A facebook memory popped up the other day, I guess it must have been around 5 years ago that I went to do a photography shoot with Leicester photographer Scott Choucino at his studios which were then above the Landsdowne Pub on London Rd. I’d known Scott for a few years though my restaurants where he’d occasionally come along to take photographs of performing musicians and sometimes my food.
He’d been looking to get into professional food photography, and I, well, I had no idea what I was doing- I’d sold my restaurants and was in the period that in my best selling memoirs will be affectionately titled ‘the wilderness years’ selling my soul and creativity to heinous freelancing chef work around the country. But I guess he knew me as a ‘food guy’ so we got together to take a few photos, seemed like a fun idea.
This inadvertently started me in the direction of being a ‘food creative’, working at first on Stills, then TV ads and on TV series behind and in front of the camera. As luck would have it, this co-incided with the food stylist increasingly being required to create more natural lifestyle images rather than the ‘glued and glazed’ trickery for which they are so often stereotyped. My knowledge of food from 20 years as a chef and an eye for simply what looked good therefor served me well from the get go. Learning to manoeuvre nimbly around set in my size 12 Etnies without knocking over lighting rigs or jolting camera set ups mid- stop motion was a required skill set I soon discovered too. Its been awesome discovering a new creative path and i’m grateful to Scott for nudging me in this direction.
It was around the same time I discovered the need for photography backgrounds. If you’d asked me then what a photography backdrop was i’d have immediately pictured the patchy blue paper roll that framed my basin haircut and awkward forced smile in my 1980’s primary school mugshot. Flicking through copies of Jamie magazine looking for food ideas to emulate with Scott, it was apparent that things had moved on a little in the food styling background game. My girlfriend at the time had knocked up a couple of painted surfaces to use (one of which Deep Copper, is still one of the designs I make) and the ideation formed that these could be a product to sell online.
Starting from home, literally on the kitchen table after the school run, we set up a small range and got our first few orders. To be honest I cringe a little at our first products, not the surfaces themselves, they weren’t bad (although the textures and techniques have progressed a long way), but frankly if my woodwork teacher knew i’d started a business that involved any element of joinery he’d be spinning in his grave. (Note-the joinery is now thankfully outsourced to a professional!). However i’d like to think my Art teacher would be less surprised, he was a cool guy and a talented artist who tried (and failed) to get me to continue with art- (I followed the science route before coming a chef), so there is something nice about finding myself 25 years later with an actual artist studio, pretending to be an artist.
Our ‘Peachy’ surface Photograph by David Loftus for Nathan Outlaw’s Cookbook -Copyright Bloomsbury Press 2019
The business has grown steadily and organically for the first few years. One wonderful element is the championing by my customer base, whilst i’ve never put together a formal affiliate scheme, (I might do when I find the time) the medium of Instagram has been a fantastic way of spreading the brand identity naturally. Once the surfaces enter the real world its awesome to see them popping up in feeds, online and in print. Its also notable how friendly and open the handful of other ‘background businesses’ dotted around the world are, each with their own identifiable style, it’s kind of a cool job.
A significant shift in 2019 has been towards supplying more and more custom surfaces direct to agencies for global brand campaigns, (KFC brought an unholy amount of red to the studio this year) I’m conscious of the scalability of my current studios and toying with the idea of setting up a separate printed range in 2020, although I’m fortunate my studios are in a creative and neighbourly area where i’m able to occasionally pull in creative helping hands and use my lovely neighbour’s at GraffHQ for extra studio space from time to time.
Canvas photography backgrounds in progress at GraffHQ
So that, in a nutshell is a little blog on what was initially a sideline business to fit around my food styling work that has grown steadily into a worldwide mail-order company for hand crafted surface art. If you’d like to know more, if this sounds like something you’d like to get involved in or if you want to take a look at the surfaces or even my lil studio, then do get in touch!
Tom
tom@woodrowstudios.co.uk
December 2019