I have one celebrity interview to my credit: Lyle Lovett, in 1996. We met at his office in Tomball, Texas, a nondescript building behind the local Whataburger, and the conversation continued through dinner at a nearby Tex-Mex joint. The next morning we were back at his office, where I donned a helmet and hopped on the back of his BMW R1100GS for a ride out to the Trinity Lutheran Church cemetery, where some of his family is buried. We were there to talk motorcycles—I was working on the launch of a magazine called The Motorcycle Journal for my master’s degree—and Lovett was low-key but eventually forthcoming about his motocross days and his annual trip down the Baja peninsula with friends. It was a great story, but it never saw print because I didn’t get the photos to go with it. I don’t know what went wrong, but as you might remember of those bad ol’ pre-digital days, you never knew anything went wrong until the film came back blank. Regret over that long-ago glitch wells up every time I take photos for work—at least it did until I went digital. Now, taking pictures, especially of food and drink for this blog, is downright fun. Being the enterprising journalist that I am, I turned my quest for better images into a story about food photography that ran in today’s Kansas City Star. As Ben Pieper, co-creator of Four Foodies, says, it’s amazing how quickly food can look gross in a picture. The photos on his blog look downright tasty, though, as do Beth Bader’s on The Expatriate’s Kitchen. (As a side note: Bader is collaborating with Ali Wade Benjamin of Ali’s Cleaner Plate Club on a new book, due out in February.) Another blog featured in the piece is Too Many Cookies, launched by André du Broc, who’s baking his way through Martha Stewart’s cookie book to fulfill a pledge to donors for AIDS Walk Kansas City. For more culinary eye candy, check out David Morris’ work. And then go pick up your camera. You won’t regret it.
(The photo I wish I’d taken of Lyle Lovett, courtesy of Motorcyclist.)