Cooking class with Chef Tony Mantuano

Last year I photographed a series of restaurants for Levy. Some of which include Wolfgang Puck, Portobello and Fultons Crab House at Downtown Disney. I thoroughly enjoy working with the crew at Levy and jump at any opportunity they give me to shoot. Good people, great client and incredible food!

On this last assignment I was asked to cover a cooking class with chef Tony Mantuano at Portobello. Tony is the most laid back, soft spoken down to earth guy you'll meet. He is also the James Beard 2005 Best Chef: Midwest winner and was nominated in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Watching Tony around food is like watching art in the making.


Tony is also the executive chef at Spiaggia which is also owned by Levy and is the only four-star Italian restaurant in Chicago. You can also catch Tony on Bravo's Top Chef Masters.

Here's a few shots from the cooking class.

UFC

My favorite kind of shoots are the last minute ones. For this concept body paint guru Nick Herrera had the brilliant idea of painting a girl in UFC attire. For a location Nick secured "The Jungle" a mixed martial arts gym near downtown Orlando.

Believe it or not, our model had no clothes on.. Awesome job Nick!

Here's what we came up with:

Swinger Update

When I'm not obsessing about my next shoot or spending money on the next piece of photography equipment you can find me working on my 1973 Dodge Dart Swinger restoration project.

Quick rewind back to 10 years ago when I was living in NYC, I bought a 4 door 1972 Plymouth Valiant from good friend Stan Cheslock in Orlando Fl. For $400 the car ran great and I managed to drive it to NYC where I drove the car until getting wrecked by a truck in the meat packing district. The car collected a number of parking tickets sitting on the side streets. On the day I decided to donate the car to a charity, a Dominican neighbor convinced me I was crazy for having the car crushed. 10 years later and several thousand of dollars into the car I was T boned by a 90 year old man in Orlando FL.

The day I was wrecked the first person I called was my friend Brad Samuels of Samuels Auto in Sanford Fl. Brad is an extremely talented guy when it comes to cars, paint and body work. I've seen anything from Ford GT 40's to Ferrari's and Porsche's at his shop for repair. Brad's idea was instead of repairing the total loss of the Valiant, buy a nice 2 door that I could interchange the parts with. So after some research I found the Swinger in a Craiglist ad. The car was pretty close to original with its Bruce Rossmeyer sticker still on the deck lid!

I've spent the past 2 months tearing the car completely apart, sandblasting, cleaning metal and having the panels painted in epoxy primer. Right now Brad is teaching me the process of body work. Never did I realize how much work goes into a project like this.

Over the course of this project I'm going to be posting updates on the Swinger project and all the tricks of the trade that Brad is willing to teach me.

Here are a few shots from when I found the car to the current state of progress.

Technical Update

It doesn't seem like 4 years have gone by since buying my G5 dual core desktop. Nor does it seem like 2 years since buying my D300's. In fact when I go back and think of all the cameras and computers I've bought over the years I can't help to think how far along technology has come.

This past week has been super hectic juggling jobs and extra exciting buying my new MacBook pro 15" with the i7 processor & anti-glare high rez screen. I also finally upgraded my camera body to a full frame d700. Even though on paper the d300 and d700 have the same megapixel count, the full frame sensor on the d700 really makes a significant difference. The dynamic range is far greater, shadow detail is excellent and handles low light extremely well. Then there's the aspect of shooting 1:1 ratio which takes me back 15 years to my film days. Back when a 17mm was a 17mm not a 35mm. Needless to say, now that I'm in full frame mode I just can't see myself wanting to shoot dx format cameras again.

Just yesterday I sold my second d300 on eBay. Due to my ever growing interest in video I am strongly considering a Canon 5d Mark 2 as a backup camera to my d700. Knowing that I can adapt my prime Nikon glass to the Canon bodies really gives me happy feelings about the whole switch transition thing.

Blist-Ex

Writer and dear friend Billy Manes ends his 10 year column in the Orlando Weekly.
For make-up I brought in fabulous Sunha to paint the clown face.
Lighting was simple. Medium soft box overtop, strip bank underneath.
To read more about the story go here - Orlando Weekly

Here's what we came up with:

Discovery 4.5.2010

This was the first thing I encountered yesterday morning walking out of my door in route to a Tissot shoot in Tampa.

Only 4 more to go!!