July 29, 2007 – Pyro Chef
36°59’48.15″N 121°35’4.49″W
Taken at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. This is what happens when you add cold calimari to hot oil. The bank of pyro chefs specialize in making big fire from small animals.
Big lesson in photography today. The Pyro Chefs are a signature event at the Festival, and a thrilling sight to see, so I thought it would make a great image for this photoblog. I shot dozens of pictures to get high dramatic flames, which is exactly what I got. But upon looking at the images at home I realized there really wasn’t a story behind the images. What I should have done is shoot images of the chefs, for that is where the story really is. The image you see here is the best I could do with what I had, it is a heavily cropped image showing less than 20% of the original photo. A better shot would have been focused on the cook rather than the flame, perhaps even cropped tighter, and would have expressed through lighting and heat distortion the furnace blast experience.
Next year I’ll get a great shot!