Food Photography

R.I.P Anthony Bourdain

About 8 or 9 years ago I used to photograph celebrity events nearly every day, or at least whenever I could race to my email quick enough to snag a contributor event for Getty Images. It was a crazy couple of years where I would run around New York City photographing anybody I could who might one day make me a few dollars on the stock site. I'd call myself a "celebrity event photographer" and that would often elicit the question, "Who's the coolest celebrity you've photographed?" I'd normally blush a little and get a bit embarrassed by the question, because the answer was honestly not what people expected: Anthony Bourdain. He was such a huge character, and lived exactly the life I'd dream of, traveling and eating all over the world. If you asked me my dream job more recently it would probably be to travel with Anthony Bourdain as his stills photographer. If I ever travel anywhere outside America I often look up whether Anthony Bourdain has been there, and then see where he ate. It worked a charm in Amritsar, India, where I ate one the greatest meals of my life that cost under $3. 

Anthony-Bourdain-Portrait-RIP.jpg

Celebrity Event Photographer Ben Hider

Stone Barns Bee Keeping and Baby Pigs

Stone Barns just had a new litter of Red Wattle Piglets and it was perfectly timed for my scheduled shoot with Maggie in the Apiary. All images shot with a pair of Canon 5D Mark IV's, one with a 100mm F2.8 macro and the other has the amazing lighting setup you see below with a Canon 24-105mm F4 lens.

Stone Barns Photographer Ben Hider

Holding the Canon 5D Mark IV with the Canon 24mm-105mm F4 IS ii surrounded by the Promediagear Boomerang bracket and Profoto B1 and beauty dish

Holding the Canon 5D Mark IV with the Canon 24mm-105mm F4 IS ii surrounded by the Promediagear Boomerang bracket and Profoto B1 and beauty dish

Bella Gioia New Food Photography

I'm always thankful to my friends at Project 13 for the connections with new clients in the food realm. Bella Gioia and Chef Nico have put some amazing food in front of me to photograph. Not only does it look amazing for the photos, but it tastes pretty damn good too.

Here is a behind the scenes view of my lighting setup for the food photography shown above. The restaurant has this amazing sky light that sits above a few tables and gives a very soft overhead light that works great for a table shot, and then I took over a corner table with a few Profoto lights. One has the amazing Large Deep Umbrella with diffuser and the other one has the more directional and collapsable Profoto Beauty Dish. All images were shot with two Canon 5D Mark IV cameras, one with a 100mm F2.8 Macro lens and the other with the super versatile Canon 24-70mm F2.8 Lens.

City Island Restaurant Food Photography

Nothing better than spending the afternoon in a new restaurant photographing their food. We photographed a lot more dishes than originally planned, it was an onslaught of seafood, surf and turf and the most amazing looking roast pork with crispy skin or crackling. I love working as a food photographer and would love to create more content like this for other restaurants in New York City or the Hudson Valley.

Food Photographer Ben Hider

2017 Young Farmers Conference at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture

It was another amazing few days on the farm at Stone Barns learning about farming, food and agriculture from some of the best people on the planet. There were some pretty serious discussions too around equality and land reform that got directed at Mark Bittman. I'm not sure the question that sparked the discomfort was as clearly stated as intended so I don't entirely think Bittman was at fault for his answer, but the idea behind the discussion is important and needs to be brought to the forefront.

Stone Barns Photographer