OYSTER-ology

Episode 36: Big Light Bad: Photo Stylist Adrienne Anderson’s Oyster Life

• Kevin Cox • Season 2 • Episode 36

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In this episode of OYSTER-ology, photo stylist Adrienne Anderson takes us inside the creative chaos behind Rowan Jacobsen’s The Essential Oyster, where she and photographer David Milosh spent a year transforming oysters into expressive portraits — tilting shells by fractions of an inch, battling over artistic style and learning to see each oyster as its own unique character. Adrienne explains how flavor, place and mood guide her styling choices, how visual stereotypes shape the way oysters are perceived, and why tension and limits are essential to making honest, compelling images. Her path — from washing dishes in New York to collaborating with Rowan Jacobsen to running the retail operations at one of the Pacific Northwests's most beloved oyster farms — is full of unlikely decisions, chance encounters, and relationships that quietly redirected the course of a life. And through it all, she leaves us with one unforgettable truth about photography and maybe life itself.

00:00 Introduction

00:45 Meet Adrian Anderson: From Janitor to Food Stylist

01:34 Journey to Photography and Food Styling

03:17 The New York Times Cooking Studio

04:48 The Oyster Connection: Meeting Rowan Jacobson

11:44 The Essential Oyster Project

15:16 The Art of Oyster Photography

21:28 The Influence of Oyster Photography

23:33 The Evolution of Gulf Oyster Farming

24:35 Creating Dynamic Photo Books

26:27 Transitioning Careers and New Projects

27:15 Life at Hama Hama

30:47 Oyster South and Community Involvement

33:30 Quickfire Questions on Photography

37:27 Memorable Oyster Experiences

40:19 Future Plans and Reflections

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TRANSCRIPT:  Big Light Bad: Photo Stylist Adrienne Anderson’s Oyster Life

 

Adrienne: I worked as a janitor in a cooking school. So, I think that we stole some kumamotos from the walk-in at some point and I'm sure we shucked them horribly. We didn't know what a kumamoto was, but you know, it was fun. I mean, we were sitting on these stainless steel prep tables stealing oysters, like… Don't do that! Okay. For restauranteurs I retract that from the record. I never said that stealing oysters was fun.

Kevin: And you haven't named the restaurant,

Adrienne: Well it was a cooking school, fortunately so.

Kevin: They had tons of them laying around,

Adrienne: Yeah. Oh, you should absolutely steal oysters from a cooking school. Never steal them from a restaurant. But in pursuit of education, sometimes you do what you have to do.

[bubbles]

Welcome to OYSTER-ology, a podcast about oysters, aquaculture, and everything from spat to shuck. I'm your host and the Foodwalker, Kevin Cox. My guest today is a person you can thank -- or blame -- for making oysters look way sexier than you ever thought possible. Adrienne Anderson is the photo stylist behind the jaw dropping images at Rowan Jacobson's, The Essential Oyster, the book that makes people look at oysters and say, “Damn, those things are gorgeous.”

Adrienne's story is wonderfully chaotic. Through New York kitchen dish pits and photo studios, a lucky collision of timing technology and Brooklyn's food scene led Adrienne to build a studio with photographer David Malosh, and eventually to lead the New York Times Cooking photo and video studio. In our conversation, Adrienne and I break down the art and chaos of capturing the book's oyster images -- or how to make a rock filled with meat look unique. We talk about how lighting is everything and how images can reinforce or explode the shellfish perceptions we have. Through accidental opportunities and relationships that pulled her deeper into the oyster universe than she ever planned to go, Adrienne's oyster life didn't stop with The Essential Oyster. She's part of the brain trust at Oyster South, helping to support the important southern US aquaculture community. And she manages the retail business of Hama Hama Oysters on the shore of Washington's Hood Canal, where her backup plan somehow became her real life. It's a lively conversation about creativity, community, and the strange, beautiful detours that define her remarkable journey.

So adjust your lighting and arrange your oysters to reveal their true styles. As we hear about emotional movie screenings; the benefits of being a dishwasher; why not to go to culinary school; how to take great pictures of your food; the tension of the creative process; the fun of a three day science party; poor planning, bad ideas, wild coincidences; and a bike ride that changed everything, with photo stylist photographer, retail manager, special projects coordinator, and co-creator of one of the oyster world's most iconic books. Adrienne Anderson.

