Tips on BBQ Photography

0:00Welcome to the barbecue show, the Midwest show for burgers to brisket beats at a stake. We can back yard warriors to competition techniques. Here's our host, Stunt and Jake. It is us, the barbecue show with Stunt and Jake. Thanks so much for joining us once again. Almost a year five. Almost. Almost. Yes. It's the little victories in life folks that we have to, we have to undertake. Before I forget, because we always forget to do this, on the show today, yes, funny. We'll start at the beginning on the show today. Friend of the show, Andy Borner. Yeah, he's gonna join us talk a little bit about photography and social media and it's just it's one of those things I think interests me. So I think it interests the rest of everybody else about how we get better photos of our food because the cameras got to eat first. You know, I'm glad you brought that up because I think there's probably people listening and I go, I don't really care about taking pictures of my food. And when you suggested, we should talk about food

1:00pictures. And I thought right away, that's an excellent idea because we share pictures back and forth and we share pictures on our social media stuff for the BBQ show. That's great. And a lot of times my pictures is just terrible. Yeah, same. And in some of that and do it justice. Some of that is just me. But here's the thing, whether you are trying to start your own foodie webpage, social media page, whether you just like to share pictures with your friends, maybe you just want to remember stuff. Why not make the picture the food look as good as it tasted? Right. Absolutely. Because there are pictures of their food that we've make at my house sometimes, especially when we did the smoke at Saturday. I looked back at some of those pictures and I was like, that looks disgusting. That's terrible. You know, just like a silver, you know, aluminum pan with those little like like the pork shots in there. And it's, you know, it just looks bad. Why didn't I take those out and put them on a plate and arrange them 30 seconds, snap a decent picture. Yeah. So I think this is going to be more fun than than we possibly thought. I think so. And then

2:02plus on top of that, Andy is honestly a plethora of barbecue knowledge. So you'll enjoy just listening to him talk about life in general, I believe. He is. He's just a fun guy to have. He's got a firm get in here. He's one of those guys. He has a great attitude. He's funny. He's upbeat. And it just lives breathes barbecue. He does. He really does. And this, I mean, I don't want to give away the farm here, but he told us his license plates say barbecue man, BBQ man. That's a bold statement right there friends. That is tell you right now. And we learned a little something. If you're looking at personalized plates and you got Vikings plates, you can only go six digits. Yeah. I'll look back. Just because I got a room for the logo for the big helmet. All right. Well, now we've successfully wandered off topic. Once again, speaking of off topic, but on topic, I got to throw a shout out to listener Beth. Yeah. Beth stopped in the station this last week and said hi. And, uh, quite honestly, she wanted more information about Mike Young and prime sauce. Oh, very cool.

3:02PrimeSauceco.com, by the way, uh, give him a look. I think it'd be impressive. So Beth, thanks for listening. Thank you, Beth. We appreciate that very much. She's driving somewhere today. She told me she'll be driving. It was north. I don't know. New Prager. New London. New Spicer. Suite. Newfoundland. I don't know. Right now, Beth just drove into the ditch. She's like, these idiots never get it right. I don't know what's wrong with them. Anyway, what have you been up to? What have you been? What have you been cooking? Well, uh, we had what two days of spring this week that were absolutely phenomenal. That's right. Yeah. We had stakes on Tuesday nights. So that was, uh, very fun. Uh, both of the wife and I said, we're going to go to the gym. We're going to get better at this this week. Uh, this, we gave ourselves a little leeway in the beginning of the month. And now we got to get to it. So I had a new restaurant. I'm going to put a restaurant barbecue joint called the gym. Very nice. Right next to a strip club called the library. Brilliant. This is how we make our millions. I'm just saying. I love that. No, uh, so we went and worked out on Tuesday. And then we got home. And, uh,

4:07I said, I'm throwing stakes on the real quick. We had them already to go thinking that I was going to be a little later than I wanted it to be, but, uh, through them just on the black stone, uh, just quick, quick, you know, sear, sear and dough. But, uh, yeah, had stakes. And, uh, she had a side salad. I did not. And that was it. So that's all I got done in the grill this week, though. Nice. Something. At least I did something. I feel like that's, that's a big step. For me, uh, this week, it was, uh, chicken. Okay. All right. Well, full disclosure, it was two chicken sandwiches from Donald's. I failed us miserably. Normally I'm the guy who's like, I'm after it. Yeah, you are. It's midnight. I'm fired up smoker. And, uh, I didn't do anything this last weekend. I don't even remember why. Do we even have a week? You were sick last week. Guy was down hard. Yeah. So that's probably why. But I feel a much better. Thanks for asking. Uh, and I'm excited for this weekend. I remember we struggled through the show now. We are both like, uh, yeah. Yeah. It's going around. You live that for you guys. Sure. Everyone's very excited

