Food Photography Tips for the Blogger: Shoot Fast, Eat the Model

Seed My fine art training and my interest of photography merge in this 13 x 11" book of more than 50 images named Seed. In this book I have attempted to do what Picasso said good art should strive to do: Show us something we have never seen before, or show us something we have seen many times in a way that it seems like we have never seen it before. Many of the images seem strangely human. Artists call the phenomenon of seeing humanity in the objects around us "equivalence", so if we see a bit of ourselves on these pages, then perhaps this book helps prove the aphorism "we are what we eat". Click here to view the contents of Seed. You can even order prints here. Click here to order the book Seed from Blurb publishing.

My photo-related websites Here are some links to some of my other photo related websites and projects: Projects.craiggoldwyn.com - This site contains a lot of my barbecue photography and foodpron. There are also photos of some of the Leader Dogs For the Blind I have raised, and some travel photographs. Sometimes I do commercial photography and some of that work is here too. CraigGoldwyn.com - Words and pictures, signed fine art prints. Spinography.com - Immersive images, because the world isn't flat. Stereographer.com - Stereo is also for the eyes.

My studio lighting setup These two images are typical of my standard studio (basement) shots with the Spiderlight 5 shown above and described at left. Click on the image to see an enlargement. Single light. This is with the light above and at about 10:00. Pretty much a straight shot. Nice color and specular hilights. Click on the picture to see it larger. Single light with bounce card. You can see from the shadow the light is to my left at about 8:00 and above. A white card at about 3:00 puts some light into the shadows. Click on the picture to see it larger.

My field lighting setup Here are two examples of how the Nikon SB-800 and the Nikon Creative Lighting System works for me. Click on each picture to see it enlarged. Main light at 11 o'clock. This is the cutting board behind the counter at House Park Bar-B-Que in Austin, TX. It was very dark there, so I took my SB-800 flash with LumiQuest Softbox and placed it on an upside down pot to the left and slightly behind and slightly above. The result looks like window light or a Dutch Renaissance painting of a groaning board. Click on the picture to see it larger. Fill light. The pitmaster at Mt. Zion barbecue in Texas would have looked terrible without fill from the front. His face would have been featureless because the background was bright and he was in a darker part of the room, his skin is dark, and his hat brim further shaded his face. The food would have been discolored by the fluorescent lights. So I took an SB-800 flash with a LumiQuest Softbox (see "In my camera bag" at left) and held it at shoulder height so it would get under his hat brim. I set the camera on manual aperture and shutter, metered the background before he walked into the picture, and locked in the shutter speed and aperture so the background would be properly exposed. My camera is usually pre-set on Commander flash mode and through the lens (TTL) metering, so I pointed the spot meter on his face and fired. The camera controls the duration of the flash to correctly expose at the shutter speed and aperture I selected so I don't blow out the foreground. I only had time for one shot and I nailed it. Even the seersucker stripes in his shirt are properly exposed. Click on the picture to see it larger.

360 degree Virtual Tours The Herbfarm Restaurant, below, is a superb restaurant near Seattle, on all the top 10 restaurants in the US. I shot their interior 20 times rotating the camera on a tripod after each shot to create this QuickTime virtual tour. Don't ask about the lighting. Clickz on the picture to see the full 360 panorama.

My photographic background Grandpa Dave gave me my first camera in 1965 at age 16. Within a year I was a yearbook photographer in high school. As an undergrad I took classes at the University of Florida from the brilliant artist Jerry N. Uelsmann, considered by PDN magazine as one of the 20 greatest photographers of the 20th Century. I still dream of coming close to him as a story teller with my more personal images. You can see for yourself how far I have to go by visiting CraigGoldwyn.com. I went on to get a Masters of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1977. There I took classes from Ken Josephson, Joyce Neimanas, and Harold Allen, but my greatest influence was Sonia Landy Sheridan. She sucked me into her orb and I became the first grad student in her nascent Art and Technology Department where a handful of us worked with computers, lasers, copy machines, and fax machines. Well, it turns out that my MFA was the world's first in this field of study, now standard at almost all art schools. In the past decade I have taken two weeklong workshops from my new hero and mentor, John Paul Caponigro, the renowned maestro of Photoshop artistry, and I remain active in his online group of accolytes, NextStep. His blog is a creative well, deep with ideas and inspiration. Kevin O'Connor is another important influence. He is a commercial photographer, and a consultant to many companies whom he teaches how to get quality color output. I've also done a bit of commercial photography. I've sold to TIME magazine, AP, shot sporting events, graduations, dog shows, and even a Quicktime Virtual Reality immersive 3D shoot for Playboy.com. That job was much easier than foodpron.

