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Spotlight On: Jean Cazals

The Art of Food Photography

Foodie Craze

In the last decade, food photography has accrued a cult-like following, thanks in part to digital platforms such as Instagram. The meals once recounted on personal blogs (think Nora Ephron’s film, Julia and Julie) have now been replaced with imagery of one’s breakfast, frothy cappuccinos in southern Italy, or the perfect slice of pizza in some dilapidated Brooklyn borough. You get the picture.

No stranger to this is Jean Cazals, a French food and lifestyle photographer based in London. For the past 35 years, Cazals has photographed food after 10 years of shooting portraiture, witnessing all its trends and guises, or what he refers to as the “fashion of food.”

“I originally wanted to be a heart surgeon,” said Cazals from his Notting Hill home base of London, “But I did not have the grades, and my parents urged me to explore something else, which then led me to photography.”

The visceral element of Cazals’ ambitions to be a doctor permeates much of his work. His unconventional approach to photographing food sets his work apart from most product-driven food photography, rampant in the gastro genre.

Business of Food Photography

Having worked primarily photographing food for 35 years, Cazals is familiar with the different waves of fashion and trends that impact the business, whether it’s one-shot or a series of shoots.

“Often, it depends on what the client wants,” said Cazals. “For instance, the textured background or shooting down on food is something which is very much in fashion at the moment.”

The fashion element of food can, often, be problematic in Cazals’ opinion.

“All of a sudden, people take one thing, and then everybody wants to be like that. So you get advertising companies and companies say,’ Oh, we want it like that,’ which to me is saying, ‘Oh, you want it to be like everybody else,'” said Cazals, “And then in a year, there will be something different, and so you have to do that.”

Making Your Mark

And while trends may come and go, Cazals believes he has managed to impose his style in his 35 years working as a professional food photographer. For him, it’s essential to capture what he refers to as a “stunning” element of food. Think French Impressionists.

“The stunning is important for me. Food photography nowadays can be someone plucking something on the table, taking the shot, and that’s it,” said Cazals. “And yes, while a picture of food must show the reality of things, I do think as an artist, you can create this altered reality within food photography – just in a more curated way.”

Drawn to the graphic elements of food, Cazals is interested in how food photography can tell a story – rather than show an appetizing product. For him, this is what appeals to him about the genre.

“You can’t get into depths within the subject with just one image,” he said. “And with food, you can go through a theme, like a series of few pictures of tomatoes or play with the surroundings. So it varies a lot. It really depends. The main thing for you as the artist is to insert your own style and vision.”

Make Room at the Table

There’s no denying that food photography has drastically changed since Cazals first embarked on his career. As a trend, Cazals believes food photography has become more accessible due rise of technology. Today, there’s also more room at the table, and by that, more women shooting food which makes food photography “richer because you have two visions instead of one.”

“I think at the moment the young food photographers generation is more interesting in capturing food on the go than curating food photography,” he said.

Balancing Act

The consummate stylist, Cazals, loves to use food also as a prop in his work. Styling is a key factor in my photography. The way the space, element, light work in harmony.

“While normally food should be there to show something like a recipe in a book, or for a magazine, I also like to push the boundaries and play around with the subject whether it’s an egg with a knife underpinning it.”

For Cazals, this playful approach to food photography epitomizes his vision of the disicipline.

“I want people to look at an image that is not just a snapshot of a food, but something that goes a bit further that surprises the viewer whenever possible.”

On juggling the artistic and commercial demands of being a photographer, Cazals says that the desire to take photographs means becoming a professional, which means taking on commercial work.

“Because we’re artists that will always serve as the foundation for what we do – whether it’s hobby and profession, or both,” said Cazals. “We do photography because we like photography, and we like to take pictures, and then it becomes a professional, which means we earn money.”

However, Cazals negates the notion that by becoming a professional or doing commercial work will compromise one’s artistic integrity. Yes, money is involved, but it allows him to do what he loves every day and earn a living from it.

“I was and am fortunate to be able to do something I enjoy every day, which started out initially as a hobby that became my livelihood,” said Cazals, who also acknowledges how crowded and competitive today’s photography landscape is, in part due to the rise of digital technologies.

”Again, it’s a privilege to do what I love and make my living from it.”

Spotlight On: Bryan Minear

For this week’s Spotlight On feature, we spoke to veteran brand ambassador Bryan Minear about how his work as a fine art and landscape photographer has evolved, the perks of fatherhood, and his views on the marriage between technology and art.

He’s a dad and husband first – two fundamental qualities to understanding how Minear thinks about the state of play and the media landscape today. It also seems to act as a sort of compass for where Minear’s energy goes in the creative world; these days, perhaps best encapsulated within 280 characters on that other social platform photographers have been rediscovering in the wake of Instagram’s pivot to video. More on that to come.

