I finished taking food photographs at A Matter of Taste, AMOT Eatery, last week. This was the first restaurant I have photographed in east Nashville not owned by restauranteur Matt Charette. AMOT Eatery is a great gluten free restaurant in east Nashville located on 11th and Fatherland. It's in a wonderful space with beautiful bright windows two blocks from the well know Five Points area.

After we discussed the fifteen dishes to be featured the owner, Kellie Hopkins, gave me free rein to photograph the dishes at the restaurant. It took five days over the span of a week and a half to complete the project. The restaurant is closed from 3-5 everyday so I came towards the end of lunch (around 1pm) and started setting up, photographed about three dishes a day and stopped at 5pm before dinner service.

My real learning curve was organizing the days' shots so I wasn't moving from one end of the restaurant to the other, as I did the first day. Before starting day two, I organized the dishes by how I wanted them to look and feel, then by where I thought it was best to shoot the dish.

Brunch items needed to be high key and look like they were shot on a bright weekend morning, dinner entrees needed to look as though it was night time during an intimate dinner, and sandwiches need to feel like lunch time. So, items naturally grouped themselves and one day became a patio day, another day was bar-top day and another was by the window day.

I then decided how to light each of the dishes. I was lucky that AMOT has great window light and used it every chance I could, but several times I supplemented or even overpowered that light to create the desired mood.

I only ran into complications a few times during the whole process. Once because of the dish used, a deep plate, hid the food with the composition I planned on using. Another time I was using natural light and as the light outside faded the house light began to compete with the scene. Both times, after a moment, I figured out an alternative plan and got a photograph I enjoyed.