P#26 Q4: How to Avoid Divorce and Photography Nightmares On Thanksgiving Day

Don't Be The Enemy

Ron Goldman: Stay out of the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day. Setting up food photography shots requires a lot of time, patience, and a lot of effort.

If you're scrambling around with family and friends coming over and trying to time everything so that it's ready to hit the table at a certain time, it's going to be virtually impossible to take a professional looking Thanksgiving photograph.

There's certainly no problem with grabbing the camera and getting shots while things are being prepared, but the best thing would be to start a few days ahead of time and make a second Thanksgiving meal.

I've never been in a household that is quiet enough and relaxed enough to actually sit down and do a professional looking shoot during the holiday itself.

Audri Lanford: So you actually have to have two Thanksgiving meals?

Ron Goldman: I can't even imagine trying to prepare an entire Thanksgiving meal for a group of people while meantime be running back and forth in my studio with each item or trying to bring my whole studio inside and get it set up around the final dinner table. It really doesn't sound like an enjoyable day to me.

Audri Lanford: Let's say that you're doing it beforehand. Either you or your spouse has agreed to do it twice just to focus on the photography side. How would you go about getting some great pictures?

Ron Goldman: I would make a shoot list of certain items that I want to photograph. The reason I write it all out ahead of time is because on the day of the shoot things can get quite hectic and you tend to get rushed and forget about certain things.

I would like to see shots of the individual dishes, maybe as they're being prepared, as they come out of the oven, close-ups of ingredients, as well as a full table spread at the end.

Part of the problem with doing that is the time. Cooking all of those dishes and then trying to photograph them can be very difficult. This type of project takes a week or two if you really wanted to get everything that is on most people's tables on Thanksgiving day.

It can really ruin your day when you're trying to cook and set up beautiful images to photograph and you find that what you thought was going to take an hour has now turned into three or four. And you had ten items on your list that you thought you were going to get done, and you'll be lucky to get two done, and you start to rush. That really shows up in the final product.

Audri Lanford: If you can have help or you can get culinary schools to work with you, it would be great.

Ron Goldman: You'd be way ahead. If you're not trying to prepare the dishes and style them yourself, you can move different dishes in place very quickly.

If you don't have help, the best thing to do would be just choose one or two items and shoot them each day leading up to the week before. It doesn't even have to be on Thanksgiving day. You could do this at any time during the year. Just set up the dishes you know you're going to be preparing at that time.

To Conclude

One of the great things about pictures is that no one has to know exactly what day they were taken. If you want to make your life a lot easier and don't want your family to despise you and your camera during the holiday, try taking your Thanksgiving food photographs on a different day. On Thanksgiving day, just enjoy the holiday with your family and friends.