But it’s there–maybe rebelliously–where the mid-thirties Minear starts to sound in a way that betrays his age but sets him apart from his peers. He shares his work, sure, but also his mind. And on Twitter, people tend to read more and give more gravitas to words than a caption on Instagram.

Fittingly, Minear has recently used Twitter as the account to blast IG, attracting notice from creative platforms, such as DPReview and Reddit. Their readers have applauded his disdainful words for Instagram’s about-face for photographers, while his contemporaries have expressed empathy for his views.

“In my eyes, Instagram stopped caring about artists and independent creators a long time ago. I have been a huge supporter of Twitter since the beginning and found a thriving photography community here around 2019 when I began to pursue it as my primary social media outlet,” he tells DPReview.

And caring about artists, art, the craft itself, and the future of all three is something that drives him. Minear is old enough to know there are more predictable avenues and more dependable ways to make more money. Still, young enough (and savvy enough) to know he has the scope and time to make an impact in, and maybe more importantly, for the industry with the right moves. And he’s made plenty of those – becoming a Fuji X Photographer and Capture One Ambassador, to name a few.

He credits his grandfather with getting him started in photography, “He always had cameras around,” he says. Still, it’s to Minear’s credit that he simultaneously developed his photography and graphic design abilities, the intersection of the two proving to be the fertile soil for the new world of NFTs, a world Minear adopted early on.

In this way, Minear has found himself less defined as a pure photographer and more falling into that modern category of ‘creator,’ a kind of multi-hyphenate. To become a successful sustaining creative today with a base in photography, you must buck the antecedent notion that the value of an image can only be measured from within IG analytics. And of course, he would have to be in this world where the frivolity of imagery makes some feel they’re entitled to custom work at commoditized prices. This is where NTF comes in, something he shares his knowledge on through podcasts, tweets, and anyone interested in lending an ear.

So, while he might take up a loudspeaker to call out Instagram and Mosseri for flipping script, he’s accepting of what he can’t change, Darwinian enough to change with the game, and has the wisdom to know when to do each. He knows the dose makes the poison.

What you figure out about Minear if you open your eyes and ears to consume his content is, ultimately, he exemplifies the modern creator with this ‘hero’s journey process, and marrying art and tech. And the way he speaks about NFT and this marriage of art and tech will both excite you and swivel the Rubik’s Cube of your day. He’s effusively positive at a time when the industry needs that most, and that’s the thing; after speaking to him, you walk away thinking to yourself, “Yeah. Whatever he’s on, I’ll have some of that.”

Wedding workflow with Eric Ronald

What does the workflow of a wedding photographer look like? Join David and Capture One Ambassador, Eric Ronald, for an exclusive look at what goes into shooting and editing destination weddings. Bring your questions for the live Q&A!

Eric Ronald is an Australian photographer known for creating timeless imagery that celebrates the human experience and true love. His passion and unique ethos has taken him around the world to document wedding days of couples in Kenya, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Cyprus, Montenegro, India, The Philippines, Egypt, among others.

Please note, due to Eric’s location, there is only one session for this webinar.

Spotlight On: Kristina Varaksina

For Russian-born photographer Kristina Varaksina, upending the traditional perceptions of female beauty continues to underscore her work as a conceptual photographer. Based in London, the Capture One Ambassador also doubles as an educator and commercial photographer. The Capture One team sat down with Varaksina to hear about her journey and why she thinks photography is the most powerful medium today.

Self portrait, “Sweetie”, from the series, “Self-Portrait”.

The Beginning

“As a child, I liked drawing,” said Kristina Varaksina from her studio in London. “I liked all kinds of art and went to a children’s art school in Russia. I also loved painting and anything creative, really. So naturally, I began to think how I could make this my profession.”

Like so many young artists, Varaksina’s parents encouraged her to explore the creative industry’s more practical and financially lucrative side.

“My parents thought you need to have something a bit more solid,” she said, laughing. “They said that I should become a designer or an architect or something like that.”

So, it was no surprise that later, Varaksina found herself in architecture school, where she studied architecture and interior design. Upon completing her undergraduate studies, she pursued another ‘solid’ line of creative work – enrolling in a master’s program in graphic design in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

“While I was pursuing my bachelor’s, I had already started working in a graphic design company, and I liked it,” said Varaksina, “So I decided to get my master’s in graphic design, but by then, I realized I did not want to be a graphic designer, but instead, an art director.”

Varaksina viewed the role of art director as a chance to lead the creative process from concept to completion—stamping it with one’s unique style.

“I started working at one of the city’s biggest advertising agencies back then, and then I moved to Moscow to pursue my advertising career and started working on bigger projects for bigger clients primarily as an art director.”

“Brothers in Arms”

From Hobby to Profession

During her first forays as an art director, Varaksina’s side hobby was photography.

