Favorite Photos of 2015
You may have already noticed, but we here at Edible Capital District believe that visuals can be equally as compelling as the written word—from a delicious roasted beet dish with basil and goat cheese to getting a pig to pose for the camera to capturing students tilling the earth for planting with the cityscape in the background, to name a few of the memorable images our photographers captured. We’ve traveled the Capital Region to bring you a sampling of the bounty of local flavors that is available, and we are just getting started.
With a new year upon us, we’ve assembled a gallery of 10 of our favorite photos from 2015. Enjoy them here, and thank you for joining us on this new ride and for your warm welcome. We can’t wait to share lots more with you in 2016.
Brent Harrewyn is the lucky guy who photographs the recipes featured in ECD. “I receive the recipes, do some research and envision how the recipe will look. I gather surfaces and props that will complement the look and feel of the recipe. Then I produce (often with a little help from Mom), style and photograph the recipe. Here we have a lovely, yet simple, roasted beet dish with basil and goat cheese. Voilà!”
Sometimes it all lines up. Liz Lajeunesse explains the shot’s four elements: “A balanced composition, curiously slow animals, a superwoman and a glowing light from above. Once the Dairy Princess stood in the middle of this barn, all eyes and ears were staring into my lens. It was as though I had announced ‘Places, people, places.’”
“My father is a pastry chef, so I rarely make sweets on my own time,” says Brent Harrewyn. “But when I received this blueberry maple ice cream pie recipe, I got really excited since I’m partial to rustic homemade (cream-heavy) desserts and love maple!! I had to move fast for the shoot, working with the natural light. I produced the master shot of the pie and then proceeded to eat the slice that I cut out for that particular shot. Camera in hand I caught this deliciously candid piece of ice cream pie. It tasted as good as it looked!”
Stan Horaczek visited Rock Hill Farm and discovered that “Pigs apparently have short attention spans, so we fed them some apples to get them interested in their photo shoot. This guy made about two seconds of eye contact before realizing that the camera wasn’t a treat. I got off two shots before his snout went back into the dirt.”
Brent Harrewyn had a bit of time to kill as he waited for the roasted veggies to cool before folding them into doughy empanada pockets featured on the September cover. “This was a simple moment of earthy roasted roots just pulled out of the oven.”
For our inaugural issue, Jenn Bakos checked out Albany Distilling Company. “Owners John Curtin and Rick Sicari are required to wear rubber boots in certain situations, and I loved how they were all lined up together below the whiskey barrels. This is one of the first shots I took that day and it set the tone!”
“I was always good at games like Jenga and pick-up-sticks,” says Brent Harrweyn, “so I thought this idea was going to be easier to execute. Wrong! This studio-produced balancing act of 10 different cheeses and crackers took me four hours to get right!”
Liz Lajeunesse snagged this shot as Alejandro del Peral gathered all the requested props for his portrait. “As I stood at the intended table near the golden natural light, Alejandro walked through a scene that was perfectly composed and balanced with guess what? The house mascot just sitting there watching the two of us walk back and forth like a tennis match!”
After her shoot at Albany Distilling Company, Jenn Bakos headed over to the Washington Tavern, also in Albany, to meet up with Joe Donahue from WAMC Radio. “Joe loves this place and knows everyone working there. He invited Michael Byron, the owner of the tavern, to join him for a pint. The light was streaming in and it was a great candid moment with them laughing and chatting.”
Liz Lajeunesse often puts her subjects to work. “That day in Troy, we had two high school students ready to roll. As a wannabe gardener, I knew what needed to be done. The mentors and I looked at the decomposing veggies from the winter, and I thought, ‘Let’s dig these out and overturn the earth to prep for spring.’ This photo is one of my faves, composed of dramatic diagonals, perfect subjects and the greenhouse and cityscape all working together.”
