Multnomah County receives 15,000 reports of child abuse annually. Children’s Relief Nursery provides parents and children a connection to a healthier lifestyle. Every year they do a great fundraiser called the “Iron Chef” competition. As Polara’s main food photographer, my crew and I tried to help by photographing many of the talented chefs who donated [...]
Author Archives: Michael
The Bounty of Oregon – Eggs
February 15, 2012 – 3:26 pm
One of the fun things about being a food photographer is that I get to experiment a lot. The Bounty of Oregon project is one of my favorite experiments. It’s a series of photographs and videos that I’ve made in collaboration Jeremy Dunham our in-house videographer/guru, conceived to feature local ingredients in their natural state [...]
Playing with Laser Triggered Splash and Pour Photography
February 1, 2012 – 2:58 pm
Here at Polara we’ve said before that learning from your fellow photographers is simply the best way to learn photography, but there is one exception to that rule and that is “to learn to do it yourself”. When you can combine the two you are guaranteed a winning outcome. We had felt for sometime that [...]
In Remembrance of Steve Jobs
October 6, 2011 – 4:53 pm
When my daughter, who now is 23, was in middle school, it was time for the annual science fair. We were old hands by this time at science fairs having been through it a couple of times with her older brother. We had all the science project suggestion books (this was pre-Internet, if such a [...]
Portraits of Influence
October 4, 2011 – 1:48 pm
One of the wonders of photography is how time imbues images with power. These images are a series of Nobel Prize Laureates, former heads of state and famous political figures. Each of them traveled to Portland over the last couple of years as part of the World Affairs Council International Speaker Series. It is a step [...]
An Apple a Day or More!
January 18, 2011 – 12:32 pm
The Willamette Valley is painted with a green swath of farm and forested land, sitting between the Coast Range and the Cascades, making Oregon justifiably famous. In the last ten years, this cool and misty breadbasket of the Pacific Northwest has produced everything from Hazelnuts, Marionberries to award winning Pinot Noirs. Some people would argue [...]
The Bounty, of Oregon that is
August 12, 2010 – 9:45 am
One of the nicest things about working in a collaborative environment like Polara Studio is how we often “feed” off each others creativity for ideas, images and inspiration. Jeremy, one of our photographers, spent a weekend hunting for something that Oregon is rightfully famous for, mushrooms. He didn’t have much luck as these wonderfully tasty [...]
Pearfect – Pears and Vino Gelato
March 11, 2010 – 6:12 pm
It hard to believe it’s been almost 3 months since I posted. Between the holidays and a great studio party of almost 400 people the first part of this year has flown by. But as promised here’s another recipe from the Ponzi Vineyards Cookbook and honestly one of my favorite photographs in the book. Hope [...]
Finally a recipe link
December 28, 2009 – 2:39 pm
Here’s the first recipe from the new cookbook I promised to post. Everything shopped local and all the food photography natural, natural light, that is. I thought something hearty for winter…so to quote Nancy Ponzi…”Winter in the Willamette Valley is often, well, inevitably-cold, grey, damp and drizzly.It’s really not that uncomfortable outdoors, days of snow [...]