5:08about that. So, uh, we, yeah, we made it through at any rate. So, um, excited to have any bottom in on the show. I was noticing, uh, you used your blackstone. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, how did it do? Templates? Cause it was a little warmer when you did it. It was warmer on, uh, it was getting colder. The wind picked up Tuesday night by the time I got on the blackstone, but it did fairly well. I mean, I had it kind of, uh, honestly, uh, the truck was out of the garage, so I had it basically just right under the, the lip of the garage door. Uh, so I was, for the most part, out of the wind, it whipped, come, they came in there a little bit, but there was a night, uh, last weekend when my wife was like, do you want to, do you want to grill these? Or do you want to put them on the smoker? And it was, the wind was blowing and I said, man, I'm just, I've got to the point now. If I have to drag stuff into the garage itself, I'm like, that's just, cause especially with the smoker, if you pull it into the garage, then the whole garage thinks like smoke for a week and a half. Yeah. I know I'm taking my man card now, but it's, uh, I was like, I don't know. And it just seems like a lot of, uh, a lot of screwing around. So the Instapot got some uses last week. Okay. With some, uh, some, uh, country style pork ribs.

6:12You know, it's, it's funny. You say that because we did a crockpot show last year. Mm-hmm. And I think, uh, I feel bad because I have not done that money crockpot meals this year. Instapot, crockpot, all the same for the most part. And I, I think looking back on that, I feel like you're not just on that episode. I wanted to do more of those items this year and just kind of talk about different things because it's super easy to do that when you run home for lunch and then get it ready for the night. And, uh, we didn't, I've not barely done that. So you got the Instapot going. So I cut you off only to share that. But the, uh, and I would venture to say, and I don't, you know, far be it for me to stir the pot. Is there a pot where there's crockpot or Instapot? Uh, two different things. Your crockpot low and slow. Oh, yes. That's what you're saying. Instapot. I mean, my wife can get home from work at five and throw a pot roast in and we're eating at six thirty seven. Yeah. And that's the advantage to the Instapot. Uh, I wasn't, we could probably do a whole show on Instapots. But, uh, I forgot about this speaking of Instapot. My wife did homemade yogurt homemade yogurt in the Instapot. What? Uh, which is funny because yogurt, I guess I didn't

7:13know this is similar to sourdough. And she's like, I'm making yogurt. I mean, I've always wanted I'm going to try it. I'm going to go, okay. She's like, all this is a gallon of milk and then, and then you have to buy some yogurt. Wait, wait, wait. I said, I'll hold up now. Uh, back up, you need the culture of the already made yogurt to start. You got to have that that just like with yeast and anything else, just like a sourdough, you have to have that starter, that original starter. And that's why you have to go buy a little thing of yogurt. So my eating ingredient of yogurt is yogurt. Got it. Yeah. If you're considering yogurt in your Instapot. And I think you should. It's kind of fun. It's kind of neat. You can do different ways when it's done. It's kind of soupy and runny. And then you can strain it through cheesecloth. You let it sit for like a day and all the moisture runs out. And you kind of like squeeze out the way. And then you've got a firmer more of a Greek style yogurt. Interesting. And then she took that and that was delicious. And then you add, I think it was condensed sweet and milk and mix that in. And then it becomes a sweeter yogurt instead of that real tarty Greek style yogurt. That way. And then you can add stuff too

8:18if you want pro tip. Yeah. We learned a hard way with the spot at our house. When you're done, when the yogurt is done cooking and you pour the yogurt out of the Instapot, do not scrape the bowl with a spatula, the container. Okay. Because what you'll get is you'll get a line of what looks like yogurt stuck to it. But that actually becomes milk solids. And then when you eat the yogurt, you're like, I'm going to put a little piece of paper and it's the little milk solids that stay in there because they got firm and solid up against that. So leave that in there, scrape those solids out and throw them away. What the way is that the name of it's actually milk solids? Yeah. All right. Yeah. I feel like I just heard an episode of a pioneer woman that's making stuff the old fashioned way. Gonna make some yogurt. And she told me this is where she poked me. She said, we're going to make yogurt. Go out and churn this butter into yogurt. And I never was I never was able to make it any yogurt. I never made it. I didn't make butter either. Oh, well, I buy my butter at the store. I'm an American. There we go. Maybe we should try it up. No, we're not going to turn butter. What we are going to do is chat with our good friend,

