Here is a Flesischmann's Yeast ad campaign I shot last year for Olson that's running right now.
Quite a bit of production went into making these two pictures. It started with Art Buyer Mark Pakulski contacting my rep Adam Renfree with these concept sketches:
It was then up to me to figure out how to turn these concepts into real photos. Once we confirmed the cornucopia was made out of bread, I immediately thought that I would need a food stylist who could bake and prop.  I called Lucy Neilson and got her thoughts on the sketches. Lucy can bake, but she had never made a cornucopia out of bread. So, instead of having her spend a week figuring it out, we decided it would be more efficient to hire a professional baker to bake the bread and make the cornucopia. My food guru friend, Kevin Ward, recommend Jared Lester of Pearl Bakery and he rocked it. Not only did he make all of the breads perfectly, but he was already using Fleischmann's Yeast in his breads. The stars truly aligned on this shoot.
I sourced the table tops from World Market and The Rebuilding Center. Lucy brought in props from a variety of stores (West Elm, Williams Sonoma, Ikea) and from of her own personal inventory. We set up and shot everything in-studio at Sandbox PDX. Art Director Emily Hoyne really liked my natural light food work, so I chose that style for lighting. I used some fill cards here and there, but what you see is basically what came out of the camera. Very little retouching was done. I used Canon 5D Mark III with the Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro and shot f/5.6 at around a 1/15th of a second.
This photo shoot is a perfect example of the difference between being good at taking pictures and being a professional photographer. Photography was very small part of what went into this job. I spent about a week getting ready for this shoot (coordinating with the agency, booking studio, prepping my crew, etc). On set, I was responsible for making the shots happen. I directed my assistant, digital tech, food stylist to get the basic composition going. I went back and forth with Emily to get photographs that the client would sign off on. A shoot like this is kind of like a big performance, but you don't have the option to miss your lines. There was no redo and the clock was ticking. However, with a lot help, I made it happen and everyone was really happy with the end results.
To take someones else's advertising concept and turn it into reality is not an easy task, but it's what I love about my job.
Credits:
Emily Hoyne - Art Director / Olson
Caleb Hudson - Account Supervisor / Olson
Mark Pakulski - Art Buyer / Olson
Lucy Neilson - Food Stylist
Jared Lester - Baker