As if Jon hasn't been on the road enough in the past few months, we got a call to do a location shoot up in the very pretty town of Santa Rosa. After a seriously crazy day in the studio, we hoped in the car, loaded with all the gear that we could think we might use, and headed north. Only one U-turn and a sack of McDonald's later, we finally made it to the hotel, weary but excited because the next day we were going over to famous chef, Guy Fieri's house! Driving over there, we past the oddly located, Charles Schultz museum. I wanted to stop and say hello to Snoopy, but we had work to do. In a very unassuming neighborhood, we met our clients at Guy's house and hauled our gear in to set up our shoot. But, little did we know, Guy was in the middle of filming a TV segment in his own kitchen, and there was a huge production crew swarming over his grounds, prepping and setting up lighting for a new show that he's going to be filming in his backyard!
Because still photography is considered the ugly stepchild of the entertainment/advertising industry, we were stuck in the corner, and took over the use of his "game room". Filled with posters of his face, an entire case filled with Oakley sunglasses, and all the junk one has but doesn't have a place for it in the real house, we set up our computers on his pool table and our set on the floor (the shots we were doing were straight overhead, so that made the most sense). Just as we finished getting our set perfect and ready for the food stylist to bring in the first food, one of the wardrobe stylists from the production crew came marching in and stomped all through our set, ruining the paper that we had just put down as our shooting surface. Nice. Luckily we have had to deal with worse, and rolled out some more paper.
After that, the day went pretty well! Guy's dog only tried to steal the steak we were shooting once, we stole some lunch (they apparently forgot that we were going to be there that day too along with the production crew) and got to work (although briefly) with Guy Fieri himself. Because we were shooting steaks for his brand, and we only had so many of them to cook and get looking right, instead of cutting through more steaks, I took a moment and retouched his meat to get it to the perfect pink hue (wait that sounds wrong) earning me a high five from the man himself! That was almost as cool as getting my picture taken with him! (Which I hope will happen the next time we get up there...). Despite being wedged in between his mini-basketball hoop and the foosball table, we got the shots that he wanted and earned an invitation to come back and continue working on these projects at his house. Cool, man. Hopefully there won't be so much going on next time, and we might get to spend some time chatting with the chef who made crazy hair popular...
~Heather