 [bubbles]

Kevin: Adrienne Anderson, welcome to OYSTER-ology. I met you some months ago for the first time at Hama Hama on Hood Canal and it was such a pleasure and I am so excited to have you as a guest on OYSTER-ology.So welcome and thank you for being here.

Adrienne: Thanks, Kevin. I'm happy to be here.

Kevin: You have done a lot of different things. You're a photo stylist but you're also with Hamma Hamma Oysters on Hood Canal, and you're also with Oyster South Organization. What's your background and what kind of led you to photography and styling and food and that sort of thing?

Adrienne: Ooh, that is a great question and I wish I had an answer for you. It's probably gonna take me my entire lifetime to figure it out. So this might be the first attempt for me to do that. What led me to photography? I would say that it could have been any kind of visual art since I was a kid. My earliest memories were always making images. So I don't know where that instinct came from, but it's been with me as long as I've been alive. I would've loved to go to art school, but art school is really expensive and honestly just like couldn't afford the supplies when it was, I was about college age. So, it was never something that I pursued with any kind of professional training. And I ended up in New York as a cook because I wanted to travel the world. And I had this idea that if I had experience washing dishes. I would be able to walk into a kitchen anywhere in the world and work as a dishwasher for the night and make enough money to get like a hostile room, and then I could spend a few days in that city.

So this was the extent of the plan that I had. I loved cooking and food. It's always been part of, I think the same creative impulse that pictures that pull, that's exercised on me. So I moved to New York. I started cooking. I started working in restaurants, and eventually an opportunity came together for me to start working in food photography. And I just had an incredibly lucky encounter and got into a food styling assistant and then kind of apprenticed my way up into a full food stylist. And it just it just happened that I got into this career where I could make a living, helping make pictures of food.

Kevin: And you actually were involved with the New York Times cooking photo video studio operation. 

Adrienne: I was, I was about 15 years after this. a couple steps that happened between me becoming a food stylist and leading the design of the NYT cooking photo and video studio in Manhattan. And the biggest piece between those was in 2011 after I'd stopped working as a professional sous chef and had made the transition fully into food styling. So I was freelancing, starting to figure out how to, how to run my own business. And found a tremendous business partner in photographer David Milosh, who was a great friend of mine. And we like all best friends thought, wouldn't it be great if we ran a business together?

Kevin: Yeah, right. Except you really did it.

Adrienne: Well, yeah. we did it. We in 2011 or so, we started building what at the time was the first studio to kind of capture the zeitgeist that was still happening in the Brooklyn food scene at that moment. We weren't the ones to start the first food photography in studio Brooklyn, because we were geniuses. It happened because it just, we were doing what we were doing at a time when the technology changed and when digital photography suddenly became accessible then you could have a studio anywhere.

Kevin: Okay, so why oysters?

Adrienne: Why oysters? It was not a conscious decision. Rowan Jacobson is why oysters. I met Rowan kind of in the same way that I could have met any other collaborator, which is again just, just like poor planning, bad ideas and wild coincidences. I was bike packing around the Catskills with a couple of friends one weekend. So, we saw a sign at an apple orchard for cider tasting. We were talking with the apple farmer and finally he's like, listen, you guys seem like nerds. You might like this book that just came out. It's called Apples of Uncommon Character. It's by this guy Rowan Jacobson. And I was like, never heard of him. Gotta look that guy up. So I went home, picked up the book, started reading it and was like, dang, this guy can write seriously. I'm like, I wanna know him. so I looked him up and he was doing an event in New Hampshire. It's like a four and a half hour drive to Portsmouth. Okay.I'll, I'll go, I'll go to this event. So I got a ticket and I got there and it's like the crowd is maybe like, retirees who'd been listening to NPR that afternoon and just needed anything to do that night. and the host is like, what are you here for? I said, the Roman Jacobson Apple dinner. And they looked horrified and felt so sorry for me for having such a bad idea that they just, they're like, obviously you're insane or desperate or something, so you're, we're just gonna seat you with Rowan. So that's how we met. Oh my God. I ended up, I got seated with, I just sat with him and we exchanged contact information. And then a couple months later, he just texted me. He was like, hey, you're a photo stylist, right? I got this idea. I wrote this other book about oysters. I wanna write a new book about oysters, but I want to have a lot more photography. And I remember you being insane and having access to a photo studio in Brooklyn. Do you wanna help me produce this book? And of course I said, yes.