9:22Andy Boderman. And he's got a wealth of knowledge. I think people are going to be surprised at how easy it is to take your food pictures to another level. And what I learned with chatting with him is you don't hold the steak further out in front of you like a fish like a fish to the camera. That's not the trick. I refuse to believe that. I know. It seems like it should work, but I guess you know what? If you want to take those pictures, hit us up. We'd love to see a BBQ show on the socials. We'll take a break right back after this. All right, we're back. The BBQ shows stunt and Jake and our very, very special return guy. Is this the hat trick? This is the hat trick. Andy Boderman, you might know him better as the BBQ man. Yes, it is. Hey, you're drawing this show. Jay, thanks for having me guys. I always look

10:24forward to this and really glad I could come down and do a hat trick. Well, we love having you on because you're the guy we can go to for literally whatever we're just stuck in our crop. From the utility guy. Right. Right. You know, we talked knives. We did a burger episode, another entire episode about burgers. Yeah. And today we're going to do, we're going to cover a lot of bases, but our main topic we want to get into eventually is photography. Yeah. And I think it's an overlooked thing, not just realtors need professional photography, but BBQ people too. BBQ people too, because we all take pictures of our food. I mean, we're like, do we start with Facebook? I feel like yeah, yeah, social media is Facebook. Yeah, remember what Facebook started. It was cat videos and pictures of your food. Yes. That was all it was back before like politics became a thing. Yes. Yeah. And before that, it was my space. Right. And there was a limited amount. You could only have so many photos. And I remember I was just thinking about this the other day. The movie 300 came out and my space did a whole big promotion with the movie 300 where you

11:26could upload up to 300 photos to your my space. Right. And that was like mind blowing to us. I was like 300 photos online. It's crazy. Where are they going to host this? My, my space was great, but I had one friend. It was Tom. Yeah. Everybody had Tom. Can I give Tom a shout out? He just like he was there. He started this thing. He got his money and he got out. He just disappeared. He had no ambitions to go rule the world or do anything as a, you know, super rich billionaire. Yeah. He was just like, I'm peace and out guys. Thank you. And for that, Tom, we all thank you. And thank you for being our friends. Yeah. Yeah. Living somewhere, you know, raising kids. Yeah. Not worrying about that. How can we never go to work? Yeah. We don't got dad started a little thing once and I heard a rumor not to get us off topic. No. Hey, I heard a rumor within the last few months that he's like coming back trying to do some relaunch of not my space, but he's somehow got in with the member of the original vines.

12:29Oh, yeah. Which with the Reels were and ticked me for TikTok and Reels. So yeah, at their time. Yeah. And I heard that he had somehow become partners with the vine folks and they were going to try to relaunch vine and make it this thing. Yeah. Yeah. Do you see that online? Maybe. That's probably true then. Yeah. Yeah. That checks it out. Yeah. AI helped you with that. No, no. It was on the intro webbing. That's gonna be real. Don't it? All right. Before we get into barbecue photography. Yeah. What have you been up to, man? We haven't seen you in a few months. How you been? Yeah. Just I think I've been good. Really trying to kind of launch the barbecue with Boater and Business into the next next phase of whatever that looks like. A lot of corporate classes and things like that. So that's kind of my bread and butter. I work with with companies who are trying to, you know, provide their client base or potential leads. Sure. They'll come on. They'll do, you know, a spiel and present to them. And then I come on. We ship everybody a stake and then I show them how to cook it. It's high quality, wago stuff. The thing that most

13:34people are really afraid to cook because it's, you know, it's too expensive, quote, unquote. So it's really fun to go in and kind of get people amped up about that and give them the confidence to look at, you know, a hundred dollar stake and feel confident that they can cook it well. So you said you come on. So you're doing this online? I'm doing this online. Really? I work with companies, a gigantic, you know, huge, big, crazy corporations. But not food companies. I think almost like an extra thing for like a 3M. Yeah. I've actually kind of found myself in the cybersecurity space oddly enough. Okay. So I do a lot of work with cybersecurity companies that are doing a lot of B2B stuff, trying to get the senior leadership of some of these gigantic corporations to sign on with them to be there. Yeah. They're showing the nerds that they know how to do a firewall, but we also know how to do a fire in the grill. In the grill. Fireball. Fire is different now. I'll take that again. No, it's fine. We can delete this and you can go back.