“I had actually studied photography during my bachelors, and I particularly loved black-and-white and analog film photography,” she said.

But Varaksina struggled to see how photography could become a viable profession and decided to stick with advertising while honing her photography skills during her free time.

“As I worked on photography, I began to realize that in my advertising work, the ideas I proposed were adapted to the client’s needs and to what the client thinks the consumer will like. So, when we see the final product, it doesn’t look anything like my initial idea.”

From her vantage, she saw how photographers could exert more control – whether it was deciding on the light, the suitable color pack, or even how to direct talent on set.

“I thought to myself I sit in an office from morning to night just handling clients’ comments. And that’s all I do!” she said, “So, I decided to quit my job, and I moved to San Francisco to get my master’s in photography. And that was a big turning point for me.”

“Joanne with her Son”

Subversive and Liberating

Growing up in Russia, Varaskina acknowledges how there was always an enormous amount of pressure on women to look beautiful – to be well-groomed, skinny, always leave the house with make-up—and in other words, look “perfect.”

“Even my mom would tell me, ‘What kind of girl are you if you’re not taking care of yourself?'” said Varaksina. “Even as a child, I could hear boys at school say they wanted their wife to be beautiful.”

Even from an early age, Varaksina saw that a woman’s worth stemmed from her physical appearance.

“I always was so enraged with that whole concept that if a woman was not beautiful, then she had no value in society, and so I wanted to change that perception.”

While pursuing her MFA in photography in San Francisco, she started to think of her thesis project.

“I wanted to focus on women and the multiple roles they can have in society,” she said.

This notion served as the foundation of her thesis project.

“I found different women at different ages, and I staged where they were and what they were doing.”

Upending traditional notions of what it means to be a woman continues to guide Varaksina’s conceptual work today, which has broadened into giving visibility to ‘ordinary’ people. Including as diverse voices and perspectives has become another important goal of her personal work.

Different series of her work are on display at galleries globally from Lumas, Germany to Hello World, Vienna to Brownie, Shanghai. Most recently her work was shown at Photo London – an annual photo fair that features the best contemporary photography from across the globe.

“Sameera”

Professional Life

Leveraging a background in art direction, Varaksina noticed that most of her student work tended to be concept-driven, underscored by a cinematic quality.

During this time, the AMC hit series, Madmen was making waves in the US, which piqued an interest in the 50s and 60s style fashion for Varaksina.

“I think the style of the show partially inspired me,” she said. “I like that part of stylizing, matching the color, the shape, all of those things. And that made me fall in love with fashion because I thought how all the clothes and the accessories can serve as a unique tool to tell a story and to express your vision.”

Upon completion of her master’s, Varaksina began working as a fashion and beauty photographer.

“I quickly realized that there are some expectations from the industry,” said Varaksina acknowledging the vicious cycle of trends intrinsic to the fashion world.

She soon realized that she would like her fashion and beauty work that challenged the idea of beauty—and beauty for the sake of beauty.

“Beautifully dressed beautiful people can only excite you for one second, but I wanted my images to touch people’s feelings and stay in their minds for longer.”

Instead, she wanted to focus on creating images that captured the essence of the person – similar to her conceptual work that emerged during her MFA studies in California.

“Rather than dress up someone, I wanted to strip it down and by doing that, reveal who they are –their inner self, their inner world.”

“Twilight”, a fashion editorial focusing on transgendered female models

Photography Today

For Varaksina, photography plays two different roles in her life: global and personal.

“I think photography has become a very, very important tool of this generation. We communicate a lot through photography. Just look at Instagram and how influential it has become when it comes to news, events, trends, and so forth,” said Varaksina. “Look at something like Black Lives Matter and how we are able to see all these people around the world protesting; it’s all through photography.”

There’s no denying that medium of photography has taken on a new power in today’s digital and image-obsessed economy, which is why Varaksina believes photographers are in a unique position to foster change.

“I think photography has never been more powerful than it is now,” she said, “We as photographers have so much power in our hands right now. We can change trends, change the ‘norm’, change people’s perception of certain concepts and events, by showing a different point of view, by being inclusive and drawing attention to someone or something that is not normally visible.”

On her personal connection to photography, Varaksina, the consummate creator – loves the quick turnaround that the discipline affords.

“If I were a painter, it would take me a lot of time to complete one painting, which is, of course, an enjoyable process,” said Varaksina.

But the instant gratification that the discipline affords – the confirmation of one’s vision highly appeals to her. Digital, film, and even post-production offer creatives like Varaksina even more freedom and flexibility.

“You can express yourself in so many ways through photography, which is exciting to me. And I know that I can experiment and will keep experimenting with photography for the rest of my life. I will never feel stuck in this medium.”

“Strong Current” for Harper’s Bazaar