Kevin: It's funny because when I first got involved in oysters and wanted to learn everything about it the first book I ever read about it, and the first person I ever realized was the expert was Rowan also. And so a couple of years later, I decided to start this little podcast. And I thought, well, I got to get that guy as a guest. And it's like, he's never gonna talk to me on some unknown new podcast. But I figured, what the hell? I shot a note to him and he immediately said, yeah, let's do it. And he was my first guest on this podcast, so,

Adrienne:  That's amazing.

Kevin: Okay, so you started working with Rowan and David was involved in that with you as well,

Adrienne: Yeah. I went to David with just, unrelenting enthusiasm for the project that this would be a good idea and that, that it would maybe turn into like some kind of calling card that we could use. We'd do it as a passion project and that, we would, we would get enough money to at least like pay for our travel, we wouldn't get paid for the work on it. I don't think either of us made a penny off of the actual creative labor we put into. But we got our expenses covered and got to meet all these people and all of the people and relationships that happened as a result of making that book have completely changed the course of my life. If I had refused to do it because there was no money involved at the time, I wouldn't be the person that I am today. I wouldn't do the work that I do. I wouldn't be in the places I am. So it all, I think, comes back to riding a bike around the Catskills one fall afternoon and saying, Hey, you guys wanna go in and ask some questions about cider? 

Kevin: Did you have any experience with oysters? Did you like oysters when this happened?

Adrienne: I think that I had maybe had a half a dozen oysters in my entire life. Before starting work on the Essential Oyster. I think I probably had, I had one as a kid growing up in Minnesota. And when I moved to New York to become a cook, I worked as a janitor in a cooking school. So, I think that we stole some kumamotos from the walk-in at some point to me and I, I'm sure we shucked them horribly. we didn't know what a kumamoto was, of course. But you know, it was fun. I mean, we were sitting on these stainless steel prep tables Stealing oysters, like I love it. Nothing. Don't do that! Okay. For restaurateurs I retract that from the record. I never said that stealing oysters was fun

Kevin: And you haven't named the restaurant,

Adrienne: Well it was a cooking school, fortunately so.

Kevin: Oh, that's right. So they had tons of them laying around, I'm sure, anyway.

Adrienne: Yeah. Oh, you should absolutely steal oysters from a cooking school. Never steal them from a restaurant. But in pursuit of education, sometimes you do what you have to do, 

Kevin: All for educational purposes. Did you go to culinary school?

Adrienne: No, I just I cleaned oatmeal bins at a culinary school. I had a couple different jobs. I lied my way into a job waitressing in Times Square. So I was waiting tables at a tourist trap in Times Square and working at a Starbucks across from the Waldorf Astoria to make enough money to pay for my $400 a month rent in Brooklyn. And then I was working on top of that, cleaning the cooking school. And during that time, one of the chef instructors there was like, Hey. You don't have to do this. I was like, what do you mean? She said, don't go to cooking school. And I said, aren't, don't you teach here? And she's like, yeah, it's you just get a job. Just go get a job. then she said, in fact I'm starting a little restaurant and I need some help. If you come and wash dishes, I'll teach you everything you need to know. You'll be a prep cook. You're gonna do everything because that's what people in restaurants do. You learn to do everything right. So she's like, you don't need to know what the five mother sauces are. You need to show up on time and be willing to dice onions for four hours in the correct way. And you need to do it fast and you need to work clean. And that's that. Everything else you'll just learn on the job. So I said, great, where do I sign?

 Kevin: Nothing beats practical real learning.

Adrienne: Yeah. Yeah. It's Julie Qiu and I were just talking about the importance of apprenticeship in oyster shucking and how it's so extremely hard to become a good shucker unless you have somebody standing right next to you taking the time to, to teach you. And it's a really difficult thing to learn how to do if you don't have this apprenticeship system. And, I am not an oyster farmer, but I spend a lot of time around oyster farmers and I think that, it's pretty, pretty similar thing when you're dealing with natural products that come from natural ecosystems you really just need, you need guidance because Yeah, every single thing changes every single day. And there's no rule book for any of this.

Kevin: The Essential Oyster Project with Rowan and with David. I think it was in 2016 you guys came out with it. But the book is still, I believe, the definitive authority on oysters and the variety of oysters and everything pretty much you need to know about oysters and it's a gorgeous book. You have so many photographs of so many oysters and they all stand on their own. So how do you approach a project where you make oysters, which to an untrained eye look kind of similar, look so distinctive and unique.

