We had a lot of delicious recipes on day two of our glamping shoot at El Capitan Canyon. You can see day one HERE and our fun behind the scenes photos HERE.

We started with one of my favorites, grilled figs with burrata cheese served with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, I pretty much ate half of this plate once we got the shot.

What’s better than a huge Mexican breakfast outdoors? The menu consisted of a large iron skillet filled with fried eggs and topped with cheese and tomatillo salsa, refried beans, corn tortillas heated in foil packets, grilled pineapple and mango skewers, sliced avocados, tomato juice with lime in salt & chile rimmed jars and fresh Mexican hot chocolate!

These are grilled lamb chops with rosemary and one of my favorite new salads, Israeli couscous with grilled corn and arugula, and pears with honey. The Israeli couscous recipe was adapted from a cookbook called Good Food to Share by Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, who also happens to the daughter of our food stylist Karen Gillingham.

At El Capitan Canyon, you can order a BBQ kit for your evening meal, they deliver it right to your cabin, but you have to add your own seasonings if you want to make it extra special. This one is the Tri-tip, we added grilled onions and charmoula. The kit came with baked beans,vegetables, salad and garlic bread.

The last meal we made on day two of our trip, was the Grilled Salmon, it is also a kit you can order from the campsite, our awesome food stylists made little hobo packs and cooked the salmon, seasonings and veggies together. I love the colorful styling of this one.

The perfect way to end a day roughing it outdoors is with a sweet treat of grilled pound cake with tres leches sauce and a cuddle by the fire.

Happy Holidays!

We really got into the spirit of the Season with this shoot. We were especially excited to find Labrador retriever cookie cutters! Enjoy the recipe, these cookies are delicious! Prop styling by Alicia Buszczak, art direction by Steph Fowler & production by Chrissy Cassidy.

Last week we worked with the talented prop stylist Alicia Buszczak on a tea themed shoot. I love how everything turned out, especially the colors and textures. You can imagine the amazing aromas in the studio that day. It did get me thinking though, what is the history of tea? I’m not going to bore you with a long rant that you could find anywhere on the internet, but here are some interesting facts, along with some of our favorite images from that day.

Legend has it that the Chinese Emperor Shen Nong in 2737 B.C. was having his usual cup of hot water when some leaves of a tea plant fell into his cup. He fell in love with the flavor and tea was born. There is no proof that this story is true, but I like to believe it is!

For hundreds of years, people drank tea for its herbal medicinal benefits. It was also used as a religious offering in the time of the Western Zhou Dynasty.

During the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD), only royalty and the wealthy drank tea because the tea plants were so limited. More plants were discovered during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and so tea drinking became more common in lower classes.

Tea is often associated with Zen Buddhism in Japan because priests drank tea to stay awake and meditate.  They also developed the Japanese Tea Ceremony for sharing tea in a sacred and spiritual manner.

Tea arrived in England during the 17th century, King Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese Princess, she made Tea the drink of Royalty.

There are four main types of tea: white, green, oolong, and black. But depending on the influence of culture, these four types can turn into thousands of varieties. The most interesting of tea facts is that all tea comes from the same plant, Camellia Sinensis.

Check out this documentary All in This Tea , we just ordered the DVD, it’s supposed to be really good.

We blogged a few weeks ago about our camping trip to El Capitan Canyon,  if you missed it, you can see some of our fun behind the scenes photos HERE. These are a few images from our first day there, we hope you enjoy!

We started with an upside down apple cornbread, grilled bratwurst, grilled grapefruit halves with honey and fresh coffee.

Then we did another breakfast of Hot Granola in mason jars with blueberries & almonds, grilled pears, and a delicious citrus tea.

For our dinner recipes, we decided to shoot a couple of the El Capitan’s BBQ Kits. They deliver everything you need to make your dinner on the grill! This one is the Chicken with baked beans, salad, and garlic bread.

What would camping be without a night of Hot Dogs & Hamburgers, don’t you just love the El Capitan mug?

And finally…..S’mores!

Look for more delicious food photos from our camping days 2 & 3 soon!

We celebrated Halloween here at the studio on Saturday night along with the crew at MagicBullet Media. We put up the big screen and watched Halloween (so scary!), lots of treats, jello shots with gummy worms, yummy spinach artichoke dip, pizza and popcorn, and of course tons of candy! Lew also set up a backdrop for photos. Check out some of our fun costumes! We hope you have a great Halloween!

To see more photos click HERE.

We’ve been planning a Camping Cooking & Foods shoot for a few months now, and last week we finally made it happen! We found the perfect location at El Capitan Canyon near Santa Barbara. We wanted to thank all of the amazing people involved on this shoot, especially Kendra,the Sales & Marketing Manager at El Capitan, without her this shoot wouldn’t have happened at all. If you’re looking for a place to get away for the weekend, we highly recommend it there, it’s not camping, it’s Glamping!

