Well, I’m quite overdue for our monthly remake… but better late than never.

The cookie shot seemed to be a bit intimidating (or perhaps uninteresting) to most of you, so let’s go a different route this month, with a simple green salad.

The thing that Penny asked us to focus the most on was on pushing our own limits and viewing things a little differently. Shoot from a different angle, try a different lighting style, or maybe simply change your lens. I almost always shoot with either my 100mm 2.8 or 90mm tilt-shift, so for this particular assignment, I threw on the 24 to 105, a lens that Penny said she shoots with almost exclusively. Immediately, looking at the photos, I knew this was a good thing for me to do. The images looked fresh to me… a nice break from shots that sometimes I feel that I have shot a hundred times.

Anyway… enough of the back-story. The assignment is quite simple. It’s a lightly dressed, green salad, in a white bowl on a white napkin on a dark surface. To give you a one more additional hint… I was shooting on a very high ISO for this because I was hand-holding and the light was not particularly abundant.

Do go ahead and make your photos diptychs that show this original photo along with your version of it on the right.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of March.

For this month’s photo remake, I want to pay tribute to Gourmet magazine’s fantastic cookie issues of the past. You know the ones. Cookies done up to be gorgeous graphic works of art. I have to admit I was really disappointed that Bon Appetit didn’t pick up that banner with the demise of Gourmet, so I thought perhaps you all might want to try your hand at it.

For this challenge, pick one of the Gourmet Magazine covers that features cookies, and remake it. Ideally, you’ll use a similar cookie, but if you need to substitute, that’s ok. You can use any of the covers I’ve included here, or take a peak back through your saved issues (or those at your local library) to pick one that you like. Just remember it has to be a Gourmet Magazine cookie cover.

When you do your remake, there’s no need to overlay the cover text, although you can if you’d like.

One more note for submitting your work, and I’d like to use this new format for all remakes… make your image a diptych with the original photo on the left and your version on the right. That will help in particular this month since we all may be doing different originals.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of December.

The Donna Hay website has some beautifully simple shots to represent each of their seasonal menus. I love the look of the shot for fall. A simple potato shot, with peel. It’s high contrast and messy, and yet soft and clean at the same time.

Let’s see what you can do with this simple shot.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of November.

[This shot is from the Donna Hay Website, photographer not listed]

Ok. So September kind of got away from me, photo remake wise. There are some beautiful canning jar shots in the pool that are still awaiting my comments. Despite the current lack of feedback, I hope you all learned a little about shooting transparent but reflective materials. Rather than letting October pass me by as well, I thought I’d jump right on it with the new challenge: Pie.

Pie is one of those things that seems simple, but turns out can be quite a styling and shooting nightmare. A slice standing on it’s own often requires a lot of reconstruction, or you end up with a gappy and sometimes flat mess. Not that that can’t be beautiful too. But that upstanding slice of pie that will soon be gracing magazine covers takes propping, stuffing and all sorts of fiddling.

Similarly, a whole pie, while easy to style and photograph, doesn’t give much of a hint as to what is going on inside. You have to dive in to really tempt the viewer. Take a slice out, and now you start to have something. Of course, then, you also have to start rebuilding the edges.

So, for this month’s remake, let’s see what you can do with a double-crusted fruit pie, shot top-down with a slice taken out. My pie was plum, which gave a lovely red hue, but you can use whatever fruit you’d like for your pie. But, do try to actually remake the photo including styling and lighting conditions! Just submitting any old pie photo you have won’t force you to study the image to figure out what is going on.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of October.

I know last month’s challenge was tough, particularly in the midst of a busy summer. But I definitely got a kick out of your results.

This month’s remake introduces it’s own difficulties, but there is a good chance many of you are already involved in the cooking aspect already. This month, our remake is about canning. Photos of veggies or fruits in vintage glass jars can be so beautiful… but managing the reflections so you can still see the contents of the jar takes some work.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of August.

I knew at some point for these remakes, I’d resort to this. Remaking the 1974 Weight Watcher’s recipe card photos. How can you not love something called Rosy Perfection Salad? or Frankfurter Spectacular? or Mackerelly?!? But of course, my all time favorite has got to be the Fluffy Mackerel Pudding. I mean, come on.. it’s fluffy, it’s pudding and it’s fish, mackerel no less (what is it with these cards and mackerel?)!
Anyway… yes, this month’s challenge is all about creating these masterpieces of the 70s. Pick whichever card you want, and remake it in the spirit of that card. You can go one of two ways with it this month: you can remake the photo so it looks like the original or you can remake the recipe in a more modern and, well, aesthetically pleasing way. Since you won’t have the original recipes, you will have to get a bit creative. I’m not exactly sure what is in Snappy Mackerel Casserole myself, but I bet I can have fun making it up.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of July.

