After more than 20 years as a photojournalist for publications such as National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, Bellevue, Pa., resident Scott Goldsmith stumbled on food photography, approaching it from a unique perspective.
Three years ago, California Pizza Kitchen hired Goldsmith to do nontraditional food photography for their promotional materials, capturing not only food but also chefs, servers and customers in the restaurants.
The experience was transformative.
“I was just taken by the presentation of foods, the plating, the way the staff interacted with the food, the preparation of food with steam coming off of it,” he said. Goldsmith recalls a moment when splattered bacon grease caused a momentary flame to shoot up around a pan — an impromptu scene that sparked a photojournalist’s reaction.
Most food photography, he said, is highly staged, with plates arranged just so. As a photojournalist, he habitually “reacts to things without preconception,” leading to food images that feel spontaneous and natural.
He went above and beyond with the California Pizza Kitchen assignment, submitting many extra images because he was so captivated with “the geometric shapes, crumbs on the table, spills on the counter” and the other elements he discovered in his first foray into food photography.
It turned out that he had good timing. Goldsmith noted that his style of food photography, including crumbs and spills, is coming into vogue, so the restaurant executives liked his extra images and hired him to shoot “Taste of the Seasons,” California Pizza Kitchen’s latest cookbook. The book is being sold in CPK stores nationwide, with proceeds benefiting children’s charities.
For the cookbook, he photographed fishermen in Seattle, dairy cattle in Wisconsin, an olive ranch in Northern California and an organic farm in Southern California. Journalistic assignments have taken him to 49 states as well as many other countries.
Goldsmith grew up in Indiana and spent the first seven years of his career at the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky. He moved to Pittsburgh 25 years ago in part because he loved the city from a photographic perspective. He also believed it would make a good home base because it has major league sports teams and Fortune 500 companies, but not a lot of freelance photojournalists.
He continues to work in traditional photojournalism as well as food. For National Geographic, he photographed environmental effects of Marcellus Shale drilling. He also worked on the same subject through a separate Heinz Endowments-backed project. More recently, he has worked as part of a team shooting a similar project on air quality in Western Pennsylvania. The air quality project will result in books and traveling shows; one show is on exhibition at Pittsburgh Filmmakers through Feb. 26.
For online examples of Goldsmith’s food photography, see his website at eatdrinkbemerryphotos.com. For his other work, see scottgoldsmith.com, the-msdp.us (Marcellus Shale project) and air.thedocumentaryworks.org (air quality project).
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