Ever since I was young I have been studying art. My family is heavily involved in the agricultural industry but my Mom was an artist, four of my cousins either made a living creating art or could have. We have an interesting mix of people in our family tree.
I was a late bloomer with a camera. At the ripe old age of 25 my parents gave me my first camera, a Canon AE1 35mm, and it changed my life. I got very serious about creating images almost immediately. in short order I had opened a commercial photography studio after finishing a degree in Information Communication Studies. Fairly quickly I was creating story images for many of the front line retail computer magazines. I love’d working for editorial clients because they gave me a great deal of creative freedom and control. I enjoyed a period of success but I wanted more challenge and then came an opportunity to photograph food.
My big grabber in any type of photographic image, is texture. I love texture. Food photography is full of texture. My first food client was a company called WebVan. They were an early online grocery delivery company and they hired me to provide them with beauty images for the food categories for their website. I loved the work so of course I wanted more and about that time an art director friend from the high-tech world called and asked if I was interested in photographing food for cookbooks. It was a no brainer to me so naturally I said yes. Turns out she was working on a series of books for “Joy of Cooking”. Yes that Joy of Cooking. I shot the instructional images for most of the series. Thirteen books later they asked if I would be interested in working on a book for the Culinary Institute of America called “Cooking At Home With The Culinary Institute of America”. Long story short that project lead to working with Bon Appetite Magazine. Since that time I have worked with a variety of companies doing all sorts of interesting projects.
Now I have taken a bit of a turn to start photographing buildings. Talk about texture.
Michael Falconer Photography Copyright 2025