The Foodio Here's a rig I setup when I was teaching at Le Cordon Bleu, Chicago. It was pretty easy to build and it might just work for you. I called it a Foodio, for portable food studio. I designed it so students could shoot their dishes for their portfolios. It was on wheels so future chefs could roll the Foodio into the various kitchens in the school. Using it was a cinch and they took great pix even with point and shoot digital cameras. It was simply a four shelf stainless steel wire shelving unit on wheels, the kind found in most restaurant kitchens. I removed most of the wire from the middle two shelves and set thick plexiglass on them. I enclosed the top two shelves with thin plywood painted white making it like a softbox. I put two sockets in it so I could use either regular light bulbs, compact fluorescents, or slaves, and a small fan in the side. The front was hinged at the top so it could be opened, as it is above, to change bulbs. On the back I hung two rolls of paper, one black and one white so the students could have professional looking seemless backgrounds. If they didn't use the paper the plate would sit on the plexi making it float. If you start manufacturing Foodios, remember to send me a royalty check now and again.

How Jaden Hair does it Jaden Hair writes the Steamy Kitchen website. She is an accomplished cook with a popular cookbook and a column in the Tampa Tribune and she also does lovely food photography of her recipes with just the inexpensive Lowel EGO Tabletop Fluorescent Lights. The salad above is her shot. I have two EGOs and use them for fill lights, but she uses them for main lights and does one heckuva job. These little guys are especially well-suited for eBay shots. Click here for an interesting article on how she shoots. How to build el cheapo lights Jai and Bee, two food lovers who are skilled with a camera, have devised a way to make your own el cheapo lights like the Lowell Ego. Click here.

I am often asked, especially by food bloggers, about my food photography. I'm always flattered, especially since I know that I am a loooonnnnng way from a good food shooter. But I have done reasonably well given the constraints under which I operate. I cannot afford to prepare three plates of every recipe and slave over the shoot for an hour spritzing it with oil and fussing with lights. I do a recipe, shoot it, serve it to my wife, and we discuss it. So my motto is shoot fast and eat the model. And that's the way most other food writers work. So I've organized some tips on technique and info about my tools.

But first, let's begin by discussing the different types of food photography.

1) Foodpron (misspelled deliberately so this site will not be flagged by search engines as a pron site). People gobble up pictures of beautiful food. They love looking at food they cannot make at home, like looking at the bodies of models and athletes they cannot have at home. Alas, most foodpron is like real pron, low production values. Most are bad pictures of fabulous dishes on food blogs and message boards, often shot in a restaurant, often taken by a cheap point-and-shoot digital camera with head-on flash, usually annoying everyone in the dining room. Sadly foodpron also appears on many restaurant websites.

2) Food sculpture. These are the photos that appear in ads, on packaging, menus, and some cookbooks and magazines, often created from non-edible products to look super realistic. Photographers spend hours on a shot with the help of food stylists, prop stylists, art directors, and assistants. They use chemicals, paint, and non-edible products to get the effects they want.

3) Food verite. Thankfully these pix are becoming more popular, especially in cookbooks and magazines. They are carefully arranged, lit, and composed, but the food is real. They may spritz some water or oil here and there, but everything is real. We look, and we drool on our keyboards like voyeurs watching our beautiful neighbors in the hot tub. This is what I try to do on AmazingRibs.com.

Click on the picture to see it larger.

Although I do have formal training as a fine art photographer, I have had no training at food photography. The differences between these disciplines is like the difference between a barbecue chef and a Chinese chef. Both make great tasting meals, but they approach their art very differently and with very different tools.

I have come to realize that food photography is the craft's most difficult discipline and, although I am climbing the learning curve rapidly, I am still an intermediate.

At the outset, let me make it clear that the kind of pictures I take are a lot different from those taken by the real food photographers. I am shooting the food that I cook from my recipes and I want it to look like the food you will get if you follow my recipes. I use very simple lighting setups and minimal props. I shoot fast because my wife is waiting in the dining room for me to join her for dinner. So I don't spray the food with glycerin to make it glisten and I don't use Elmer's glue to simulate milk. I work with one or two lights, white cardboard, and aluminum foil.

