Al Roker's Recipes to Live By

A new cookbook out today, with photos by yours truly

Photographing cookbooks is one of the best parts of my job, but the whole process seems like a fever dream when you’re finally holding the finished product. It starts with the excitement of booking the job, then the slog of planning and back-and-forth with the author/publisher/art department to ensure the shoot goes smoothly, which leads to long days in studio and on location, then even longer days sitting in front of the computer turning those images into gold.

And then…nothing. For months. Just long enough to almost forget that there are loads of images just waiting to be shared.

THEN… drumroll… publishing day arrives! For Al Roker’s Recipes to Live By, that’s today!

It was a joy to work on this project with Courtney Roker Laga (Al’s daughter, and the driving force behind the book), as well as spend some time photographing Al, Courtney and Deborah for the lifestyle images.

For a more detailed writeup on the process of bringing this book to life, along with fun behind-the-scenes photos and videos, take a look at the landing page I’ve dedicated to it.

I’ll be back in coming weeks with more posts about the nitty-gritty of planning and executing a cookbook, at least from a photographer’s perspective. But for now, I’m just thrilled to share this with you.

(Amazon links are affiliate links.)

Ahem…

Now that this cookbook has made its debut, I’d love to announce that I’ll be shooting another one soon! Marissa Rothkopf Bates of The Secret Life of Cookies is finalizing her recipes now, so we’ll have this baby wrapped up by the holidays. I may be 10 pounds heavier by then, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for art. Yeah, art.

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Links & things

The new D&G campaign stopped me in my tracks last week at Milan’s Malpensa airport. Stunning, glorious work by Steven Meisel.

Oh yeah, we went to Italy! Where it rained much of the time, so not many great pix. But I ate a lot of delicious food and probably consumed my weight in mortadella alone.

I’m sad this wasn’t a thing when I lived in NYC.

But my thing is bratty husky videos.

Tell stories and defeat evil with Yes Yes Marsha.

My Instagram algorithm remains unmatched.

This guy usually hangs out in our neighbor’s yard, but visited us a few weeks ago: