All language subtitles for 01-01-Meet Rob Grimm.mp4

My name is Rob Grimm.

I am a commercial photographer
and I specialize in food, beverage

and product photography.

I started out as a product photographer.

I was working in another photo studio.

That's where I apprenticed,

and that was here in Saint Louis,
where I really kind of was full time

at one studio and had a chance to dig in
and really apprentice at one place

and coming up through them and being able
to be introduced to their clients.

That's when I got my first taste,
if you will, of food photography.

The overall goal in effective food

photography is to evoke
appetite appeal in the viewer.

Food is one of the most photographed
objects.

Go down a grocery aisle.

You'll see thousands and thousands
and thousands of images.

We're selling food,
so we have to make them feel hungry.

You instantly have to go, Oh, I want that.

That looks good.

So I think one of the greatest things
that a food photographer can can do

outside of having
their equipment is understand

that they have to evoke emotion
in their viewer.

So they need to pick up some tools
and some props and some techniques

that are going to convey
that to their audience.

Almost every art buyer, art director,

they almost all comment
that, wow, his stuff is bold and graphic.

At the same time,
it gives it an appetite appeal.

It really kind of makes
people want to draw in to it.

So I think what I've been able to do in
in my approach to the food is kind of boil

it down to a simplicity that really makes

the food heroic.

My culinary skills have gotten a lot
better since I've been shooting food

photography, and I've had an opportunity
to be around some incredible chefs

and some incredible food stylists
who have mad skills

when it comes to working with food.

So I've just always loved cooking.

I love being in the kitchen.

My approach,
could that be called obsessive?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm definitely a perfectionist.

I guess I'm a little bit

in tune with the details.

Can you say?

I would absolutely describe myself
as a businessman and an artist.

When I went off to college,
I went into the business school

and I spent a little time
in the business school

before actually shifting gears
and going to get my BFA.

So I did spend time kind of understanding
the foundations of business.

And without question, that has helped me
maintain presence in this market.

I got into teaching recently.

I've always done lecturing.

I've always had students come through
the studio for, I know, 15 years.

They bring their class through.

I sit down with them for a couple of hours
and talk to them about what I do,

how I do it, how you can actually be
a professional artist.

And and I want
I've always wanted to kind of share that.

So just in the last couple of years,
I've started to change what I was doing

in terms of just lecturing to students
and going out and actually doing workshops

and working on a much
broader educational platform.

My dad
was a it was an artist and an art teacher.

He was a ceramicist,
a jewelry maker, a photographer.

I mean, growing up with him was amazing.

In fact, some of my earliest memories,
which are

some of my most formative memories,
I was probably five years old

sitting on my dad's lap at the potter's
wheel and he's running the paddle

and the Potters.

We all had one hand around my waist
and the other helping me make a pot.

Very cool, great way to grow up.

I have never met
a student of his former student

who didn't say that
my father had a huge impact

on them personally
and he had thousands of students.

That's really a rewarding thing
to hear about your father.

And I think
that just coming from a line of teachers,

I have had a grandmother
that was a teacher, a great grandfather.

There was a teacher, a father.

It just there's a lineage of education
in my family.

So now I've got the bug
and I very much feel my my father

kind of channeling
through me. And I love it.