Adrienne: It was very challenging on that shoot because we didn't have any money and we were just doing it this ourselves. David and I were both functioning as, as the art director. We involved a lot of bickering, a lot of tension, a lot of hugging it out, a lot of not hugging it out simmering anger 4:00 AM texts. We can fight for months over the backdrop to an oyster and what makes it look a certain way. And I think that's part of why we both gravitated to this industry. If you don't have strong opinions on how things look and if you don't enjoy the frustration of looking at things over and over again until you can make them feel right to you. There's, there's definitely like a little bit of OCD in it and it's just a Profession with a lot of details and a lot of passions. So we were both the art directors. He was the photographer, I was the food stylist. We were both the prop stylist. We were everybody's assistant. And we were also shooting things out of order, the order that everything appears in, in the book organized by region. It's not like we sat down one day and got all the oysters from the Gulf and then shot them one by one. Mm-hmm. We were getting oysters shipped to us. I don't think that we did any of the oyster portraits on location. the ones that were shot in studio, you can usually see they're very punchy and sparkly. There's a lot of attention to color and texture and other things that happen in still life photography. 

So, because we were shooting it out of order and the design for the book hadn't been done yet. None of this had fallen into place. So we were just printing. We would get some oysters. Rowan would tell us the story behind them because remember, we don't know anything about oysters ourselves. We're learning as we're making this book. So Rowan would clue us in if there was something really unique to the growing location or the growing method so we could talk through what are the details and nuances that we really wanna blow up on this oyster. And we would usually ask for at least a couple dozen if possible. When the growers sent them to us, we would sort through them to try to find the ones that had those characteristics more than others.

And then when we were shooting them to bring out the individuality of the oyster. We would use color, we would use texture, we would use composition. Just the way that we were trying to get it to interact with the lights, if you've ever been on a still life shoot the image can completely change when you tilt something a half an inch in a different direction. It's because there's so much work that goes into bouncing the light around the room in a certain way that I don't think is how many shoots are done anymore because the crews tend to be much smaller. The gear tends to be much more simple. 

Kevin: When you set up a shot of any particular oyster you're learning about any unique qualities of that oyster that you wanna be able to highlight and show. If Rowan says, oh, this is an Olympia oyster and they're native oysters in the Pacific Northwest, do you try and tell the story of the Olympia oyster so that readers see more than just an oyster?

Adrienne: Yes. But not in a literal way. I am more interested in using the literal story as inspiration for things that will just make a really unique image. Because I mean, oysters are essentially rocks filled with meat so you're just looking at rocks over and over and over. It's like, okay, is this rock really that different from the last rock? Oh, it's got it's friller than the last one. This one has a single purple stripe. So if there's something like Olympias, which tend to have this, really coppery taste Then there's a, there's an image in the book where we shot Olympias on a sheet of weathered copper with like fingerprints and scratches all over it, which is maybe one of my favorite images in the book. The reason why we chose that surface was really just copper flavor, copper backdrop. And I think it's kind of a visual joke that you can get. But I also think it's really beautiful. And that was actually the image that I think David and I fought the most over. Oh, he, it was like, this is gross and ugly. And I was like, come on, it looks good. Like, I love the fingerprints.

Kevin: What was the difference? Was it purely like his aesthetic eye? He didn't like the way that photograph looked and yours was yeah but Olympias are coppery. It's like sucking on a penny. I mean, you gotta have copper if you're gonna show Olympias, so you're talking more about the characteristics of the animal as opposed to just the pure aesthetic image view?

Adrienne: Oh, we, no, we were just fighting over the look of it. It's, you get two artists in a room and we love to fight with other artists. and it's good you need it because that's, I mean, that's how you create things in a group. There, there is no harmonious creative process. Mm-hmm. In a group dynamic. I've never seen anybody who has one. At the end, you can often get together and be like, oh yeah, okay we did that thing and it's amazing and we're super proud of it, but it's not easy. I think that sometimes the better the work is, the harder it is to get to the end point.

Kevin: It's so interesting hearing you talk about the process. I mean, that's why you're artists, right? Everybody has a different way of seeing things, especially the more artistic oriented you are the more challenging that gets.

Adrienne: Oh yeah. 'cause it's, I mean, you're just like getting, you're getting reception from unknown points in the universe. You're just constantly bombarded with these ideas and impulses, and I think that that is the work of being an artist is just kind of discovering how to listen to yourself and then seeing how that unfolds in the world.

