Buchanan Studios Blog

One of our regular clients, Jerry’s Seafood Restaurants, is launching a new fast casual concept of crab cake restaurants. They’ve brought in a tremendous executive chef and the first location should open in Annapolis (of course) this winter.

Those of us lucky enough to call the Chesapeake region our home understand the concept of the crab deck. For those poor souls outside of the area – think tiki bar minus the mai tai. Add in steamed blue crabs and that’s the idea.  We’ve shot Cantler’s 6 or 7 times over the years so it’s always fun to try and get a new perspective.

One of my clients is a furniture and lighting manufacturer. In addition to regular product shots we will get with them about once a quarter to shoot their display ads. We put this together over the course of a long 20 hour period. This is a live shot, ie it’s not a composite of the night scene and individual product shots dropped in. While shooting live gives up some control over the situation, it also allows us to see the interaction between the products (chandeliers) and the environment in a way that composites may not.

As usual with any dusk shot, we’ve got about 2 minutes where the light balance is right – which makes for a stressful setup. Luckily there were several bottles of wine available after we struck the set.

I’ve shot a lot of rockfish over the years, this one was one of the best looking straight out of the kitchen.

New images from the SpringHill Center Christmas showhouse.  Nursery by Gifted Notions and den by Julie Bass of Decorating Dens