food for the starving artist COVERAGE: NATHANIEL CRAWFORD
Hello, friends. This month is Local Wolves’ black and white edition! As a photographer whose main subject is predominantly food, being asked to shoot solely black and white photos of the recipe was a challenge. With food photography, I rely so heavily on color to tell my story. With a lack of color, I was forced to use more light and shadows to be my storytellers. I was challenged to pull together my resources to create a vibrant story without the use of color. The outcome? I found a way to tell a new story, a story beyond the plate… or, in this case, the iron skillet. For this month, I had very different intentions as to the recipe I was going to create. My initial idea was to make a blackberry pie with a beautiful lattice crust design on top that would wow the crowds and maybe even sway my date to call me back. Though, just like my hope for a call back, I would quickly be left in disappointment. The obvious reason I was doomed to fail from the start was the fact that I had never attempted at making a pie before. Sure I had made plenty of fruit galettes in the past, but a real-life made-by-your-grandma pie was something I had never mastered (or even attempted). My issues came in two parts: one was my lack of pie pan and two was using a recipe I had never tried before. These two combinations were just a recipe for disaster (quite literally). Quickly as my pastry dreams came crumbling down, again, figuratively
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and literally (thanks to the dry pie dough!), I panicked to think of a solution to my pie making dilemma. I had a bowl of blackberries just waiting to be put into a pie but with no pie crust to be found. Rapidly, my mind went to work, thinking of alternative solutions. In the midst of my panic, it hit me, make a crumble! I began throwing flour, sugar, and chilled cubes of butter into a bowl, before sprinkling it over top of the berries and tossing it in the oven. The outcome? A freaking awesome crumble! The blackberries were warm and bubbly, with a perfect balance of tart and sweet, while the crumble topping was golden brown with hints of nutty aromas. So what did I learn through all of this? I learned that without challenges, we can never grow. If I am not faced with adversity, how will I ever know what it takes to overcome it? If I am never challenged to expand my creativity, how will I ever discover new styles? Being presented with a crumbly pie dough, I have to be able to take that situation as a chance to critically and creatively find a solution. I think that is what I love so much about food photography, it’s a medium that I am able to challenge my creativity. With food photography, I am able to create something that is truly me, a reflection of one’s own self, even if it’s not exactly the way I intended it to be.