Best of Charlotte Photos!

Here we go!
Be sure to pick up this week's issue of Creative Loafing - this is the Best of Charlotte Issue - the year's biggest and best issue. Below are my photos for the cover section and for each of the 6 categories that readers and staff vote on each year:

here's the cover for the Best of Charlotte section:


and here are the 6 categories:

How do you fit a 28" wedding cake through a 26" doorway?

Excellent question.
One which my mom posed as we stood at La Loverina,
an INCREDIBLE bakery in my dad's hometown of Lovere,
a small village in the northern part of Italy.

I am still in the midst of editing these, but here's a sneak preview of the
wedding cake that barely make it to the wedding!!!!

Chef Tim

I had the opportunity to photograph Chef Tim for Beer Advocate Magazine. He is one of the country's top 5 beer chefs (yes, BEER Chefs) and was going to be featured in the next issue.

My portrait of Chef Tim land the COVER (photo above) of Beer Advocate, and 2 more images were selected for the story! (both below)

Cakes!

There is something so simplistic and beautiful about these cakes, that I was completely blown away when I was shown these delectable/edible works of art. On the outside, they look normal (except for the amazing sugar art which is incredible art itself), but when cut, these cakes reveal their beautiful little secret.
Take a look! The place is called Salara, located in the Ballantyne area.

Siam Garden

This was another shoot for Creative Loafing that I recently took.
Lampang, pictured here, was a charming and funny lady. She's the owner of Siam Garden, located on Whitehall Drive, close to 485.
As soon as I meet folks that I need to photograph, I can sense how comfortable/uncomfortable they are about being photographed.
Lampang gave off a friendly and comfortable vibe - you can see it in how relaxed she is in this photo and in all the photos I took of her that night.

Creative Loafing

I should mention that there might be a fair amount of food images throughout this blog, as I am the official food photographer for Creative Loafing here in Charlotte.
I've been at it for 3 years now, and enjoy visiting a new restaurant every week and finding a way to photograph the food to give it an interesting, different look.
Here are two fun ones:

Meme

(l-r) Mom, me, Meme, Juan

Meme is my fabulous grandmother, who at 86 years old, is truly truly amazing.
She speaks 7 languages (Hungarian, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, German and studied a little bit of Japanese in Caracas, Venezuela). She stil swims every day, walks every day and tutors several students in various languages.
On our 2-year wedding anniversary (December 23rd), Meme made Juan and I a delicious meal, which included my favorite Hungarian cucumber salad seen here.