¡Feliz Navidad! Today’s food truck friday theme is “South of the Border.” What better way to forget about the bitter, winter cold than to talk about caliente food trucks and probably my favorite to-go food, tacos.

Kyle and I have continued our work with the Nashville Food Truck Association which has been an amazing experience. If you have followed my posts before, you know that we have the pleasure of meeting all the chefs, seeing the trucks, and more often than not, tasting lots of food made by the same trucks you see roaming the streets of Nashville. One of the best things about food trucks in general is that they offer a ton of variety. Quite often you can find them collaboratively grouped at meal time, providing lots of cuisine choices in a small zone.

While there is a lot of variety, there is one type of food that seems to pop up more often than most… muy deliciosa Mexican. They say that no snowflake is the same, well that’s how I feel about food truck tacos… well, and that I need to taste them all, haha. The taco’s size and shape are perfectly designed to be eaten on the move. Everything is wrapped up nice and neat, with utensils rarely needed. Despite the overlap in “packaging” (aka tortillas), these food trucks manage to separate themselves from each other and create distinctive variety with burritos, tacos, and the like. Even with the same ingredients, the typical Mexican fare from one truck tastes completely different from the “same” food as another. That is just amazing to me; taking such a commonly admired food type, with common ingredients and using personal/regional cooking methods and seasonings to create something completely unique. These chefs are truly magicians… especially to a guy like me who doesn’t do a whole lot of cooking, haha.

Photographing them has been a lot of fun. Kyle and all of us at dreier & company strive to bring that same personal and unique spin that these chefs apply to their food to our photography. Everyone has a camera, lots of people photograph food, but despite the overlaps, what you get with dreier & company is always unique, expertly crafted and delivered. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at our website or look at the images below to see what we can capture (even in a tiny, cramped, hot kitchen on wheels.)

– John

(P.S. – See more food trucks here.)

TACOS MARIA – CALIFORNIA STREET FOOD

FREEBIRDS – TEX MEX INSPIRED

FARM 2 MESA – WHOLESOME SEASONAL FRESH

As hard as it can be with a busy production schedule we’ve been more committed lately to work on fun personal projects. In this case we collaborated with food stylist Sara Rounsavall from Louisville, Kentucky to just do whatever we felt inspired to do. We always love the opportunity to work with desserts and coffees. (Turns out, Sara was a barista in a former life.) That’s where the serendipity began. We work our way from light, to dark, to graphic. Below is how it all played out. Prop styling by our own Emily Pierce.

-Kyle

Food Photographer • Kyle Dreier  |  Food Stylist • Sara Rounsavall |  Prop Stylist • Emily Pierce

Often times, the studio team is just buzz-buzz-buzzing along, so it’s refreshing to take a moment to sit down and reflect on the mouth-watering work we have been creating. In November we had the pleasure of working with fresh-mex grill, Salsarita’s.

Before shooting, Kyle and I took a lunch time field trip out to the Salsarita’s location in Mt. Juliet, TN to investigate. Our findings… we can wholly confirm, the chips are indeed addictive. And don’t get us started on the hand-mashed guacamole, it’s soo good – you can see the beautiful big chunks of avocado and you can taste that it was freshly hand-mashed. Much like the name suggests, they know a thing or two about making a mean salsa variety, too.

When you’re working with fresh ingredients (and we can’t leave out those addictive tortilla chips, haha), the dynamic food styling duo that is Teresa Blackburn and Whitney Kemp, and have room to creatively play on set, well, it makes our jobs that much more fun and easy to create the fresh, natural and authentic imagery the client (and customer) are craving.

– Emily

Food Photographer • Kyle Dreier  |  Food Stylists • Teresa Blackburn & Whitney Kemp |  Prop Stylist • Emily Pierce

We’ve been asked to do pet food in the past. Hey, “food photography” doesn’t mean it’s just people food. When local entrepreneur John Burke of Okra and Molly reached out to us to update his photography, we couldn’t resist. We’re all animal lovers here…some dogs, some cats (Lord help them) and even a chinchilla.

Okra and Molly is a special occasion dog cake company. These cakes are made with dog friendly, nutritious ingredients. John’s heart goes into to these neat little creations to help celebrate man’s best friend.

Here is a small sampling of images we produced for Okra and Molly. (Special thanks to our pet models Logan, Barney and Bella.)

Treat your best friend. Visit Okra and Molly.

– Kyle

Food Photography by Kyle Dreier | Prop Styling by Emily Pierce

In between productions we set aside blocks of time to work on our own projects—play days with some focus but still plenty of room for serendipity. You may have seen earlier posts about our ampersand series. As I recover from two full blown Thanksgiving meals I thought I’d share some Thanksgiving related work we did here in the studio recently…yet another “&” food inspired session…”turkey & dressing”.

Not to digress too much, but I did encounter some debate during one Thanksgiving meal about what we call “dressing” and “stuffing.” I guess I’m kinda technical in my position on the subject as I consider “stuffing” what is cooked inside (stuffed into) the turkey. “Dressing”, to me, is what is served with or along side a roasted turkey.

A big thanks to Sara Rounsavall for her food styling excellence, Emily Pierce for prop wrangling and styling, Erica O’Rock for producing and John Love for assisting. I’m thankful for all the talents we bring into each shoot.

– Kyle

Thanksgiving is approaching. Winter is coming.

And for this reason, my mind has turned to comfort foods. Warm, gooey, comfort foods.

We just had the privilege of wrapping up a shoot that utilized a lot of texture, contrast, dark and vibrant tones: all the things I think of when I imagine my impending food-fueled winter hibernation. And while we can’t show those images yet, I did dig through our archives to find some images that I felt represented the foods and moods that this type of year brings. These images also provided a lot of inspiration for me as I have recently been volunteered to host Thanksgiving for the first time ever (and might be mildly stressing out about it).

On our shoot this past week, I kept finding myself drawn to the props table to peruse the many warm and unconventional plateware we had… thinking of ways it could be used in one’s own home. I love being able to do this on shoots. Often, we have a prop stylist with a specific creative direction that they’ve been given for each shoot; and they always show up with wonderful goodies that I would have never thought to use for the types of food we are shooting… or would have ever been able to find on my own to be honest. They know the places to look around town and the people to get in touch with to find those odds and ends that you often see in our photos. Needless to say, I got many ideas for my Thanksgiving table and the coming winter months.

I also spent some time on our shoot getting ideas from the food stylists for Thanksgiving. Not recipes specifically, but a lot of tips and tricks that they offered to help take stress off of the actual day. Things I can prepare and make in advance, the best types of foods to make if you want something that can sit for a bit while other things are being made, etc.

It is so nice to have a team of people around that provide great inspiration. It actually got me excited about hosting Thanksgiving and excited about putting all those comfort foods I’ve been dreaming of into a realistic plan (and soon into my stomach). Now, I’m going to dream up the perfect tablescape (and add to my list of plate ware, florals and accents I need to go buy) in order to create the perfect moody, cold-weather, but warm vibes atmosphere.

– Erica

Food Photography by Kyle Dreier  |  Styling Contributors Sara Rounsavall, Hannah Messinger & Teresa Blackburn