Foody Portraits, capturing restaurant atmosphere

It made a refreshing change to be taking some portraits whilst photographing a restaurant and food.

Here are Melibea's Manager David, and Executive chef Alex Ureña

Photographing for Zagat in New York I have just been requested to photograph food and an empty restaurant, but Melba the curated dining experience people wanted me to capture some of the atmosphere and the personalities behind the food. It took me back to my Travel photography days covering gastronomy, lifestyle and landscape. Here is Melibea's Mixologist with some of his creations

I loved the opportunity to capture some of the behind the scenes action, and of course enjoy some of the fully flavoured meditteranian fusion food at the west village restaurant Melibea.

The staff's sense of fun and attention to detail was impressive

www.melba.co/ www.melibeanyc.com/ www.jonmartindesigns.com

A mile in my shoes, abandoned shoes on the streets of Manhattan

Abandoned shoes on the streets of Manhattan are not a rare sight. Sometimes a particularly well made pair of sturdy shoes vacated by their previous owner can trigger a set of leathery questions.

On this day I happened to walk over 10800 steps (after I got my new pedometer from Jacks world) photographing Manhattan restaurants and food for Zagat in my own shoes.

As I tread my path between restaurants I keep my creative eyes open looking for something worthy of storage space in my minds cloud.

I did not shoot the old guy engaged in an intense phone conversation whilst ignoring the guy shining his shoes, but I did photograph a pair of abandoned shoes and an abstract painting made by remains of the walls of a demolished building clinging on to the side of its still standing neighbor and mixed the two together to create “a mile in my shoes”.

http://www.saatchionline.com/art/Digital-Photomanipulation-A-mile-in-my-shoes/1185/1639819/view

Curries to Kitch, Jon Martin's food photography in Manhattan

I'm running around Manhattan photographing restaurants for Zagat, everything from curries to kitsch comfort food, and Italian to Ethiopian. It is a good opportunity to keep my food photography skills finely honed and to find some restaurants that I would otherwise miss out on. I'm shooting with available light and leaving the food au naturel, without all the cheats of top end food stylists.

This Octopus and squid is the prettiest dish that I have photographed so far, but I didn't have time to eat it as I had to run to the next restaurant.

Check out some of my other food photography online:

Rooftop photoshoot

I like to plan my shoots in advance, meet with the portrait subject or model, discuss what they are looking to get from a shoot, what images and photographers they like, and what inspires them. This give me a great chance to hang out in my favorite New York cafes and to understand my subject, building an imagined world for them to inhabit.

Recently I got a chance to photograph some of the models from Hoboken based www.Drakebook.com for a modeling boot camp. This opportunity came out of the blue and I had 4 hours to photograph 12 subjects when usually I take an hour or two to photograph one.

I sat in on one of the talks by a international model video guy who was telling the young models some of the industries harsh truths and insights, I'm, guessing that a lot of it did not sink into the young models, but in time they will come to understand.

I did enjoy improvising whilst exploring a new environment seeing some new fresh faces and doing my first rooftop shoot and and I am happy with some of my results and learned some good lessons for the next time.

There was a boy and girl team shooting on film who “borrowed” my tripod during the shoot thinking it was the agencies. I would like to see their results.

Planning a portrait photoshoot

I find it useful to meet up with a prospective photographic model before a photo-shoot just to make sure that you both know what you want out of the shoot, are able to communicate well, and are not too crazy! I also just like hanging out in cool cafes, meeting creative people.

Before my shoot with urban designer and mother Robin Balles, we met up in Choc O Pain in Hoboken, and exchanged ideas for shoots, and links to inspirational images by email. We settled on a strong profile portrait and silhouette, both using natural lighting provided by Robin's Jersey City Heights big bay windows.

As well as the planned shots we were able to try out a couple of other ideas, shooting through a "rainy" window and using a large mirror.

I have finished work on four images and have uploaded them to my fine art print website.

Visible thoughts

Waiting

Triptych 1

Triptych 2

Full English

My favourite London fry-up can be found as Nico's Cafe 299 Cambridge Heath Rd, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, E2 0EL, United Kingdom, near the Bethnal Green tube station.

Run by a Greek Cypriot guy called Theo, they still serve real chips and strong brown tea made from loose leaves,‎ not frozen processed nonsense and weak tea bag tea like most places. Even this picture makes me hungry, mmm look at those caramelized tomatoes.

This rare example of real east end workers cafe is a gem. Expect to meet locals and regulars with accents straight out of an episode of Eastenders, mixed with the very odd tourist. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1263778/Why-British-fry-healthiest-breakfast-.html

Thinking inside the box

I keep my precious bits in old plastic egg boxes, my pens in cut down shampoo bottles (stuck to the side of my office furniture with magnets), and woolly hats in an old 2.5 gallon water bottle.