14:37I'll leave it there. People need to know I'm human. I can't, everyone can't be a winner. I know. The downside to the one hour show now, no editing. No editing. You gotta hit it from, from the top. So yeah, that's what I've been focused on kind of growing that side of the business. Can I, can I, can I give you a tip? Sure. I mean, I'm just saying. And first of all, cybersecurity aside, nobody likes the Zoom deal. So here's what I'm presenting. Okay. A live show. Yeah. Which is an entertainment for these, these big corporations, you know, whether it's their company party or a retreat or whatever. But you bring the barbecue show with you and you do a barbecue grilling and magic where you show them how to make the steak and then stunt and I make it disappear. That's pretty good. Like magicians. Yeah. Let's talk. Let's talk after this. Because this is my magic knife. And this is my magic fork. Yeah. Some guys use a wand. We use the where it's cutlery the whole way. We'll punch that up in post also. See what

15:40well, good deal. That's good to hear. That's fun. That's got to be an avenue. I would think not many people have explored from barbecue. I fell into it, you know, during COVID when everybody was at home and so many of these companies were relying on Zoom to keep their business rolling. And honestly, most people kind of burned out on the Zoom happy hour. And so it became this whole thing of like, well, we're going to cook dinner. Right. And it just is kept going. And people love it because they can take, you know, their clients that are on the west coast, they can take their clients that are on the east coast and not have to fly everybody in and do the thing. We ship them a steak directly. So it's awesome. That's really cool. It's really fun. I can see here that that sounds pretty, uh, and it ties right perfectly into what we're going to talk about today because you can't do a Zoom type event like that without good video, good imaging so that they can, you know, kind of see it all, um, which leads to question two with regards to this

16:41and the show topic. Are you doing this by yourself? You have a cameraman. You got a producer, director. I mean, it's almost said to do it well. I would think you need at least a couple. Yeah, it's, uh, it's a, it's a bit of a production. We've got it dialed in pretty good. So it's my wife that runs the camera, um, and, you know, she's a photographer as well. So she's got an eye for this stuff. Uh, it, but honestly, it's, it's really live. And that's what I want to portray in these classes. I like to keep it laid back conversational. I don't want people to think that they're getting, you know, they're watching a speech. Yeah. Um, and so the video quality is incredible. It's really good. We're using very professional equipment. Um, but honestly, it's, it's a one camera operation. Okay. Um, as of right now, and we might, we might try to maybe do it into a two camera situation at some point, but I think people like the authenticity of literally watching a cook start from beginning to end, uh, and being able to ask questions in real time. Right. Instead of, you know,

17:43watching a YouTube video and then trying to reach out later or whatever. My new, uh, my new guilty pleasure has been TikTok, uh, grill talk. And the ones where people are like, I'm flat tops and restaurants making breakfast and everything else. I've been addicted to watching those. Oh, it's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. You can pick up so many cool little tips just from watching a, even a 30-second video. Yeah. So do you find that with the one, because in my mind, the one camera approach gives the viewer more of a point of view? Right. Like this is me. And so now I want to see better. So I'm going to move over to the side and I'm going to come up from above. And I, I could see where that would translate better than four cameras with four different angles and you're switching back and forth. And, you know, like we do with our magic slide of hand and camera tricks, you know, much better mirrors and such. So I could see where that would work. I could move that would be appealing. Yeah, we usually do, you know, uh, move the camera so that, you know, obviously in the winter time, um, I like to do like these steaks, uh, in cast iron, uh, on the stove. Yeah. And so like, we'll move and get a shot in the pan. That kind of thing. But yeah, it's, it's, it's awesome.

18:49That's really cool. Yeah. I didn't know you were taking off that, in that angle. I mean, I knew you're doing photography and stuff. I didn't know you're doing these classes. And that's a really cool angle. That, like you said, like Jake said, I guess it's, you just didn't think that was something that somebody would be having out there. I, when I was first asked to do it, I thought there is no way. Like, well, I didn't know it wouldn't work, but I was like, I have no idea if this is going to work. But let's try it. Right. Uh, and after we did the first one, it really took off and it was all word of mouth. Like we have not done any marketing. It's just people move and they go to different companies and they say, Hey, we did this fun thing. Um, sometimes the, the people who are invited as the students, you know, obviously some of them are senior leadership within other companies, they'll reach out and go, Hey, that thing that you did, we want to do it too. Right. Um, and so yeah, it's, uh, if you want to check it out, bbq with boderman.com, uh, you can sign up and, and reach out to us and we can get you a quote, we can customize whatever,