Kevin: Do you ever have any kind of sense of responsibility toward how you're portraying in this case an oyster? Because I would think when you set up and style a photograph of a particular oyster that is your perception of that oyster. So if you put two photographers together, and you say, we want you to take photographs of the beach. Each image is going to be different, because the artist's perception or how they want to portray it is going to be different. Mm-hmm. so when you are setting up photographs for oysters. That same thing maybe subconsciously applies, right?

Adrienne: I tend not to think of the audience at all. If I'm doing a commercial job then I have to think of the audience because that's the entire reason why you got hired is that you can make an image that makes their audience feel a certain way. So I have to be tuned into it when I'm doing that kind of work. When it's a personal project, like The Essential Oyster was, Then it's really just I don't think about who's gonna see it at all, and I think it's sort of a, it's a meditation. It's because when you get an image, when you make something in the world that has never existed before mm-hmm. And it feels exactly right to you, it is the most incredible feeling of just peace and openness and it just feels like you're alive and you are at one with the universe for that fleeting microsecond.

So when I'm making an image of an oyster. a lot of it has to do with what's my mood that day. Mm-hmm. Do I like this oyster farmer? I mean, a lot, a lot of that comes into play. I'm thinking not about the audience, but definitely wanting to honor the product of somebody else's artistic labor. And I think there is a ton of art to farming. So when somebody else gets something exactly right, it turns out, they've created something in the world that didn't exist and it turns out exactly the way that they wanted to you wanna not fuck it up. and with images, you can always hide behind an image. It's different from cooking. And I think it's certainly something that chefs and shuckers are dealing with day in and day out, is that the product of their art is going into somebody's mouth. And that's a very crazy place for your art to end up. There's a lot of responsibility in that. It can be so thrilling to cook food that people love because it's a much riskier artistic operation than making a photo. Because you can look at a photo and if you don't like it, and you're like, all right, I'm gonna look at the other thing over there it doesn't impact you in the same way as tasting something that you don't think is delicious. The visceral reaction is generally not on the line with a two dimensional image, and it's very much on the line with food.

Kevin: Do you think that the way in which style images really kind of influences the way people perceive oysters as high-end luxury foods versus something more rustic and earthy? And I asked the question because you have, a photograph of Gulf oysters, and it's a great photograph, but it's an oyster with kind of mud on it. It's like a dirty oyster, right? Which is one of the reputations that I've heard a lot of people not in the Gulf say about Gulf oysters. It's like, ah, well yeah, the mud, it's all polluted and all that stuff. so when I saw that, it's like, wow, if I had to guess where that oyster was from just looking at the image, I would say that's probably from the Gulf, because that's sort of my perception. And so do you find that photographing things that kind of show a little bit more about where they're from or the character of them are influencing the way people see oysters?

Adrienne: I do. And that particular image is kind of the flip side to that Olympia image in that, I hated that one and that was David's hill that he was gonna die on. He was like, this is awesome. This is like, it's, let's make it like, let's just make it as over the top as possible. And I was like, this is a stereotype that Yeah, that's right. Yeah. We, we've fought about that and he won that battle. And I do, I think it, it's a really, it's an arresting image because it's got a really clear it's designed to be provocative. And I hope that we did enough justice to the farmed oysters in the Gulf section of the book. Mm-hmm. That, that you could see that in a way that image kind of engages with a stereotype so then we can show the opposite of that stereotype. That when you go from this image to the shot of the absolutely gorgeous Murder Points,

Kevin: Oh yes.

Adrienne: Which just look like little jewels.

Kevin: Yeah.  Spectacular.

Adrienne: It's sort of, okay, you thought this about Gulf oysters, but actually now this. Then that was, we were shooting this in in 2015. So this was at the very early stages of off bottom farming In the Gulf.

Kevin: In the Gulf, yeah.

Adrienne: Yeah. Beth and Bill Walton were still at Auburn. It was the very beginning of Oyster South. So it was a really and still, it's a completely exciting time for the Gulf oyster industry. But yeah. But it was, I think it was, kind of more of a turning point then. And now there's all of this incredible momentum going. 

Kevin: It's interesting because you have other oysters that are just a half dozen oysters like the Totten Inlet Virginicas sitting on a beautiful bed of ice, elegant, simple, gorgeous. A very different feeling as somebody who doesn't know a lot about oysters, looking at it for the first time and saying, oh, wow, that's very different. Are oysters like this or are oysters like that?

