Featured Artist: Karen Burns

Happy Easter!

Today we are featuring artist, Karen Burns. She is a talented painter as well as a still-life photographer and teacher. Her eye for color and composition is exquisite. I know you will enjoy her beautiful images and story. Be sure to check out her photography workshop in the link at the bottom of the page.

Welcome Karen!

Thank you, Deb, for inviting me to be here on April Fool’s Day! Seriously, I’m very happy to share a bit about my work with you and your readers.

I’ve had a camera in hand for many years of travel, tasting, and teaching. Over the years my photography style has changed. Still life shooting gradually merged with food photography and that seems to be where I am at the moment. This shift in focus has also sparked a renewed interest in my cooking and baking!

It’s all so interesting to me how the colors, the shapes, the props and a good composition can pull it all together. A set up can be very simple using just a few items, or it can have several props to help tell your story. This year’s spring tulips inspired a table setting with a bit of whimsy.

Hunting for special items to incorporate into a shoot is always great. I was very happy to find Made on 23rd. Their linens add wonderful color and movement to a scene. Deb and Heather have gone out of their way to help me with linen props, especially when they made me a linen bag for my floury-kitchen shoots. This is the first loaf of sourdough bread that I baked. I drive everyone crazy by needing to “shoot before we eat”!

I do have a lot of props and many of them are family items that have been handed down. I use the old farmhouse scale that was always in my mother’s kitchen. I use flatware, tins, teapots, and cookie cutters that belonged to my grandmother. And I’m always on the lookout for other ‘finds’ that will blend with my vintage style.

I live in Northern California between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe and am lucky to have some really great Farmer’s Markets available for produce. It makes me happy to find the leafy green tops that are just as beautiful as the vegetables, something you don’t always see at the grocery stores. The Farmer’s Markets are a great place to get food photography inspiration.

My business partner and I are teaching a Still Life/Food Photography workshop towards the end of April. Please feel free to check it out on the website. We would love to help you tell your story through photography. We will be covering composition, styling, lighting, backdrops, props, and more!