Why do I call food photography the hardest photography? Because the line between appetizing and disgusting is very very fine. Especially when it comes to red meat. Think of those snapshots of rare beef, duck breasts, or lamb, where the meat is purple and slimy looking. Getting it to look mouthwatering is the whole trick.

The answer, as with anything photographic, begins with light. Remember the word photograph comes from Greek words meaning light (photo) and drawing (graph).

Alas, they never taught me studio lighting when I was getting my Master of Arts degree, so I had to teach myself. Books came in handy, and some of my faves are on this page. I promptly figured out that any light from the built-in flash is just plain awful. Horrible. The worst.

The biggest problems are light placement and color balance. Strobes are the industry standard because they pump out a lot of perfectly balanced light and they don't melt chocolate and ice cream. The problem with stobes is that it is really hard to visualize what the light will look like. Poof and the light is gone. Continuous light bulbs are so much easier to work with, but incandescents get too hot and are too yellow.

At first I chose not to invest in big studio strobes and used small portable strobes that I could also use in the field. Since I've used Nikon single lens reflex (SLR) cameras for 30 years, when Nikon introduced its SB-800 strobes, I went out an bought three immediately. These are amazing devices that can be fired wirelessly from their high end digital cameras. But they were still tricky to use in the studio to get exactly the right light (I laughingly call my basement my studio).

In 2008 Scott Kelby of Photoshopuser magazine turned his readers on to the Westcott Spiderlite 5 . It has changed my life. The reason: It uses special Compact Fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs that are beautifully balanced at 5500 kelvin (that's the color of the light) and exude an elegant soft light that wraps around the food and caresses it lovingly. No more guessing what the light will look like. It's WYSIWYG.

Nowadays my main camera is a Nikon D90 digital SLR. I often attach the camera to a computer with a USB cable and download immediately in order to view the image on a real monitor. That's a lot better than viewing the image on the camera back. When I've got what I want, I eat the model.

For shooting in my kitchen, on my grill deck, on location, or on road trips, I typically use my Nikon D90 with one Nikon SB-800 fitted with a Lumiquest Softbox. This handi-dandy folding gizmo does a great job of softening the light and I can hold it in my left hand and shoot with my right. Or I can set it on a table and walk away. Great light, quick and easy.

Tips for shooting food

Carry a camera everywhere. I don't lug my backpack fully loaded with me when I run errands or go out to dinner, so I carry a little Canon Elph smaller than a pack of cards with me everywhere.

Shoot a lot. Shoot several times from several angles and distances. That killer shot will surely have a fly on it when you look at it up close, so have backup shots.

Have a big storage chip on your shoulder.

Carry spare batteries.

Use natural light or available light whenever possible. When shooting outdoors, bright sun is usually too bright. It casts harsh shadows. The best light outdoors is open shade. Open the umbrella on the picnic table to get open shade.

Avoid using built-in flash whenever possible. It casts harsh shadows, makes ugly reflections, and flattens contour. If you are going to shoot a meal in a restaurant, go for lunch and get a window seat.

If you are shooting in a restaurant, don't be a jerk. Respect your dining companions and the people sitting around you. That means one burst of light is all you get. Make it count. Better still, skip the flash and use a mini tripod or use your waterglass, a wall, or a chairback as a tripod.

Use a tripod at home. Away from home, carry a pocket tripod so you don't have to use flash.

If you are not using a tripod, pull your elbows in to your side, breathe gently, exhale, press the shutter gently, and hold steady until the picture is shot.

To shoot without flash you usually need to use a higher ISO setting. But beware, the higher you go in ISO, the grainier or "noisier" the image. Noise is not a big problem when viewed on a computer screen, but it can show up in prints.

Look at the pix in food mags and try to figure out where the light is coming from and how the lighting was done. You'll notice that most of the best pix, the light comes from behind the food or over its shoulder, not overhead or in front.

If your camera has a flash shoe, use a flash that you can bounce off the ceiling or walls. This light is much softer and prettier.

