Grilled Steak on Stakes
Addendum – October 27, 2009 – Calumet Photo selected this image as a Photo of the Week. Nice start.
I built a patio over the summer with Vicki. With the help of Tim and a neighborhood kid, we moved the six thousand pounds of sand, gravel and pavers by hand that had been dropped on the front sidewalk by the delivery guys, to the garden about 50 feet away. Over the next 4 weeks the two of us tilled, excavated, leveled, filled the hole with gravel and sand and laid stones until we had a lovely, small patio in the middle of our (Vicki’s really) garden. No war stories. No injuries. A perfect execution by a couple of DIYers.
What’s this got to do with the photo?
It’s the nails, or stakes as they call ‘em, that were used to hold the stones in place. They’re huge. They’re more than twelve inches long and a quarter inch thick with a rough, galvanized finish on them and every time I drove a stake into the ground, they grew more beautiful and interesting. When we completed the project, I went out and purchased a dozen of the stakes and they sat in a red bucket on the floor of the hallway for weeks until the idea came: steaks on stakes. I yanked apart the palettes the pavers came on and let the large, four inch, wood blocks sit in the weather for a month. Now I had the stakes, the wood for a fire and an idea. The idea progressed along, during the move and while making phone calls and sending mailers, until it came to fruition last Thursday, when it all ended up in front of the camera. It came together quickly; it’s what happens when my neurotransmitters slam those molecules into their receptor sites and then I spend a few nights sleeping on the idea. My axons and dendrites get all excited, and then with a steak from Pedro the butcher (with the patience of a saint) at Los Paisanos around the corner, it all began.
Wood. Stakes. Steak. Fire. Boy, that was fun.
I have so much of my new work on white, it’s time to start a black series. This is number one.
this is gorgous I love your work, and your eye!
I love the post, it goes to show, sometimes a photograph ends with the camera, but begins in the mind!
Hello D.A, Really like the steaks..I will take mine medium well…Is that black plexi your shooting off the bottom to get the reflection..? I need to start acting on my thought processes. I’m just getting my website up and running. I shoot mainly nature and scenic’s, but I’m all over the board. How did you get to the point of focus on veggies and the market?
Simply choose your passion and stay with it. It will be exciting for a while, then you’ll get bored (keep shooting anyway). This is when you’ll start to realize and discover the unusual in the everyday. Eventually the real personality of your passion will start to come through and your images will come to life and your vision will evolve.
Your images are amazing! Just curious, how many lights and what type of modifier did you use on this photo?
Thanks. Shooting it is pretty simple. One light. The backlight is a Profoto Acute 2 lamphead in a small Plume softbox with the “frontlight” being a couple of side fills using pebbled silver cards. And, of course, the exposure for the fire. The tricky part? Assembling the 8 exposures of wood, steak, fire and plexi in Photoshop.
Don’t ask me how I found this image but it’s too funny because I also shop at los paisanos. I am new to the neighborhood (dean and nevins) and am loving it. I recently graduated RIT for advertising photography. I checked out your site and am a fan of your work. Do you hire assistants regularly?