Most food photography enthusiasts are familiar with the Modernist Cuisine series of books and Nathan Myhrvold. Nathan worked at Microsoft for 14 years earlier in his career, rising to the position of Chief Technology Officer. He is also fascinated with food and the process of cooking. This fascination lead to one of his "retirement" projects, the Modernist Cuisine series. The original Modernist Cuisine 5 book set dug into food and cooking in incredible detail, both in the technical aspects of what exactly is going on and also in showing those details in creative ways. The Modernist Cuisine series retails for $625, so it was a bit out of my price range for my home library, but I enjoyed checking it out from our local library on multiple occasions. There are several other books in the portfolio, including books concentrating on the techniques at home, with pizza, and bread.
"Food & Drink" is the latest from Nathan and his team
Disclosure: Nathan Myhrvold's book "Food and Drink" book was supplied as a sample for review consideration. As a photography enthusiast I was honored to be offered the opportunity the review the book. All opinions expressed are mine. Unusual for my blog, all the photos is this post are from the press kit and are credited to Nathan and his team.
Nathan's Newest: "Food and Drink"
The newest book, "Food and Drink", goes into depth in the unique aspects of photography employed by Nathan and his team. The techniques are outlined, but the resulting images are used to illustrate the concept and the fantastic results. I especially loved the introduction; Nathan and I share a fascination with photography from an early age. A fascination we both obviously still enjoy and pursue. Nathan notes: " The camera allows you to capture the light of this otherwise incredibly ephemeral thing and make it permanent."
The book is organized into several main chapters highlighting specialized techniques perfected (or just time-consuming repetitions to get it right) to capture something the human eye can't quite accomplish:
- The Speed of the Photography - dedicated to capturing the briefest of instants
- The Scale of the Photography - dedicated to capturing the extremely small and the extremely large
- A Change in Perspective - a view from the inside of the food and cooking process
- Playing with your Food - highlighting the fun aspects of food and drink
- Still Life - Homage to the great still-life paintings of food and drink as well as fresh takes
- Food Portraits - Creative looks at individual foods and drinks
Click on any photo below to see a full-size slideshow. This is just a hint of what you'll see in the beautifully printed book. All photos are credited to Nathan and his team.
Photographers will want to spend some time with the Photo index in the back of the book. There is a key to all the specialized techniques used and the index details the specific techniques used in each photo. The techniques include cutaways, composites, panoramic stitching, supermacro, SEM (scanning electron microscope!!), drone, focus stacking, you name it!
The quality of the photography and the printing are just outstanding. The best news is that the book, while not inexpensive, is very reasonably priced at $99. If you're interested, here's a link to purchase "Food & Drink". Note that I don't benefit in any way through your clicking the link, I'm just so impressed with this book!
Don't worry, there are LOTS of spectacular drink photos in the book as well!
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