Though the majority of my photography revolves around people, I also enjoy dabbling in other types of photography from time to time. Last fall I was hired to take photographs for the revised edition of Extending the Table, an international cookbook that comes from a line of Mennonite cookbooks such as the well-known More With Less and my current favorite Simply In Season. That project has now spawned THREE more cookbook projects that I look forward to working on this summer/fall (and I'll talk more about one of them below).

Being that it was my first official food photography shoot, I learned the importance of tiny details in positioning food, lighting and place settings. I also gained insight from the amazing food stylist Cherise Harper (check out her work here!) and graphic designer Julie Kauffman, who is a former coworker and current graphic designer at fair trade artisan retailer Ten Thousand Villages. Probably the most rewarding part of the process was getting to taste all the recipes! Here are two of my favorite images from the Extending the Table series of images (we did 30 recipes!):

And now on to my next food project in the making, the famed and timeless Mennonite Community Cookbook, referred to as "the mother of all Mennonite Cookbooks". My mother-in-law Nancy Hess gifted me her version (pictured below) just last fall and little did I know that I would be doing the photography for the new edition this summer! It is an honor to be a part of the remaking of a cookbook with such a rich heritage!

This cookbook has been around since the 1950's and has been reprinted several times. This new edition will include 12 recipe photographs. We want to keep the look and feel of the images as close to the original as possible, which means the dishes and place settings will need to have an antiquated, grandma's table, vintage look. This leads to one of my favorite "hobbies" as I will call it: Thrift Shopping!  Though I plan to call upon my Mennonite friends and their grandma's for borrowing many of the items, I've decided to pick up a few of my own as well. Check out the images below from my trip to Salvation Army last night:

I think my favorite items are the mustard color stackable mugs and the little glass egg cups.  If you are familiar with the Mennonite Community Cookbook and would like to give input on the recipes we photograph, you can take a survey found here.