Zoom in: A plate of watermelon cubes, so richly colored they’re almost glowing, sits on a slab of purple-veined marble. The fruit is sprinkled with cilantro sprigs, deeply toasted pepitas and crumbs of white cheese. Lime wedges and more pumpkin seeds are scattered on the tabletop, and a halved watermelon rests on a live-edge wooden cutting board nearby.
Pull back: The marble is a vinyl sheet covering half of a gray plastic folding table. On the other half are a roll of pale orange tape, an open can of raspberry-lime Spindrift seltzer and a nearly empty bowl of dried-out soba noodles — remnants of a previous still life.
On a recent afternoon, photographer Clare Barboza, wearing cherry-red glasses, leaned over the composed side of the tableau, prettying up the lime wedges. Her “ancient” Canon EOS 5D Mark III camera perched on a tripod behind her. Cool winter light poured into the airy room from windows that stretch toward the 20-foot ceiling. Nearby, in a simple kitchen nook, Barboza’s food stylist, Gretchen Rude, seared corn for the next dish to be photographed.
In her Brattleboro workspace — inside an early 20th-century cotton mill that also houses Tavernier Chocolates, Back Roads Granola and a glassblowing studio — Barboza, 52, captures glamour shots of food for all kinds of media. After attending art school and working as a West Coast wedding photographer, she burned out and, in 2009, turned her attention and her camera toward the edible. Since then, she’s shot countless magazine spreads, product photos for national food brands such as Effie’s Homemade biscuits and more than three dozen cookbooks.
Barboza shares her knowledge with authors, recipe developers, bloggers and chefs by teaching photography workshops in person and online. In addition to those jobs, which keep her busy, she collaborates with her artist husband, Joe, on a business called Poppy Bee. That faux marble beneath the watermelon? It’s a backdrop surface sold by Poppy Bee, which aims to help content creators set the scene for any flavor of food photography, from luminous, sunny shots to candlelit arrangements with deep shadows and draped velvet.
To create their products, Barboza takes pictures of materials such as stone and wood, and her husband makes paintings that work well with food displays. They print both types of images on vinyl sheets and hand-finish them for durability. The sheets, which can be rolled up for storage or kept in a flat stack, are much more portable than slabs and boards.
The couple began creating backdrops because Barboza needed them for her work, and the ones on the market were too shiny or not pretty enough, or they didn’t hold up to the rigors of being smeared with hot honey or sprinkled with oily nuts. After a few successes, they realized they could sell the goods to other photographers.
Then, during the pandemic, when “I lost all of my jobs and everybody was out of work,” Barboza recalled, they made Poppy Bee their primary focus. On the website, visitors can browse the surfaces by color, material (metal, paint, stone, wood) and vibe (earthy, ombré, warm, weathered). A 2-by-3-foot piece costs $74. Larger, 3-by-4.5-foot selections are $154, and bundles of five — in either size — come with a discount.
Barboza and her family moved to Vermont in 2016, several years after she visited the state for a gig: She was tasked with photographing fruit for Calais food writer Rowan Jacobsen’s Apples of Uncommon Character: Heirlooms, Modern Classics, and Little-Known Wonders.
Many of the book’s reviewers referenced those full-page images of apples. “Beautifully photographed,” the Boston Globe said. NPR’s “Morning Edition” was more lyrical: “Like walking into a portrait gallery flooded with russet, bronzed masterpieces bathed in golden light.”
Recently Barboza has been shooting Lettuce Riot, a salad-themed book by Seattle chef Becky Selengut, with whom she has partnered on several projects. When Selengut was starting her first cookbook, Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes From the Pacific Coast, the chef figured she’d take her own pictures. “I [was] thinking that, as a chef, I knew exactly how to plate food for the book,” she explained.
But the publisher chose to hire Barboza, and as the author and photographer worked together, Selengut realized just how much labor goes into food photography. “It requires a tremendous amount of work: setting the mood and vision for a book, cooking the dishes, styling the shot, shooting, and the extensive postproduction work,” she said.
Since then, Barboza has worked on all of Selengut’s books; the in-progress Lettuce Riot includes the watermelon salad. Over approximately eight days, Barboza and Rude will cook, style and capture 75 images of 40 dishes, using a vast library of props to give each picture a distinctive look.
At this point, Selengut said, “We are such a team that if a publisher won’t let me use her as my photographer, I’ll pass on the deal. Simple as that.”
Food writer David Leite is another of Barboza’s frequent collaborators. In 1999 he founded Leite’s Culinaria, one of the first food-centric websites. He has since authored two books and earned three James Beard Awards — two for the website and one for a New York Times story on fried clams.
Leite, whose site is renowned for its thoroughly tested recipes and friendly yet authoritative tone, is also the proud owner of 65 Poppy Bee surfaces. To his husband’s chagrin, Leite buys new ones whenever they’re released.
On one occasion, enamored of a scarlet-and-black surface he’d added to his collection, Leite worked in reverse and developed a recipe for a pomegranate Basque cheesecake to complement the background. The writer is such a fan that he’s twice visited Brattleboro to attend Barboza’s workshops and has paid her to come to his Connecticut home and shoot for the website.
“Clare has taught me so much,” Leite said. “She doesn’t burden you with all the tech and all of the theory … It’s just about what you need.”
One of the most important things he’s learned from Barboza, he noted, is how to work with light and shadow. “I call it ‘sculpting light,’” Leite said. “She helped me understand how to use light to shape, to find texture, to tell a story.”
She helped me understand how to use light to shape,to find texture, to tell a story.
David Leite
Leite may be the most famous aficionado of Barboza’s workshops, but visitors from all over the country fly to Vermont to take them. Offered roughly six times per year, the multiday deep dives — on topics such as food styling, still life photography and “food photography on location” — cost around $1,200. Online workshops, which allow participants to skip the airfare and move through material at their own pace, range from $297 for a single class to $619 for a bundle.
Eventually, Barboza hopes to own land with a “big barn that’s a studio, where we could bring in teachers and do workshops,” she said. “Leading workshops and retreats is my passion. My purpose here on this Earth is not only to be a creative person but to help empower other people’s creativity.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Food Focused”
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