One of the things I love about working with food and photography, is the new relationships I've made and old connections rekindled. El mono loco is one of the latter. Bridget Seramafidis, (founder of El Mono Loco with her husband Stelios), and I first met in high school (Tauranga Girls College quite a number of years ago now!). We first reconnected through our mutual love for food when I was living in Stockholm, having just returned from Matthew Kenney’s raw culinary school in Los Angeles. Then I was spending all my spare time making and styling raw foods and posting on social media, while Bridget was busy working on super yachts in the Mediterranean. Back then I’d never held a proper camera, and El Mono Loco had not been born. Bridget happened to see one of my posts and now more recently, my photography.
Now both back in New Zealand, apart from seeing each other fleetingly at the Papamoa Domain night markets, Bridget and my first real meeting since high school was a couple of weeks ago when I turned up to shoot images for El mono loco’s website. Before going into the details of the shoot, might I say that El Mono Loco is a very cool and dynamic young business! Under the brand, Bridget and Stelios provide Peruvian fusion street from their epic food truck (check it out on their website!), gourmet catering and healthy takeout through the Delicioso arm. The result is a fine fusion of their backgrounds (Stelios is from Peru), and talents.
The shoot was designed to depict the catering part of the business, using a few select dishes from the menu as well as fresh produce. I wanted to go for a rustic organic feel, combining consistent backgrounds and incorporating Bridget to give a personal feel to the story.
We shot at Bridget’s parents house which was a dream – ending up with 2 kinds of light woods, and a white board as the settings for the food. White simple plates denoted the gourmet catering and minimal other styling touches enabled the food to shine. I really loved the way my neutral coloured apron and Bridget's ring were a consistent theme. This is what we came up with :)