19:50you know, as far as cuts of me go, uh, whatever budget you've got, uh, we'll try to work within that as best we can and, and go from there. So that's really cool. That is, uh, it's kind of a new take on the old motivational speaking type thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you're keeping it simple, which much like Socrates, I've just come up with a, uh, a quote, I think people could live by sometimes less is more. Yes. Just didn't came over that in my head. Yeah. I know. Right. I think you just thought of that. Just like that. Wow. Just like that. Yeah. That's amazing. My puns are the problem. That's the problem. Yeah. Uh, I think your puns are great. I like puns. Everybody likes a good pun. Thanks. Yeah. Any who, uh, well, listen, we want to talk photography because I think that's, uh, definitely an important topic and that's, you know, kind of the reason we brought you in. Yeah. Uh, so let's do this. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back, uh, Andy Bowterman, his license plate is literally a BBQ man. So if you see him, let him merge in. Be nice. Be nice. Be nice. Yeah. Give a little, uh, sometimes less is more.

20:50Big soccer. I can't believe I did that. Uh, we'll talk more with Andy Bowterman when the barbecue show continues right after this. Fire that thing up, lick the dons and let's get grilling. You're doomed into the barbecue show. Wow. What do we pay these musicians? Uh, a flat fee. So I like the flat fees that we roll. Welcome to the flat fee show. Barbecue shows back, uh, stunt and Jake and our good friend Andy Bowterman is with us. We're finally going to get to our topic of the day, which is, uh, let's talk barbecue pictures, video photo stuff like that. Uh, we see it all over online, not just from restaurant, but people are cooking something and you get proud. I mean, right? You're proud. You want to show it off. It's just like a fish, uh, but a little bit different. And I've seen classes and seminars out there on how to properly take pictures of your fish or your deer or whatever it is. So you're, because you know, sometimes people like, I caught this huge fish and

21:50you're like, uh, that doesn't really look that great. Didn't do it justice or as stunt as can relate to this, the number of times I'm out in the middle of winter and I got the barbecue, I got the charcoal going and I've got a 35 shrimp on there and I'll take a picture of the grill. And of course, all you get is light from the charcoal coming through the shrimp. It was terrible. And I'm like, well, you can't really tell if those are shrimp. Right. So, uh, so first of all, what are some of the biggest mistakes people are making or where should we start? I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, with in regards to mistakes, uh, one thing about photography in general, not just food photography, but you want to show an interesting perspective. So one thing that a lot of people do will take a photo with their cell phone at the exact same angle that you would sit and eat that meal. It's not interesting. It's just not because this is how we view food all the time. So one of my number one

22:55recommendations, if you want better photos, try to find some angles that are not what human beings are used to viewing food. A good example of this is like burgers, for example, every time you have a burger, you're kind of looking at it from a 45 degree angle. Right. But if you notice, all of the photos that professional restaurants use and all that kind of stuff are straight on. Right. So you can really see the ingredients. You can see how tall it is. You can see the construction, the textures, all that kind of stuff. So just keep that in mind. And when you're taking photos of food, think about all of the components that are in there. Think about the color, the texture, you want to try to capture that as best you can. So number one tip, just off the bat. Try different angles. Try to do something that isn't normally seen by people. That is such an obvious thing. I don't know why I never thought of it. And 37 years I was a wedding guy and party planner,

23:59event planner. And I used to tell people all the time, listen, you're having your wedding in a venue where the minute people open their invitation, they're like, oh, Thomas, who's you're getting married, that's great. Oh, it's at the Blake Blake hotel. Oh, yeah, we've been to weddings there before. And they just took a snapshot of every other wedding they've been at in that facility. So the first thing you want to do to change their image is change the layout of the room. So when they walk in, it doesn't look like every other wedding they've seen in that place. Every other event they've seen in that place. Same thing with food. If you I never just you'd hit around that. All right. Thanks folks. We'll be back next week. Well, that's honestly what I expected to hear from this guy this week is some stuff that's like, well, duh, why? But it's something in general Jake and I talk with us often. We need to be better at video. We need to be better at photography for the show. Yeah. But half the time we forget, half the time it's the shot that he talked about. Yeah. And it's it's it's when we're so wrapped up into the cooking process. It's such an afterthought on how to take the photography for social media. And you got to let that camera eat first. Yeah. But how do you how do you remember to do that? And how do you get that photo to actually do

