Annabelle Breakey
- Personal Background: Annabelle is a still life, food, and lifestyle photographer. As a child, she would always be crafting new things and making crazy foods. She lives in San Francisco, but her studio is specifically in the Dogpatch neighborhood. She first went to San Jose State University, but they didn’t offer enough photography classes for her, so she transferred to the Academy of Art University San Francisco and graduated in 1990. Breakey’s father is the leading cause of her success according to her, because he made her write a business plan for her career as a photographer so that he would approve of her decision.
- Style: Breakey loves “pretty things in pretty light”, according to her website (http://www.annabellebreakey.com/about/). Food photography is one of her strong suits, and many big companies like Starbucks, Burger King, McDonalds, and many more companies are partnered with her. She has been shooting for 20 years and enjoys the cycle of life and taking care of the planet, and she states that this corresponds to her food photos and style. Breakey also loves getting out of her comfort zone and shooting crazy travel photography.
- Philosophy: As an experienced photographer, Breakey believes that it is very hard but satisfying when she makes something more than personally memorable. She tries to incorporate taking care of the planet into her food photos and the cycle of life. She also works to include emotion into her photos, like happiness with bright colors and new patterns, or to evoke adventure with all of the different places she explores and takes photos at.
- Influences: Yes, Annabelle Breakey has influenced my photography. After I went through her website and learned more and more about her, I started to adapt her style of photography into my own. The fact that she partners with huge companies like Starbucks and McDonalds by herself is inspiring. I now enjoy landscape photography while traveling to many places over time. I have tried new ways of shooting food photography as well, with bright colors.
- Sources: 1. http://www.annabellebreakey.com/gallery/natural-light-food-photography/#!/73
6. Compare and Contrast: In the first image, Breakey was more focused on the beans, whie I was zoomed out more. She also had a different type of bean, but I think that they look relatively similar. I personally like that first picture the best out of all of the ones I took for this project. In the second picture, Breakey was farther away from the glass, and there were different bubbles near the top. On my photo I was closer to the ice cubes in the coke and I really focused on the bubbles forming on the ice cubes. In the third and final photo, I had an all white background and she had a pink tablecloth. Her strawberries were a bit smaller than the ones I used as well. We had very similar bowls and brightness of strawberries in the final images as you can see above.
7. Personal Artist Statement: Taking these photos for my final report was a little tricky but fun. I bought all of these items earlier in the day and found the perfect location in my house to take them in. My favorite one was the first, of the beans that I recreated. It is my favorite because I think it looks the most clean and simple. Overall, this was a fun project and I think that my photos resemble Annabelle Breakey's at least in some way.