Gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free AND delicious

What word comes to mind when you hear ...

"Gluten-free"
"Dairy-free"
"Soy-free"

Was the word "delicious?" Didn't think so.

However, have a seat at Abby's Table restaurant and enter a new dietary realm. With inspiring flavors and inventive twists using 100% gluten, dairy, and soy free ingredients, there is a place for everyone: vegans, vegetarians and even confirmed carnivores.

We first started working with Abby Fammartino when shooting the Open Kitchen events with Michael Baker of Showcase Enterprises, and we were thrilled to continue collaborating with her. Photographer Michael Shay created the stills and worked with photographer/videographer Jeremy Dunham to shoot a video for Abby's Table Healthy Kitchen Membership recipe service, which offers 4 recipes a month in combination with how-to-instructional videos on eating heartily, healthily, and easily for people with or without food allergies.

Click the image above to watch the full video by Jeremy Dunham.

Although "delicious" was not the first word to come to mind when thinking of "gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free," after viewing these photos and video of Abby's tantalizing creations, you will never think or eat the same again.

Wrestling For a Good Cause

Multnomah County receives 15,000 reports of child abuse annually. Children’s Relief Nursery provides parents and children a connection to a healthier lifestyle. Every year they do a great fundraiser called the “Iron Chef” competition. As Polara’s main food photographer, my crew and I tried to help by photographing many of the talented chefs who donated their time to this great cause. We were also charged with creating an iconic image that spoke about competition and food to be used on their main website and postcard. Art Director and all around creative person, Michelle Bexelius brought this project to us as one of her pro bono clients.

The conundrum was to both tell the story of the competition and still be respectful to the cause. Along with the help of our great creative team food stylist, Lucy Radys, we came up with the image below – two chefs arm wrestling over a plate of food. (Thanks to Steve Cherry, one of Polara’s founding partners and photographer, for modeling.)


It was also exciting to collaborate with some top chefs from restaurants like Acadia, Screen Door and Davis Street Tavern. We began with Adam Higgs from Acadia, who is the other main competitor. For the photo geeks in the crowd, I used battery powered Speedotron packs to overpower the natural light and by manipulating the color balance was able to magically turn warm day into cool night. I was also trying to create a color palette to be used throughout all the photographs for this project, uniting visually all the chefs at all their different locations.


Next came Rick Dwidmayer at Screen Door who was as nice and relaxed a person you could find especially considering he was in the middle of preparing for another busy night.


Finally I was given the chance to photograph Chef Gavin at Davis St. Tavern. Since it was pouring down rain that day we had to shoot inside but with a careful choice of angle we were able to get another great image that fit well in the series.

Adam Higgs is one of the competitors in the Iron Chef while Rick and Gavin are competing for the People’s Choice Award. The People’s Choice Award is a “pre-qualifier” for competing for the Iron Chef for next year. They will be competing against the winner of the 2012 award. I want to thank everyone who donated their time from Polara, producer and client services manager Kasey Huber, food stylist Lucy Radys and Steve Cherry and, of course, Creative Director, Michele Bexelius who made this all possible.

Here are all images of the chefs as a triptych just like like on our the studio wall…

The Bounty of Oregon - Eggs

One of the fun things about being a food photographer is that I get to experiment a lot. The Bounty of Oregon project is one of my favorite experiments. It's a series of photographs and videos that I've made in collaboration Jeremy Dunham our in-house videographer/guru, conceived to feature local ingredients in their natural state and then prepared in some sort of appetizing dish.

We have done a few other videos in this series with Oregon produce as the hero. They included local morels, and apples that were grown, hand picked and styled by food stylist, Carol Ladd.

Now we are onto Eggs... Steve Cherry's Chickens' eggs to be exact. If you all don't know Steve, he is the President and another talented photographer at Polara Studio.
Carol Ladd was our food stylist to shoot this series of eggs. We chose to use both a Canon 7D and the now ubiquitous Canon 5D MKII for video. Jeremy worked some great camera moves utilizing Polara's new jib that let's the camera literally fly over the set in any kind of motion arc required. But, like most great food photography, it was designed not only to make the food look beautiful but to make the viewer want to eat it, which it certainly accomplished for us.