Well, either people just don’t like pasta as much as Nutella, or last month’s challenge to remake Chris Chen’s table top shot was quite intimidating to many of you. That’s ok. It was a tricky challenge… I’m really impressed with the photos that were submitted. There were some lovely variations and some beautiful photos.

This month, we’ll go a bit more macro again, with one of my shots. This is a variation of a shot that I took for a client for a cookbook proposal. In some ways it may seem less intimidating because it’s a much tighter shot… you’ll have to work with ice cream which can be quite a trial of it’s own right.

Although she didn’t choose this particular variation, and it’s really far from a perfect shot, it was probably one of my favorite from the whole shoot and it would be a good fit for my stock library. I just loved playing around with the ice cream in the emptied out lemon peel, and letting it start to slowly drip down.

Don’t feel like you need to stick with the lemon peel for your remake, but there should be some combination of fruit & ice cream (and ideally, as in this shot, the fruit will communicate the flavor of the ice cream as well).

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of June.

One of my favorite magazines to flip through for the photography is Gourmet Traveller. The stylists and photographers have an amazing way of elevating even the simplest dishes to art. I loved this shot by Chris Chen and styled by Lynsey Fryers.

I love the dark, warm tones of the wood, with the soft light. I also love the slightly messy look, with the one plate just barely nudging its way into frame. To get a great shot, you’ll really need to pay attention to the composition.

For this photo remake, feel free to make the recipe… it sounds amazing. Or, just use any simple pasta in sauce.

If you are new to the monthly photo challenges, head over to the Flickr group for the rules and to introduce yourself.

This challenge will run through the end of May.

[the photo above is by Chris Chen, and styled by Lynsey Fryers]

Originally, I had planned to make this month’s challenge all about meat. Meat is a challenging subject. Uncooked, it’s colorful, but can be off-putting. Cooked, it is critical to bring out the texture to avoid a big brown or grey looking blob. And, then you get to slicing… just thinking about having to neatly slice a turkey breast makes me shudder a bit.
Then, I watched this fantastic talk by Mark Bittman about the problems of how we eat. Which largely boil down to too much meat. It’s bad for our health, it’s bad for the environment. It’s not that everyone needs to run out and become a vegetarian… it’s just that we need to think about the impact of our choices on ourselves and our planet. And, with that, I knew I wasn’t going to feel good about making this month’s challenge all about meat.

The good news is that in general, proteins have similar issues. A big block of tofu is hardly mouth-watering without some work. Fish can be just as challenging to make appealing.

So, this month’s challenge will be about complete proteins. Note the word complete there… you can do beans, but they need to have some grains with them! I’m also going to be a stickler about the protein being the subject. If you have a bowl of goopy curry that makes it impossible to tell a carrot from a chunk of lamb, it doesn’t count. The idea is to see what you can do with making the protein the star.

I’m also making another change to the group this month. I’m going to drop the per-image approval (yay!) but replace it by requiring folks to read the rules before they join. If you submit photos that are not relevant to the theme, you may be removed from the group. It’s not personal; it’s not even that the photos aren’t good… it’s just that to make this a useful group, folks need to follow the rules.

The usual rules and are up on the Flickr group… the things like be constructive, take the photos during the month if possible, 3 photos per person and the last day will be around January 31st give or take a few days.

I’m so pleased with last month’s challenge! There were some amazing shots and creativity on how to think about black plates… one of my favorites was this shot by the food photography/styling team of Sherif Tamim and Hoda El Sherif… they took a tile and turned it upside down and spray painted black for a fantastic corrugated texture.

This month, I’m taking a suggestion out of the discussion board… it seems like the perfect time of year to be thinking about what we can do to help others. Well, I suppose, everytime of the year is good for that… but around the winter holidays, I at least seem to get a thoughtful about how lucky I am and look at ways that I can help others and share some of what I have.

WIth that in mind, this months theme is Food for a Cause. You pick your own cause, but make sure that your photo reflects what the cause is about. Maybe it’s a photo of people volunteering in a soup kitchen or collecting for a food bank. Maybe it’s food of a particular color (aka livestrong yellow, pink for breast cancer research, etc.). Make it something that is important to you, and let us know in your description how you (and all of us) can help.

I think these shots will take some thought to really communicate the intent… no simple snapping away on this one folks! In fact, I don’t even have a shot yet to put along with this post! I’m looking forward to seeing what you all (as well as I) come up with!

The usual rules and are up on the Flickr group… the things like be constructive, take the photos during the month if possible, 3 photos per person and the last day will be around December 30th give or take a few days.

PS: Coming up this week, my 2008 Guide to Food Photography Gear!