ON THE COVER

A SNEAK PEEK

BEHIND the scenes

BY CHRIS BERSBACH

tephanie and I talked about a few different places that we could shoot—one of the local farmers’ markets or her commercial kitchen were early possibilities, but she suggested that we come out to her family’s farm in the hills above Highway 41, between Atascadero and Cayucos. I was instructed to pull off the highway at a specific landmark and call her so that she could lead me down the dirt road. Amazingly, we were still 20 minutes away when we wound our way through some pretty rugged terrain. They were definitely back there, far off the main road. Once we arrived, I found all kinds of interesting settings for our shoot. Her parents came out at one point to see what was going on. Her dad reminded me of my dad, as he had a lot of fun giving me a hard time. I will admit that all his good-natured ribbing did make it challenging because I am doing my best to engage my subject to get them to laugh or smile or whatever the case is. You can’t just say, “Okay, now smile.” You can see that immediately in the photograph, someone who is just following the directions but not reacting to something that actually makes them smile. I’ve got a few oneliners that usually seem to work for a genuine smile, but I was also taking some flack from the ”peanut gallery that day.

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We hopped in the rugged old jeep—I’m not sure what vintage it was—and headed up to the ridge where you can see the ocean. Unfortunately, it was sopped in with fog so there wasn’t really an opportunity to shoot up there, but we found a couple of spots near her parents’ house and shot a roll of film at each, plus some digital coverage in a variety of additional locations. As a “thank you” I also took some shots of Stephanie and her parents together—they were great, such nice people and so accommodating. Stephanie was super easy to work with and willing to try everything I asked of her, and the light stayed right for longer than I expected.

AUG/SEP 2014 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | 15