Prime Food Photography For Portland Prime

One of my favorite things to do is to go on location and shoot the best of what comes from a particular chef or restaurant. My crew and I had a great chance to to this for Portland Prime's new website.

This newly reopened venue serves the best in local wines, meats and has a beautiful charcuterie & fromage station at their bar where the chef comes out and freshly prepares each plate. It’s lovely. Their Happy Hour is one of the few in town that goes until 7 PM and features a delightful live piano bar that has a quintessentially Northwest feel.

Portland Prime tasked the Polara crew with capturing lifestyle mixed with environment, local wines and many of the tasty food varieties. We began with featuring the restaurant in a new and unique fashion. Gone were the empty rooms that have been a part of so much restaurant photography. Model releases in hand, our producer, Kasey Huber got many of Portland Prime patrons to let themselves be featured with Portland Prime's great food, service and comfortable surroundings.

On our second day at Portland Prime, Michael and Lucy (food stylist) developed a clean simple approach to many mouth-watering dishes, which made the great work of Executive Chef Russell Kool shine in a direct, honest and unadorned fashion. Chef Kool takes advantage of the best of the Pacific Northwest’s bountiful ingredients drawing on his strong relationships with local growers and purveyors.

The hospitality we encountered from Paul and Frank and their crew at Portland Prime Restaurant made us realize why so many are patrons are coming back time and time again.

There is nothing better than after a fun shoot to then enjoy the ambiance, drinks and food we had been eyeballing the entire time we were on set. We had so much fun enjoying the piano bar and many of us tried a lovely Pinot Noir on tap from the local winery, Sokol Blosser. It was fabulous!! Of coarse we had to try the delicious charcuterie & fromage sampler as well as sliders and the stuffed chicken crepes.

So if you get a chance please check out their new website http://www.portlandprime.net/ or better yet stop on in and try something off their enticing menu and you'll have almost as much fun as the whole Polara crew did.

An Apple a Day or More!

The Willamette Valley is painted with a green swath of farm and forested land, sitting between the Coast Range and the Cascades, making Oregon justifiably famous. In the last ten years, this cool and misty breadbasket of the Pacific Northwest has produced everything from Hazelnuts, Marionberries to award winning Pinot Noirs. Some people would argue the slow food movement got its start here in Oregon where farm to table is merely an hour or so drive away.

This inspired one of our Food Photographers, Michael Shay. He began working on a series of still photographs and short videos celebrating the “Bounty of Oregon” showcasing local ingredients in their raw glory and preparing a dish in a wonderful artistic yet scrumptious fashion for us to try and enjoy.

In cooperation with ace food stylist Carol Ladd, the wonderful fall gift of Oregon apples was featured. And they don't get any more local than this, having been plucked from Carol's tree.

The video was done as a collaborative effort between Michael Shay and one of Polara's other photographers, Jeremy Dunham. Jeremy had a keen eye for angles while helping with gaffing and editing the final piece you see. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4xYGfYt5Iw

Like so much of the work at Polara (especially food photography) “the sum of the parts is greater...” as the saying goes. And the sum of these parts was a delicious apple tart, as much a feast for the eyes as for the stomach. Bon Appetite!

The Bounty, of Oregon That Is

One of the nicest things about working in a collaborative environment like Polara Studio is how we often “feed” off each others creativity for ideas, images and inspiration.

Jeremy, one of our photographers, spent a weekend hunting for something that Oregon is rightfully famous for, mushrooms. He didn't have much luck as these wonderfully tasty little gems take part science and part arcane magic to find. Nevertheless he was determined to eat some mushrooms so went off to the local Farmers Market and bought two big bags of morels.