Trust your camera's auto white balance. White balancing is like putting a filter on the lens because there are different colors of light. Incandescent bulbs are yellow or orange and give everything a warm hue. Fluorescents are green to blue. They make people look sickly and food look yucky. Most modern digital cameras can figure this out and compensate.

Get a photo editing program. Photoshop is the industry standard, but there are others that will allow you to crop, shift the color balance, sharpen foregrounds and blur backgrounds, and remove crumbs.

If your camera has it, shoot in RAW mode. It captures more info and allows you to adjust white balance and exposure later. Otherwise shoot the highest resolution you can. You can always make it smaller, but not larger.

Shoot fast before sauces get opaque and greens droop.

Move in tight to shoot, but not too tight. Leave room around the subject. In the computer, crop tight. Really tight. Make the food look huge.

Make it sparkle to convey the impression the food is moist. Move the lights or put up reflectors made of white cardboard, called bounce cards, to make little white reflections called specular highlights. Keep a spritzer bottle of water in the studio to add moisture if the food begins to dry out.

When the light is close to the subject it is actually softer than when it is far away, like the sun. Far away light casts harder shadows. I know this is counterintuitive, but it's true.

Open up the shadows. Try to illuminate dark shadows with a bounce card to throw some light into the shadows.

Paint your kitchen and dining room ceilings white so you can bounce flash off them.

Asymmetry looks better than symmetry. Don't just put everything in the center of the plate or the center of the image.

Get the object closest to you in focus. If the background blurs, that's usually OK.

Beware of details such as drips and splatters on the plate or lipstick on wine glasses.

Edit. Find the one best shot. Not three. Be ruthless. This goes for family shots. You don't have to upload everything you shot to Flickr. Nobody wants to see 10 shots of the birthday cake.

Most point and shoot cameras have a closeup or macro mode. It's usually a little tulip icon. You need it for shooting in close because other modes don't focus up close. Read your manual and find out how close you can get before switching to macro. It's usually 12-18".

Watch out for the background. Learn to look at everything in the viewfinder, not just the main subject. Get rid of distractions in the background and include things that tell the story. "Previsualize" the final image.

Step back a bit and zoom the lens in. That flattens the image and gives you greater depth of field.

Make backups of your work and keep a copy off premises in case of a fire or flood.

Keep shooting until you salivate!

In my camera bag

Nikon D90 DX 12.3 megapixel digital SLR camera with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S VR DX Nikkor Zoom Lens. This is not a top of the line digital SLR, and yes, I lust after one of Nikon's fancier units, but this baby does everything I need and it costs a lot less money at about $1300 with lens than the D3 ($4300 body only), D700 ($2300 body only), or D300 ($1700 body only). A key feature is that it can control my flash units wirelessly. Helluva camera.

SanDisk Extreme III 8 GB SD card. Digital cameras never come with anywhere near the storage you need, especially if you shoot in RAW mode which captures large high resolution images. So buy a big chip. Get fast read-write times so you can hold the shutter button down and capture action with the motordrive feature of your camera.

Nikon D80. The predecessor of the D90. I carry this as a backup camera and I usually leave my fisheye on it. This was my primary camera for more than a year and I did some good work with it. If you're on a budget, you can still find them out there and there are used ones on eBay. Just click the link above.

Nikon EN-EL3e Rechargeable Li-Ion Battery. I carry three spare batteries since both cameras use the same battery.

Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8G ED AF DX Fisheye Nikkor Lens. I adore this lens. It is perfect for panoramas or interiors.

Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras. I rarely use this lens, but it's good for sports and I like to shoot my friends' and neighbors' kids at play.

Marumi Achromat Macro 200 (+5). This is a really handy gizmo because some foods look best in closeup. An achromat is a two-element multi-coated lens about 1/2" thick. It screws on the end of a lens like a filter and enables you to move in really really close, just like a macro lens. Only it sells for under $80 while a macro lens is about 10 times that price. And it's pretty darn sharp. There are some cheap one element achromats. Avoid them.

Nikon SB-900 AF Speedlight Flash. The Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS) is amazing. With my D90 I can control all three of my flash units wirelessly (and more if I had them). Actually, I have SB-800s, not SB-900s. The SB-800 is being discontinued. The menus on the SB-800 are difficult to understand and master, and the manual is no help. I'm told the SB-900, which is more expensive, has easier menus. You should get a good book or DVD on the CLS if you buy one of these. I use Duracell rechargeable NiMH AA 2650 mAh batteries, and I carry a dozen fully charged. The higher the number the better. I use a Rayovac 1 hour speed charger.

