Michael Graydon

Thanks once again to Tara O’Brady for showing me the works of Michael Graydon. His photos are so inviting and have this sense of calm in them that I wouldn’t mind living in any of these photos (or maybe just buy a GIANT print and stare at it all day). I also admire the fact that he started photography when he was 16 years old. I can’t even remember what I did when I was 16 and I doubt I had any serious hobbies back then (yeah I was a boring kid).

Q. Can you tell me what you’re trying to capture when you take your food photos.
A. Beautiful light and rich shadows.

Q. You fell in love with photography when you were 16. What did photography mean to you then and what does it mean to you now?
A. At 16, I enjoyed the artistic and technical challenge and the trance it could put me in. Plus, I seemed naturally good at it. At the time, I wasn’t good at what kids were meant to be good at. I wasn’t good at schoolwork or sitting still for too long. I was good at photography and baseball. Photography is as exciting to me today as it was back then.

Q. What inspires you?
A. The people I work with, film and well made television. In fact there are times that the light, composition and set design in a show like Boardwalk Empire can be so distracting that I’ll miss entirely what the characters have said.

Q. Best meal you had in 2011?
A. I was fortunate to eat at Per Se in 2011 and it was excellent. It wasn’t necessarily about the place, it was more about watching Nikole’s face light up as each course was presented. For me, that made the meal magic.

All photos courtesy of Michael Graydon.