That afternoon at Polara, he showed the studio those two big bags, smelling wonderfully of green and earth that he planned to have for dinner. As a food photographer at Polara, I asked Jeremy if he could hold off on dinner while I did something with them. He took them up to the natural light studio with an old piece of metal and a bottle of olive oil, which we had around, and just started “following” the light. That's how this first photograph was made. For the photo geeks reading this I'm shooting with a Nikon D3X and a 85mm tilt/shift lens. This is a great combo that allows spontaneity at the highest image quality while giving control for both depth of field and focus plane. God did most of the lighting (and does a great job BTW) with a little assist from a white card and a shaving mirror.

In the meantime, Jeremy looked up a recipe on how he was going to prepare his prizes. One peek at that gave me an idea for a neat image pair, showing this yummy food raw and ready to eat. An old cast iron frying pan and a little of the same lighting and this second photograph was created(with a little help from Chef Jeremy).

The only sad part is that many of his mushrooms didn't make it home as the studio promptly ate them after shooting. The morels, sautéed with little onion and garlic, had a taste reminiscent of a nice steak, rich and beefy. It is always fun to see how, with a little creative collaboration and some cool food photography, the bounty of Oregon can make those little things in life both look and taste a bit better.


PS Check out our first food video "Messing Around With Morels"

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0ZblmW5l5Y

Pearfect - Pears and Vino Gelato

It hard to believe it's been almost 3 months since I posted. Between the holidays and a great studio party of almost 400 people the first part of this year has flown by. But as promised here's another recipe from the Ponzi Vineyards Cookbook and honestly one of my favorite photographs in the book. Hope you like the visual and try the recipe (and wine) as well. They both, well...Sweet!

PEARS POACHED in VINO GELATO
Serves 4

There are so many delights of fall you can almost forget harvest and Indian Summer portend the continual grey drizzle of Willamette Valley winter. Pears join the seasonal parade of prime fruits and nuts. The finest pears come from the high elevation orchards of Hood River that tower above the Columbia River and spread along the north slopes of Mt. Hood. The farmers host both Blossom and Harvest Festivals to show the orchards at their finest with stunning vistas of Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood as the backdrop. There are vineyards near the river and windsurfers in the river. Eighteen varieties of pears are produced, and if you visit during harvest (there are even historical train tours), you can taste them all.

For poached pears, however, we don’t get too exotic. Kelly Shattuck, pastry chef at The Dundee Bistro, agrees with sticking to the familiar Bosc for their elegant shape and fine texture. Pears evoke harvest, and this recipe has become a perennial Ponzi harvest season dessert.

INGREDIENTS
4 pears, just ripe, firm, nicely formed
1 1/2 C Vino Gelato (or other white dessert wine)
1 C water
2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 vanilla bean
1/2 C very mild, soft goat cheese
1/2 C chopped hazelnuts
White sugar to taste

TECHNIQUE
1. To prepare the pears, cut a little slice off the bottom so each will sit straight. Leave the stems on. Peel and core from the bottom using a small melon baller.
2. Combine the cheese with the nuts and fill the centers of the pears with the mixture.
3. Bring the Vino Gelato and water to a boil in a heavy, flat-bottomed saucepan. When boiling, add the lemon juice. Reduce the heat. Split the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the liquid. Add the pears upright in pan, and simmer just until tender, approximately 8–10 minutes.
4. Carefully remove the pears with a slotted spoon. Set aside to cool or put directly into individual serving dishes (here’s a chance to use those old flat champagne glasses). Refrigerate until ready to serve.
5. Reduce the liquid in the saucepan to make a sauce. Taste and add sugar if more sweetness if desired. Strain. Garnish the pears with sauce just before serving.

NOTE
A cinnamon stick can be added with the vanilla—or omit the vanilla—depending on your taste. You can omit the cheese filling and serve with ice cream also topped with the pear sauce. This is an excellent choice as a dessert for a large dinner party; it’s light, pretty, and can be made ahead of time…and is perfect with Vino Gelato.