LumiQuest ProMax SoftBox. These inexpensive plastic diffusers fold flat, fit in your back pocket, and take little space in your bag. The greatly soften light from your flash. When I am in the field I typically put one of these on a flash and hold it in my left hand and use it as fill or a main light source. You usually cannot tell I am using artificial light.

Giottos Mini Compact Tabletop Tripod/Monopod with Ballhead. I always have a mini tripod with me to hold the camera steady in low light (any shot slower than 160 second), if I want to fire the camera from a distance, or to hold a flash. I even will rest it against my chest or a wall or a handrail with the camera at my eye. This one telescopes from 4-16" and supports 11 pounds.

Kata KT DR-466 DPS Digital Rucksack with Laptop Compartment. This is the well padded comfy backpack I carry. It has plenty of loops and is stitched well. The zippers can be locked with a small padlock I bought.

In my studio

Westcott 4892 Spiderlite TD5 with High Wattage (900w) Fluorescent Light Kit, 24" x 32" Softbox, 10' Lightstand, Carrying Case, and Instructional DVD. Lovely soft light that wraps around the food. Make sure to get the 900w light kit. It is bright enough to allow you to stop down the lens and increase depth of field. Add a bounce card and you're all set.

Manfrotto 3090 Super Boom with Stand. I use this rather than the light stand that came with the Spiderlite. It lets me fine tune the location of the light and with the crank I can change the angle of the light.

Manfrotto 055XWNB Aluminum Wilderness Tripod with Leg Protectors and Spiked Feet. Tripods are the cure to blurry photos. Get a solid one.

Manfrotto 222 Joystick Head. I love being able to control the camera angle with one hand rather than two knobs. Fits better in the carrying case, too.

In my office

Both my computer and monitor are on articulated arms because I work standing up. I have a chair but I rarely use it.

Apple 15" MacBook Pro 2.2 GHz with 4 GB RAM and OS 10.5. Besides Apple's legendary user-friendly operating system, think about this: There are no, zero, zip viruses on the Mac OS. And they never, ever crash. Lots of RAM makes Photoshop happy.

23" Apple Cinema Display. I hook the laptop to this big monitor and I have two screens. If you buy a large monitor, shop carefully. Cheap monitors do not show color and detail well.

Apple Airport with Time Machine and 1 TB for backup on premise. This is my wireless router and it has a huge hard drive built in so my computer backs up every hour in the background. Sweet.

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Hard Drives. I have several of OWCs drives and none has failed yet. I use some for image storage, and a 2 TB unit for off-premise backup.

X-Rite Eye-One Display LT. Every now and then you need to adjust the color and contrast of your monitor and you cannot do it with the naked eye. This baby looks at the monitor and the software sends it flashing colors, and it makes appropriate adjustments.

Wacom Tablet. I have an antique Wacom Graphire, but the new models are very kewl. They let you touchup and edit images with a pen rather than a mouse.

Epson Stylus Printers. Epson is the leader in high quality photo printers with archival ink. I have an old 2200 for color photo prints, and a cheapo C88 for printing office documents. My buddies with the 3800 & 4880 (17" wide prints), 7880 & 7900 (24" wide), 9880 & 9900 (44" wide) love them. I have one complaint. Their utility software doesn't run properly if you have it connected to the Apple Airport, a wireless router.

Epson Perfection 2400 Photo Scanner. Not a high end unit, but it's good enough.

Software

Adobe Creative Suite CS4 Extended. I download the images with Adobe Photo Downloader into Adobe Bridge and convert them to Digital Negative (DNG) format. I do most color correction and editing in Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is the undisputed king of photo editing tools. I've been using it for more that a decade and I still haven't mastered it. I bought the entire Creative Suite package which also includes Dreamweaver & Contribute for website development; InDesign for page layout; Illustrator for drawing and graphics; Flash for animation; Acrobat for making pdfs; Photo Downloader for importing pix from the camera, naming, and conversion to dng; and Bridge for finding and sorting.