It is fun to re-purpose old plastic containers.

New York Bookworm

The first time that I entered the New York public library's main reading room. I was impressed by the ornate, refined, airy, bright space and knew immediately that I had to do a portrait shoot here.

I ordered some plain glass geek chic glasses online and arranged a portrait shoot with Spanish actress, dancer and writer Elena Mohedano.

Elena is working on a play and I wanted to portray a young writer at work studying in this beautiful space.

moody actors head shot

Actors head shots don't normally display a large range of emotions so I wanted to explore a darker side of the human spirit.I had planned my two hour shoot with actor and artist Barry Lehmann in Hoboken New Jersey, scouting out all the locations before hand.

I had looked around the old church and hadn't spotted a good angle but as we were walking past, the sunlight was hitting some old chipboard sheets which were getting dripped on. They caught my eye and Barry noticed what was drawing my attention.

Barry found a cowl like snood in his bag of tricks and promptly got down under the drip and I took some shots. They are some of my favorite images from the shoot and some of the only unplanned ones. I like the way the tones in the old boards harmonize with his hair color. I did also get more conventional head shots in the 590 shots taken in the photo shoot.

Barry Lehmann talent pages

Fine art print of a portrait from the shoot

Fine art print of Barry on Pier A Hoboken

Worm food wearing moth food.

Once upon a time I had a great collection of crazily bright and colorful jumpers but moths showed no style sense and devoured them, even though the jumpers were in very bad taste. I had to bin my prized collection.

I was recently given a Merino wool jumper, on washing, it revealed a multitude of moth holes. I decided to sew them open. Rather than attempting to hide its history of infestation and feasting, I would celebrate it.

Sew now I have a jumper that looks like it was once worn by 1930's gangster who was brought down in a light hail of machine gun bullets. It could be stylish, it could be the latest thing by a top designer. I like the way the fabric below can be seen, leaving the warmth and utility of the garment relatively unharmed.

My caveman sewing is in danger of becoming philosophical, maybe I can balance both aspects?
Time and decay, as ever will reveal the truth.

Neodymium Tea Bags

I found a great use for the magnets from magnetic name badges, that you may get from work, or at a conference.

They are very powerful rare earth magnets and can easily hold tea packets to the side of your refrigerator saving valuable kitchen worktop space. Open the lid of the tea packet, hold the magnet to the back of the packet and put it on the side of your ferrous metal fridge.

I enjoyed them so much that I ordered some more neodymium magnets from Amazon and use them to hold door keys to my metal front door, and Swiss army knifes, and tape measures to my steel office furniture.

These very powerful magnets are not for use by children and should be kept away from delicate electronics, watches, and magnetic data storage etc.

You will notice my British Yorkshire tea bags in pride of place, these are a vital drug for any Brit trying to survive on the wrong side of the pond.

Oh I think that it's time for a nice cup of tea!

My English grandad, Frank Martin was a street photographer after the Second World War. When my dad emailed a picture of Frank to me with his 'made in Liverpool' camera, I decided to put up a web page describing the start of his photographic career based partly on my recollections of his stories, but mainly on the information provided by my father.

My next step is to scan some images of his photographic and darkroom supplies shop that served the people of Dalston, Hackney and, via mail order, the world so I can make a page to keep the memory of this little shop alive.

I will gild my wounds and bejewel my scars.

I have had my second or third hand sheepskin coat for more than ten years, as I was recently reminded when I saw pictures of me wearing it on a trip to Rome in around 2000. It and I are looking quite good for our age, though we all suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous time.

My sheepskin developed a hole in the elbow which I had been wearing with pride for at least a year before I finally got round to adding some gold colored leather behind the wound. I wish to be proud of my caveman sewing skills, my bucking of the trend for over consumption and the beautiful aging of my reliable coat.

After breaking a few needles on another leather repairing task I took a trip to New York's garment district where shops still ply the hundreds of thousands of weird, wonderful and prosaic necessities for making clothes. I asked for needles for sewing leather and got a small paper packet of 'glovers' (for glove making) needles, made in England,

like myself.

The packaging looked like something out of the 19th century and bore the mark of Schul-Sons made in England since 1754, with more gold print on green on the inside of the pack informing me that “Schul-sons is your guarantee” and “made of the finest English steel”. On doing a quick Google I found a US trademark that expired in 1986 so, at the very least, these needles have been waiting 26 years for me to buy them. But the packaging leads me to think that they are earlier still.