In another profession I used to cook vast amounts of this incredibly versatile crowd pleaser so the look on my face when this job landed was a broad smile. Picture research for a book on Mac & Cheese - yes please!
The 60 recipes created by Carol Hilker are so diverse and yet all really simple. There are mouth watering classics for your family and friends to incredible combinations like lobster or sriracha and prawns creating a lovely zingy taste sensation. I made the classic oven baked mac n cheese for my tennis finals day and it went in a heartbeat.
All recipes are in everyone's culinary scope and incredibly cost effective. Finding the photographs was a real blast and who knew you could make waffles from macaroni!
Glorious Boards: Sensational Spreads for Every Occasion - Jassy Davis
Do you have what it takes to throw together something tasty for unexpected guests dropping in on you or, what if the in-laws text they are just down the road and hungry? Harper Collins contacted us with this wonderful challenge to find pictures to accurately represent 60 recipe ideas for grazing boards. These come from the great, new fun trend for sharing platters and plates with your dinner club friends. Jassy Davis is the in-house recipe writer for Able&Cole and has collaborated on many cookbooks. Jassy’s delicious recipes cover charcuterie spreads and cheese boards for every occasion, theme and celebration.
Sharing food with those you love is deeply connected to our well being and the eye-catching and delectable grazing boards just look stunning and super easy to follow. We fully appreciated that also included are recipes you can do for one and still enjoy the satisfaction of making a great platter for watching a movie or study time of your favourite bites just for yourself. This is a book where there is something for everyone to enjoy and to be able to make!
Out now from DK, I had a hand in developing the cover for the Star Wars Encyclopedia of Starfighters and Other Vehicles as well as assisting with the picture research and image selection - from the well known to the blink and you’ll miss ‘em obscure - Hope it proves a fun resource for the galaxy far far away!
Selected postcards from the Tibet’s Secret Temple postcard pack
Merchandise produced for an exhibition at Wellcome Collection
As part of my day job at Wellcome, I worked as a picture researcher for the Wellcome Collection museum. I tracked down high resolution images of objects in each of the exhibitions, or arranged for them to be photographed. The images were eventually used in press, marketing collateral, gallery guides and merchandise.
Tibet’s Secret Temple explored Tibetan Buddhist yogic and meditational practice and their connections to physical and mental wellbeing. It was inspired by a series of 17th century murals from a private meditation chamber for Tibet’s Dalai Lamas in Lhasa’s Lukhang Temple.
Many of the objects featured in this exhibition were extremely rare. The show’s curators tracked them down either in private collections or through contacts in Tibet and Bhutan. As a result, there were very few high quality existing images of the artefacts and artwork. To obtain these images required me to liaise with multiple private collectors to arrange for photography, as well as work with collaborators in Bhutan and Tibet who were difficult to contact. As a result of this, this exhibition was the most challenging picture research project I have worked on.
Ruth King is based in Usborne's London office, and deals with picture research and rights clearance. Ruth's is quite an unusual role so, to get an idea of what she does, we've asked her to describe her picture research work for this week:
'Over the last week or so, amongst other projects, I have been searching for images for a book about World War One that we'll be publishing in November 2013, The Story of The First World War, and helping Megan Cullis, one of our in-house editor/writers, search for pictures to use in a book she's working on, about the Vikings. We're looking for original Viking artefacts, trying to seek out rare images of the beautifully crafted objects that the Vikings left behind.
As well as looking at commercial picture libraries, we contact specialist museums or amateur hobbyists, who may own photographs of their own. We try to get a selection of unusual ‘rare groove’ pictures that have been used only sparingly in the past, if at all. I love the idea that any child or adult will pick up our books and be wowed by the photographs or fine art inside.
This week we have found some exciting Viking pictures from the Museum of Antiquities in Stockholm. Here are three of them:
There is lots of great stuff on the website for the Stockholm Museum of National Antiquities - it's well worth a look (and they have a version in English).
For The Story of the First World War we are trying to incorporate colour images into the book, to break up the contemporary black and white photos. John Nash's ‘Over the Top’ or ‘Oppy Wood’, from the Imperial War Museum, could be useful in this way:
The website for The Imperial War Museum also full of fascinating information. The main museum, in London, is closed for refurbishment at the moment, due to re-open for the anniversary of World War One in 2014. But there are four other excellent Imperial War Museum Centres across the UK, which you can find out about on their website.'
The Story of the Vikings Sticker Book, by Megan Cullis is due to be published in November 2013. Other Usborne books about the Vikings can be seen on our website.
The Story of the First World War, by Paul Dowswell, is out in January 2014 but for more books on the world wars that are available now, you can visit www.usborne.com/worldwars.
