It's in the Stars!

In the latest April issue of Food and Wine Magazine, I was asked to style a dinner party for wine pro Tom Harrow, Astrologer Shelley von Struncknel and chef Jimmy Bradley. The theme was to be an Astrology Wine Party with the star sign Aries taking center stage. Of course I was very happy to be shooting with Photographer John Kernick, www.johnkernick.com, I have shot with John many times and it is always a great experience. We did have some challenges though, the apartment was quite dark in the room we wanted to shoot and when we arrived the owner of the apartment promptly told us he did not want us to use the dining table! Yikes!..Of course the whole party centered around the dining table so you can imagine my horror. The scheme I had devised did not include an ugly ill fitting table cloth, I had in fact had a denim runner infused with silver thread custom made especially for the shoot, We worked out that his concerns revolved around scratching the very expensive table and after some persuasion we were able to put soft padding under all the plates and trivets so nothing physically touched the table, but for the first half an hour I was sweating, I had no idea how to create a dinner party with no table!

We spent a whole day on the location with my usual truckload of props, the apartment was very sparse on purpose so to create an inviting environment required me to bring lots of options to work with. To enhance the Aries theme I turned to Jonathan Adler of whom I knew had some great Ram's heads in his ceramic range. Of course when the issue hit the new stands it was me that saw stars when realized how small the story ran, maybe I will be asking John for some larger prints! : ) It's always the gamble you take, Not all stories can be big and beautiful, It's how a magazine is able to pace the flow with smaller and larger articles and I fully understand this having worked on staff for many years.

I did shoot some close up shots behind the scenes, hope you enjoy some of the details.