Nikon Camera Control Pro 2. Camera Control is a nifty tool. It allows me to hook my camera to a computer with a large monitor so I can see what I am shooting in detail right now. It can even control most of the camera's functions and fire it from my keyboard. Food photography is all about detail and selective focus and sometimes you just can't see the detail through the viewfinder. Viewing it on a big screen can save you from having to re-cook and re-shoot the next day because there's a fly on the meat.

Portfolio 8.5. I use this program to locate images, sort them, organize them, burn DVDs, and keep my life orderly.

Smugmug. This is the online service I use to display images to clients or family and friends. I think it kicks Flickr's butt (and all the other services). Loaded with features a pro needs. Click the link to see how I use it.

National Association of Photoshop Porfessionals (NAPP) membership. The Association's magazine, Photoshop User is worth the membership fee alone, but the websites tutorials, reviews, discounts, and more, is an unequaled resource. I work a lot with Photoshop and I've gotten pretty good at it but I feel as if I've only scratched the surface. I read the blog by Scott Kelby religiously. I've attended his seminars, and bought his tutorials and books. He's not only a wiz with this most complex program, but he's a heck of a shooter, and a foodie, too.

In my pocket

Canon PowerShot SD780. This is an inexpensive point and shoot camera smaller than a pack of cards. I need a camera with me at all times so I take it when I don't feel like schlepping my camera bag. With 12.1 megapixels and image stabilization, it gets pretty good stuff on a whim.

Some good references

The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby. Kelby is the acknowledged reigning Photoshop wizard, a great teacher, talented photographer, and prolfic author. His books are the best way to learn all the tricks of the pros, shortcuts, and the whys as well as the hows.

Digital Food Photography by Lou Manna. Simply the best book on the subject for the contemporary digital photographer. He has all kind of food styling tricks for commercial food photographers including how to use Elmer's glue instead of milk in cereal shots, how to make bacon curly and fresh looking, thicker pancake syrup, fake grill marks, etc. These are the kinds of tricks that I never use for actual recipe shots since I want them to look exactly as I cook them, but they are the kinds of things pros might use if they are shooting a cereal box or pancake ad. His website has a lot of good tips, too.

Food Styling for Photographers: A Guide to Creating Your Own Appetizing Art by Linda Bellingham and Jean Ann Bybee. Linda Bellingham is a food stylist and Jean Ann Bybee is a photographer. Food stylists are the magicians who make the food look beautiful. They have a magic bag of tricks, and this book describes many of them. There are lots of step by step tips and tricks well documented in photos. They start by showing us their toolbox and then they show us beautiful shots and how they created them. There is very little here for the cookbook author or blogger, because they use acryllic for ice cubes, artificial ice cream, and coloring to darken burgers. Still, it is fascinating stuff. The best book on styling I've seen.

Food Photography and Styling by John F. Carafoli Carafoli is a top stylist and in this book he shares his secrets.

Lighting: For Food and Drink Photography by Steve Bavister. This guy's into the latest trend of really tight shots. There are scores of images with excellent diagrams of the lighting setup.

Food Shots, A Guide to Professional Lighting Techniques by Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz. Part of the excellent Pro Lighting series, this book, sadly out of print, shows killer shots and detailed diagrams the lighting setup with comments from the photographer and stylist. If you can find it, snap it up.

Nikon AF Speedlight Flash System: Master the Creative Lighting System! (Magic Lantern Guides). If you want to get the most out of the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS), the manual isn't much help. But this book will make your head reel with the possibilities.

Uelsmann: Process and Perception (Text by by John Ames). Uelsmann is a man ahead of his time (that's one of his images above). Considered one of the 20 most influential photographers of the 20th Century, he is so much more than the conventional idea of a photographer. Yes, he is a great technician, making perfect negatives and prints with conventional film and silver paper since the 1960s. Yes he is a magician in the darkroom, creating techniques that allow him to combine images with as many as eight enlargers. But more importantly, he is a visionary who can create visions in our heads of stirring juxtapositions and scenes from our dreams. His work has been the subject of several books by critics and poets. His work is inspirational.

Photo Synthesis (Introduction by A.D. Coleman). Great images accompanied by the deep thoughts of the respected critic.

Uelsmann/Yosemite: Photographs. Definitely not Ansel Adams' Yosemite.

Jerry N. Uelsmann Photographs 1975-1979 Out of print but available used.

Approaching the Shadow. Magnificent retrospective.

This page was revised 10/21/2009

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