25:01yourself some justice? Yeah. And luckily in barbecue specifically, almost everything you're cook going to cook is going to have a rest period, right? Right. It might be wrapped up so you don't get the photo. But regardless, that rest period is really important to take take an extra five minutes and line up your shot. Um, this wife says that's my time to do dishes. So I wasn't that allowed to that. And and you should. Uh, but do that while it's on the speaker. Yeah. Okay. You know, if you get the next time I do a brisket, I'm not sending you a picture of my cooler. There's a brisk arresting. He said you take a photo while it's resting. Um, but yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, with a like great example is with a brisket rest. I mean, you can run anywhere to, you know, eight hours resting that, um, you know, between 40 minutes and eight hours. But at the end of the day, when you unwrap that, it's not going to instantly go

26:02cold on you. So just set aside some time to line up your shot. Um, if you want to get, you know, photos of the slices, uh, specifically with brisket, we all know it dies real quick on the board. Um, so make sure you get those photos right away. But don't slice the whole thing up. That's another, you know, tip, maybe get a couple slices, lay them out, get your photo, uh, because at the end of the day, too, I'm a big proponent of like everything that you see on my social media is meals that I've eaten. Right. I don't want to ruin that by, you know, taking too much time or doing something ridiculous with the setup so that it's not as enjoyable of an experience to eat at the end of it because I'm not sitting here doing photography for McDonald's where we're using glue instead of cheese and all that kind of right. You know what I mean? Well, I think that's the, I think people get, people want to take a snapshot of something they cooked and it never turns out well. But at the same time, you're, it's all about the grilling and the smoking experience,

27:02not about the photography experience. So you're not taking the time to make sure like, is this the right backdrop? Should I turn this the other way? Should I, you know, I'm going to go get a light quick hold on. Yeah. You know, you're just not thinking of those things. No, no. And that, that brings me to, I think, an equally important thing with any photography again is lighting. Right. Um, I have multiple lights at my disposal that are great, um, sort of flashes and things that I can use. I've got a ring light. If I need, you know, steady light for video work, that kind of thing. Um, the best light out there is natural light. The problem with using natural light is it's inconsistent. Um, you know, one day you got a great sunny blue sky day and the, and the sun coming in to your kitchen or whatever you're doing the photos is, is beautiful. And then the next day, it's cloudy and awful. And so you can't replicate that. So there's tons of lighting rigs available out there. Um, my biggest thing is just go out there and start playing around with it. See what

28:07works. Um, there's no magic when it comes to lighting. Sometimes things that are completely ridiculous work really well. So just play around. Um, have fun. See what, see what you can get. And, you know, with modern cell phones, they take amazing photos. You don't have to go spend tons of money on a DSLR camera and, you know, lenses and all that kind of stuff. Now I love photography. So that's what I do. Um, and if you want to do that, you certainly can. But given what most people are walking around with in their pocket, you can create amazing content with decent lighting and a cell phone. Try, try to do that. Try this one at home. No, honey, I need the new smoker. It's only 3,500 and I need this camera. It's on sale for 5,200. Welcome to my life. Yeah. Somehow, I can see that coming for sure. There's $2,700 lens because it might be a little bit sharper than the one I've got. Yeah. And are we selling these photos on food? Well, no, but I mean, it looks

29:09really good. Well, if you start a business where you're doing corporate, then you can write it all off. So that's what I like to hear. My favorite two words right off. Yeah. Who writes it off? That's fine. It just gets written off. Nobody pays for it to write off. Classic. Classic. So the next thing I want to ask about, because there's a couple of processes, two I want to get into, but let's cover the, let's cover the basics first location. I mean, take the pictures on the grill, take it off the grill, put, make sure you put in it. We see it all the time. I saw back drops. Well, we see it on social media all the time where somebody takes the selfie and they don't realize behind them is pile a laundry and, you know, yeah, kind of thing. Yeah. So background, super important. But I think even more importantly is something that you can replicate quickly without it being a big deal. Because at the end of the day, you've already put in all this work on the food, right? Now I got to go get a bunch of stuff

30:09and load it in and, you know, deal with all that. So my process, when it comes to food photography, I'm literally using one strobe, which is a, you know, a flash. And I keep it in a closet right in my entryway. I can quickly grab that, plug it in. I know what angles I want to have it at. And then I like to use a, I have a black cutting board that makes everything sort of pop. Play around with that. The only thing I will say is with wood cutting boards, especially lighter colors. The food isn't going to pop as much in those photos. So what if my ribs blend in with the black cutting board? It's good bark, right? Right? That is, I mean, when you're talking about a brisk and you get that true like Texas black bark on there, it can be tough. Yeah. That's a different cutting board then. Yeah. Yeah. And as far as like outside, I love taking photos on the grill.

