Bon Appetit!

FINALLY…after waiting months, Bon Appetit finally put my image to ink and I got a great tearsheet.

See the web page here.

I was assigned last year to shoot fishmonger Brooks Takenaka at United Fish Agency in Honolulu for the magazine’s Starter page. Creative direction was simple, strong light, medium to light background, and power. Immediately I thought Penn-ish and Avedon-ish and with Hugh G as my lighting tech and assistant, we nailed the shot.

I mentally created this shot days before I was scheduled to shoot. I searched my library of books and internet for ideas, lighting schemes, and inspiration and figured how to create my vision into reality. In other words, I went to this job with this idea in mind.

Yet all the planning in the world cannot create a shot as the one above. Never would I have thought or seen this shot days before. I love the graphic feeling of this shot and in many ways, it sort of what I see in dreams. No not fish tails and hands, but lines, dark, shadows, and graphic feelings. I love this shot. The veins in the arm mimic the lines in the fish as do the nails mimic the points of the tail and other points of the fish. Everything is like a mirror. See it? I see myself? Or at least those dreams.