppliers and restaurants, all getting involved in the festival. Particular highlights of the day were not only the talks in the Stable at the James Figg public house but also the hands on cooking activities for the kids, including Whoopie Pie making, cake decorating at the Aga Shop, pasta making in the Town Hall and "Tortoise Dough" making at the Cottage Bakery. A few highlights of the day and the full pictures can be seen at www.imagingessence.co.uk/thame_food_festival Just a little update, a video from scissorspaperstone.tv about the Thame Food Festival with the highlights, look out about 1 minute in for a comment from yours truly!!