31:13The thing about it is, as you know, most grills are very dark. You know, you've got the bottom that's usually the outside is black plus you've got the black bottom. So just be aware of your lighting when you're taking those photos. And sometimes I'll even pull out a flash outside just to kind of highlight everything like you were talking about with the shrimp losing some of that. You can definitely bring in artificial lighting to help that situation out. But move your grill. If you've got good lighting, that's happening naturally. Move it and see what you can get. I definitely spun the grill around on the patio to get a better sunlight in on it for a photo. See, I never do any of these things because like you guys mentioned, it's always an afterthought. Like, oh, I should take a picture of this quick. A lot of my grilling happens at night outside. And you look at the grill and it's got the fire underneath or it's whatever. And you're like, oh, that looks great. And then you take a picture of it. And then you look at the picture and maybe it was the flash or it wasn't the flood. And then you realize the first thing I always think of is,

32:15I can't post this picture because my grill is a mess. That's another thing. I'm one half of the barbecue show. This thing should be pristine, dang it. Clean your equipment before you take that photo call. But I mean, those are legit things. You know, part of it is just natural. I mean, it's just we're all human it to some extent. So location's good. Reflective surfaces obviously avoid taking a picture in front of a window or figure out figure out an angle that doesn't reflect. That's, you know, that might be if you do have a flash or an external light, you know, move it 15 degrees one way or, you know, move your camera to make sure that you're not getting that that that reflection. The other thing that just real quick on the topic of lighting that has made a huge difference in my photography is really think about where the light source is coming from. So in nature, you're never going to be standing directly in front of something and have it

33:18perfectly lit. If there's a light source behind you and you're standing in front of it, it will cast a shadow. Sure. If you have a photo where you're shooting directly at the food and the point of view is directly in front of it, it seems really unnatural because we as human beings are not used to seeing things lit perfectly when we are looking directly at them. If that makes sense. Right. So you want to have the light off to the side then? You want to have, you can do 45 degree angles. You can back light. You can do all sorts of different things, but shooting something straight on with the light also being straight on and like, you know, ducking down so you can get the photo without, you know, casting that shadow, it just when you look at that photo side by side with another photo where the light is different, it feels unnatural. Interesting. So once again, it's one of those things like, whoa, this is good. The light's straight on. This would be perfect. Yeah. You never would think that it looked unnatural, but at the same time it makes sense that it's

34:20it's when people draw things and they like intentionally know exactly where to put a shadow when they draw. Yeah. Like, how did you think that? Like, I just drew a face and you like added shadows on their nose. Like, what? Yep. Yep. Those are called artists. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They think about this. Yeah. Yeah. They, um, skills. What about process pictures? Like, here I am trimming the brisket. Here I am seasoning the brisket. Is any of that stuff necessary? I guess it depends on what you're while you're taking pictures. Yeah. Yeah. It completely depends on your audience. Um, you know, I like to show process, uh, in video more than I do photos. Okay. That being said, I've, there is some fun process photos that I've taken. Sometimes you can do a slow shutter speed or something like that to show the action of like, the knife coming down and maybe the knife is a little bit blurred because you did a, you know, longer exposure, uh, things like that. But honestly, you know, if, if the goal is to show what you're doing, um, video is a really

35:24good way to do process. So yeah, the trimming videos, I, you know, I've done the time lapse. So you can just see start to finish because very few people want to sit there and watch you, you know, hack away at a brisket for 30 minutes. Right. Yeah. So, yeah. Listener of the show did a video last week of them cooking dinner and like, going through the whole process and they sped it up. It was all, it was a time lapse. But it was so like, I was like jealous and like, I thought that was kind of cool to watch. And I was like, why don't I do this more often? What do you, could you just do that with the camera on a cell phone on a tripod or what do you need for that? Yeah. 100%. It all takes. I mean, I just, it was because it wasn't my no means like great photography. But yeah, at the same time, like, I was like, I want to do that. I'm sorry. Listener. He didn't mean that. I'm sure it was great. Because you're a listener and you're listening right now. Right. Yeah. Sorry. You did wonderful. No, honestly, um, again, like the modern cell phone is, is incredible. Now, if you have an iPhone

