Food Photography: The Glorious Eggroll Part II
How many of you have watched the show “How It’s Made?” You may not want to admit that’s what you’ve been binge-watching on every Saturday, but it’s ok. You’re in a safe place here.
I can watch the show in a seemingly endless loop, and be endlessly fascinated by the processes involved in making everything from push brooms to RV’s. (Really dug the push rooms btw.) In either case, as a Dallas commercial photographer, I have the joy of creating every day, and I love the process of making things. So when I get to capture a new process I haven’t seen, it gets me pretty pumped.
I just wrote about one of my recent Dallas food photographer shoots for one of my clients that produces eggrolls. Check out that Dallas food photography blog here. We spent a day shooting Dallas commercial photography of various recipes that incorporate the eggrolls, and some beauty shots of the eggrolls themselves. This day was the second portion of shooting, and basically offers a behind-the-scenes look at where the eggrolls come from, and what it looks like to make an eggroll. On a side note, I’m going to try and keep count of how many times I say eggroll in this post as well, although you may have already started a tally.
So back to factory day. The Dallas industrial photographer in me truly enjoys capturing the machinery and people that make all manner of things, and we spent quite a bit of time this day out in the factory shooting the rolls right after they were folded and took a nice steamy bath in the fryer.
As you can imagine, it smelled pretty good in there, and I watched countless eggrolls in their crispy browned goodness roll past me on the line. This is the part where my inner foodie gets excited again, but I assure you I did not grab any eggrolls and put them in my pockets, camera case or Ziploc bags that I had handy for some reason. Wait, that sounded more like a confession of guilt than profession of innocence didn’t it?
No guys, I was all business here, and I shot the owner with her mom (one of the founders), and some of the other employees as they checked out various parts of the line.
What was probably my favorite part of the day though had to be the lunch. Hold on, let me explain. My assistant and I got to sit down with the owner along with her mom, dad and some of the employees for a legitimate Vietnamese meal. So not only did I get to create great Dallas industrial photography, but also got to experience a different culture and the love that went into the different homemade dishes that everyone brought. Plus they managed to pull in a few piping hot eggrolls straight off the line for us, so we were able to do a quality check on several. All in all, that was a very cool experience, and it’s great to be able to connect with my clients on such a personal level. What is probably even cooler about that lunch is the fact that they sit down and have lunch like this every day with their employees. This company is a family business, and it definitely felt like one big family there.
We even got photos to show the family aspect, so that clients and consumers can see how much they care about their people. After that, it was on to capturing headshots and Dallas corporate portraits before wrapping everything up. I had such a great time working with this company, and hope that you enjoy the photos!