This shoot was a lot of hard work, but we had fun as well! In the early mornings we would see herds of Deer walking by our Cabins and then grazing peacefully nearby. The food was delicious, from burgers and corn on the cobb, to eating the leftovers from the shoot, especially the figs and burrata cheese with balsamic vinegar. We all enjoyed throwing the stick for Abbie (the service dog) and watching her run through the creek, she had the most fun of all.

And a very special thanks to Erin & John for all of their hard work, and to Greg, Amy, and Louie, our gorgeous models!

Here are a few behind the scenes photos, look for our finished shots next week!

We’re always doing research and looking for the latest food trends. I was at a bakery the other day and saw mini pies on a stick, what a cute idea! I’ve also noticed cake pops everywhere, starbucks has them! I don’t think anything will ever truly take the place of cupcakes, they are just too cute and delicious. Another great food trend at the moment are Whoopie Pies. I didn’t realize Whoopie pies were so controversial. Were they invented in Maine, Pennsylvania, or was it the Amish? One thing is for sure, it was around the 1920’s, and people would yell “whoopie” when they saw the treat they were about to receive. Well that’s what I read somewhere.

We had our favorite baker Heather Wong of Scootabaker make us a variety of different flavors for us to photograph. Here’s what we came up with!

Halloween is coming up, how about making a batch of these for your party? These are traditional chocolate with a vanilla icing and halloween sprinkles.

Leave these under the tree for Santa! Vanilla cake with vanilla icing.

What would be more romantic than Red Velvet Whoopie’s for your Valentine?

These are green tea and raspberry flavored, these would make great Easter whoopie’s!

And for the chocolate lovers…

We’re huge fans of our local farmers markets. Our food stylists buy from them regularly on shoot days, the produce is so much more beautiful and organic looking than from the regular super market. For example, you’ll rarely see carrots with those gorgeous long leafy stems at the grocery store. Our favorite farmers market is here in Culver City on Tuesday evenings, they have some delicious food vendors there as well. If you’d like to know where your local farmers market is, click HERE. We’ve also just recently signed up for a CSA basket to be delivered every week, so if you don’t have time to make it to the farmers market, this is a great alternative. We love Farm Fresh to You because you can pick and choose which vegetables you prefer. They have some great recipes on their website as well. Not only do these locally grown vegetables look amazing in photos, they are also so much better for you, so go shopping!

There’s no better time like the heat of the summer to cool off with some refreshing lemonade. We have a little garden outside our studio, and the mint is growing like crazy. We also have a little lemon tree, and tons of strawberries. It’s so rewarding to make fruit or herb infused drinks with items from our garden. Here are two of our favorite lemonade recipes and of course what would a photography blog be without some pretty pictures? We hope you enjoy!

Mint Lemonade

Ingredients

1/2 lb strawberries trimmed and halved
1 1/2 cups fresh lemon juice
1 cup sugar
3 cups cold water

Purée strawberries with 2 tablespoons lemon juice in a blender until smooth, then force through a fine sieve into a bowl to remove seeds. Stir together strawberry purée, remaining lemon juice, 1 cup sugar, and water in a large pitcher until sugar is dissolved. Taste, then add more sugar if desired. Serve over ice.

We’re really excited to finally start blogging over here at Lew Robertson Photography. We’re a studio specializing in food and beverage photography. We have a lot of exciting things planned for this blog, some behind the scenes shooting, how to organize props, interviews with some amazing food and prop stylists, thoughts on stock photography, some beautiful imagery that hopefully inspires, and recipes! I should mention now, we’re a studio that LOVES dogs, we have 3 that live here full time, and many friends that stop in along the day. Look for some fun photos of our furry friends!

Now onto our first Recipe ever!

CANDIED FLOWERS

These are super simple and can be used to decorate any dessert!

Ingredients:
egg whites, beaten until frothy
coarse or super fine sugar
100 proof vodka

Use edible flowers and petals (preferably organic and not from a flower shop or garden center, as they are usually sprayed with pesticides.)

Add a few drops of vodka to the beaten egg whites (this will help the flowers dry more quickly), then paint each flower or petal individually with mixture. When coated, sprinkle sugar evenly over flowers, and let dry on wire rack.

When flowers are dry, they will be stiff to the touch.

For a more delicate look, use superfine sugar; or opt for a more textured look using coarse sugar.

Store dried petals in an airtight container and freeze for up to a year. They are wonderful to keep on hand to dress up a simple store bought cake.