36:24or whatever phone you have, your onboard camera app is great. But there's also all of these secondary camera apps that can kind of unlock more features and more things. So I use a lot of those third party apps to try to get a little bit higher quality, maybe a little bit more depth of field things like that. But honestly, yeah, just get yourself a tripod, throw your camera up on there, your phone, get a good angle. That's an interesting angle. Again, we're talking about, you know, keep it interesting. Right. And just roll with it. And then, you know, anything that you don't want in there, you can add it out in post, just like this show, right? Correct. Yeah. Sounds like he's begging to get at it. So, so essentially what you're saying is that if you're doing video or you're doing photo, a lot of these same principles apply to either one. 100. Don't let it change your attitude. The visual medium is essentially the same when you look at

37:28a video versus a photo. Now, that being said, I take a lot more time and care with my photos because at the end of the day, I'm a photographer more than I am a videographer. Right. I am trying to get better at video. That being said, it's also a lot more commitment to take video and get multiple interesting angles. And when you're, you know, you've got grease all over your hands and you want to go move the camera and all that kind of stuff, it can be a little bit more difficult. So the thing no one sees in a movie is how when they went from this shot and then turned to the other shot in the room, they relit the whole scene and then redid it all and you're not just going to make that happen naturally. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. A little bit of a different, a little bit of a different prospect. Right. Yeah. How are you been still doing live classes? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Northern. Northern fire. Yeah. We got the schedule up for the first part of 2026. So I got a brisket class coming up. I think in April. Okay. Usually do a spring one and

38:31a fall one. And so that, that's my, typically my most popular class. It almost always sells out. So if you're interested in learning how to do brisket, start to finish, we do this kind of brisket boot camp. It's about three-ish hours. And the best part is you get to eat brisket at the end of it. That's not a bad gig right there. It's not a bad gig. It's a win. And yeah, we cook a appellate version and an offset smoker so people can really tell the difference instead of just arguing on the internet about it. That was my biggest thing when I started doing brisket classes because I've seen the arguments online. I was like, we're doing both. Right. Because I want people to physically taste A versus B, they can make the decision. And I think it's closer than a lot of people think. But come and be the judge. It's really, really fun. We have a good time. That's very cool. That's awesome. Andy Boderman are guest, the hat trick. We'll go for the grand slam. Let's do it. I like it. I like it a lot. So what was the website? Again, if people want to check

39:32out more details, BBQ with Boderman.com. That's B-O-T-E-R-M-A-N. Hey, thanks for being here, man. Oh, love it. Anytime, guys. We appreciate it very much. Just wait. One of these days is going to call and go, hey, Palmer's out. You're in. Let's do it. I'll let you know. All right. All right. His schedule is probably busy or mine. So one more quick break. We'll come back and wrap up the barbecue show right after this. All right. Let's wrap it up for another week. Andy Boderman. So great. It's a great guy. Just a fun kind of guy. He's so much fun to talk to and I'm going to talk him into taking us next time he goes on to Texas. He's bringing us with. He's glad I got to have him come with. Let us go with him. Yeah. We'll just we can hide in this suitcase. He's a big guy. I have never noticed. He'll he'll he'll love for us to come with him like that. Let's recap quickly. Lighting is important, but angle of the picture you take of your food is even more important. Absolutely. That it seems so simple. Why is it that sometimes the best fixes in life are the easiest fixes? It's just that our brains don't think that way. You know, I guess. I mean, like he said some about texture. You're like, you're trying to get texture in color. Well, yeah, but you're

40:35we're always taking straight on. He said the angle in the light. Like you said, it's just, okay, that will capture differently. I think for me, the only thing I've gone for me is that the pictures of my food are just as bad as all the other pictures on my phone. So turns out it's the guy on the other end of the phone. They're all the same. It's okay. Yeah. Thank you, Andy Boderman for joining us on the barbecue show. Most importantly, thank you for joining us each and every week. Remember, if you miss any part of the show, you can always catch us later. You can download it from wherever you get your podcast. Yeah, you can download it for podcasts. You can find us there. The BBQ show. Can always hit us up too. If you go to radiomancator.com, you can catch the live replays there as well. And we'd love to hear from you. As always, hit us up on social medias and we'd just love to chat anything. Absolutely. Next week on the show, not confirmed. So I will not say we have a big guest in the works, but I don't know if it's going to happen. Well, I hope he's famous. He what he is actually. What? Yeah. Never know. We'll see you next time on the barbecue show. Thanks for listening to the barbecue show with stunt and

41:38Jake. Missed an episode? Get up anytime on your favorite podcast platform. Just search for the BBQ show. Until next time, fire that thing up.