I'm Kylie Mazon and I'm a food photographer based in LA. I have a food
blog called Cooking with Cocktail Rings and I do all the recipe writing, testing
and food photography for that. I've had an opportunity to work with a lot of
really cool clients to do sponsored content they'll either send me products or
an ingredient that they want to incorporate into a recipe and then I
figure out a way to feature that in both the recipe and then the photography.
I was brought in by the Freehand hotel in downtown LA to do some photography
around their various restaurants and bars to use on their social media and
websites. Over the period of two days I'll be shooting around the hotel and
coming away with at least 25 selects to deliver to the hotel.
Downtown has changed so much in the course of even the past five years
and I've been taking the train down and spending the day just going around to
different bars and restaurants and just really trying everything. Jobs like this
are all about communicating the ambience of the hotel. It's really cool
it's very different when you walk in there's all this dark wood in the lobby
a really cool exotic travel vibe. Visuals are everything you know we take very
seriously Instagram all the pictures we make all the content the little details
and you know the success is about taking care of the little details there's layers upon
layers upon layers. For this job I was working with Stefan he's the senior
content manager. The first thing that we shot
were these lattes and pastries at cafe integral. 'Thank you'. I mean I love a good
matcha latte and they definitely do a good one. Hold it out towards me more
We brought out the tile and the floors as details so that you're not getting the
same picture with the same wood background for every image. Usually I
shoot with a Canon 5D Mark III but I've been looking for a camera that's better
for travel just because mine is kind of bulky and I bring several different
lenses and so to have a smaller travel friendly camera was great. The next thing
that we shot was lunch at Exchange restaurant in the hotel lobby. Kind of a
Mediterranean feel. Do you mind leaving the holder just I can move it around?
thank you. Photographing food you want to shoot it fresh I mean you want that
steak to come out glistening and make sure you have color. Having a bunch of
color in your photographs really can go a long way. You want some close-ups but
a lot of full dish shots so that is there's a cohesive story.
You really have to pace yourself and figure out what you want to eat ahead of
time on a big food shoot because now we have all of this and it all looks
incredible we've got some chef chuka we've got the grilled naan the nice
breakfast platter over here and so you really have to be picky because we also
have lunch after this. This is really just second breakfast. Delicious. For some
of the dishes we took them outside to shoot you're gonna hold it like right
here and then angle it down a little.
yeah, nice nice. After lunch we went and took some exterior photos down on the
street. I put on the 11-22mm so that I can get the full building
there's a really beautiful neon sign that is the old commercial exchange sign
and they kept that when they restored the hotel. The last thing that we did the
first day was shoot cocktails are Exchange and they have beautifully
garnished cocktails which make my job easy because it adds a little dimension.
They're very showy and beautiful. As a Canon user already I have had brought my lenses to
the set. I was able to use the adapter to use some of my other lenses. The lighting
at the hotel has been great. Got that nice reflection through the windows,
it really helped out.
The start of day two we took pictures of the rooms. We're set up in the corner
King room to do some exposure bracketing so that we can get a full interior shot
and the windows won't be overexposed. We'll get a nice variation and then
we'll composite them together. That's some really cool artwork in here.
For lunch we walked around downtown LA and got a feel to the city. We found a little
taco shop so we stopped in there had some fish tacos - one of my favorites
After lunch we came back to the hotel and shot the tea service at Rudolph's Bar
It's their happy hour tea service which is pretty unique
it's basically alcoholic tea
The last part of the second day of shooting was Broken Shaker which is the
rooftop bar and we had to wait for the lighting a little bit on that one so
that it wasn't quite so harsh. We did some photos of the bartenders making
different cocktails, shots of the cocktails around the pool area, cool
pictures of the pool and the ambiance up there and so beautiful with the LA
skyline in the background. One of the things that I really like about this
camera is that it has Wi-Fi capability I can easily connect my phone if I'm out
on a full day shoot then rather than having to go home or bring cords with me
I can just remotely upload. Overall I was impressed by the quality of the camera
and the fact that there are so many interchangeable lenses, I was able to
keep my style of shooting. You had the size of the point-and-shoot but it
didn't feel as much like a point-and-shoot because I was able to
change all the settings with the touch screen and the different dials. There's
so much to learn still I love that even today I got to try doing more interior
photography so I got to learn new things with that. The food world especially in
social media is very saturated. I'm proud of the content that I'm putting out
there making sure that the images that I'm posting are up to a certain caliber
and I think that has been successful for me. I love to eat and I love to take
photos I think food is so beautiful it really brings people together and it's
always been something that's been a huge part of my life.