Bolles Culture of Philanthropy 2025 Harvest Dinner

Chef’s Garden Catering & Events invited me to capture their catering and some candid photography at The Bolles School for their “Culture of Philanthropy” 2025 Harvest Dinner.

This was only my second time on the Bolles campus, the first time being in 2018 when I was just starting back at my agency job and was tasked with capturing hometown Olympian swimmer, Ryan Murphy, as he taught swimming lessons during a camp. Let me tell you, it is beautiful – and only a mile from my house! I’d kill for that river view on the daily.

Chef’s Garden did a beautiful job with the setting and the team were so extraordinarily nice – I’d just seen half of them the night before at the PRI event – we almost felt like coworkers! And continuing the theme of top-notch, the food was divine. This was my first event where I budged and took up the offer to have a bite. WOW! I’ve only ever had quail eggs before while living in South Korea, but never the fowl – it was so delicate and delicious. I hovelled over to my corner and finished it clean. They kept feeding me the courses and appetizers that I eventually had to relent and skip dessert and cocktails – I was here to work after all.

The sunset was beautiful, and then the lights came on. Black bands running through my shots due to a frequency offset that just did not want to cooperate with my Nikon Z8. I still love this camera, but not as much as I love Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop, and DaVinci Resolve for coming in clutch with denoising and de-banding  features.

Shots were feeling a little bit repetitive after awhile and there was already a “people” photographer on the scene taking staged shots with on-camera flash, so I took a more food-focused and voyeuristic approach when I did photograph people. I decided to switch over to video once I felt I captured a good amount of shots of each act of the dinner. Find the recap Reel at the end.