Adrienne: Yeah. Well, as far as making the photos go, a lot of it boiled down to how much time we had because, we were, we were doing these shots kind of when farmers could get us oysters. And then also keep the idea of the pacing of the book in mind. We knew that it was gonna be organized by region, so that was helpful.

So whenever we were doing, because we were doing this over the course of a year, when it was a shoot day, we would get out a giant piece of foam core. They're called V flats. And you use them, they're black on one side, they're white on the other. You use them to help bend the light around the room. And we would just use push pins to put all the Polaroids that we had done so far. Like every time it was, it was time to work on a shot for the book, we would lay out all of the images in order, and so we could see kind of where this one was gonna end up. And we would try to make sure that it wasn't too similar to if we had, if we had like a big group shot of oysters before it, and another one after it, we're like, okay, no matter what, this one needs to be a closeup of an individual oyster. It needs to have a scale change, otherwise, the pacing on this book is gonna be really boring. And when people are flipping through it, it's just gonna be same, same, same, same, same. And that's a great way to lose a reader. you wanna make sure that there's a dynamic pace to the book. just like an album or something that you listen to. If it's kind of like the same three minute pop song over and over again, no matter how much you like it the first time, you're not gonna really be excited about it the 12th time. And certainly not the 50th time.

Kevin: It's an incredible challenge and you, I believe you really just nailed it in this book the way you did it, because I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it just now, but kind of the pacing of the images it's remarkable because it really does make every oyster look different, even though, if you just held two of them up together you might say, yeah, they look the same to me. So you've, you really achieved it. Are you still doing photo styling very much? I know you're doing other things as well.

Adrienne: Yeah. not at the moment. I'm certainly not doing it commercially. I've got a, I've got a day job as retail manager at Hama Hama, so that doesn't leave a lot of time for a side hustle in the photo business. And I'm, I'm happy to be taking a break from it for sure. I do miss making images and I've got a couple of projects that are kind of cooking on the sidelines right now that I'm hoping to release in 2026, which will get a little bit back to what I love about image making and cooking and bringing the two together. But the projects are still so early in their lives that I don't even know how they're gonna turn out yet.

I moved out to Hama Hama because since producing the photos for the Essential Oyster Lissa and Adam and I became friends and I would come out maybe like once a year and just hang out with them and we would cook and eat oysters together and just, hang out in one of the cabins and it was this incredible respite from my life in New York. And I think, as an artist too, you're kind of thinking of your backup plans. Like if I completely blow up my life or if everything falls apart, like what am I gonna do? Mm-hmm. Because if you're living an artistic life, or, or a farming life, you're kind of on the edge most of the time. So, I was kinda like, ah, what's my backup plan? And honestly, the best backup plan I ever had was like, if things really go south, I think I'll just, like, move to the Olympic Peninsula and sleep on a couch at Hama Hama. I bet they would let me do that. 

Kevin: It's a damn good plan.

Adrienne: So I came out last October, about a year. It was probably a year ago to the day that we're talking here. Lissa was doing an event called the Haunted Shell Pile, which was this educational extravaganza featuring tidal creatures and costumes and jump scares and a 20 foot shell pile. So it was a lot of fun and I was having fun and I was at Hama Hama eating delicious oysters, and Lissa was like, Hey, do you wanna come out sometime and just like, not go back. And I, it was the moment was like, yeah, I, I think I do, I think I'm ready. I think I'm ready to make the move. So the impetus for me starting to work at Hama Hama is that we talked about making a book together. Oh, and then in the way that many things unfold in the Hamaverse that didn't, I wouldn't say that that project is on track at the moment. I, I don't even know if that project will ever happen the way that we thought it would. But I think that other book-like objects may come about as a result of my working there. But really my day to day is managing the farm store, which is super fun and keeps me extremely busy. And then starting to help out with the online store at Hama Hama a little bit more.

Kevin: Full disclosure, Hama Hama is without a doubt my very favorite oyster Farm. I love me too Hama Hama. I just, I love everything about it. Not to mention the incredible oysters, I'm just a huge Hama Hama fan. I felt often the same way that you described when I was living in Seattle and I would drive over to Hood Canal and it's like, I don't even want to go back to Seattle. I just want to stay right here in Lilawaup. It's paradise. So I understand what you're saying.

 Had you done retail work before or is that something you just said? I I can do this.

Adrienne: I'm trying to think, have I, I've had about 40 or 50 different jobs and I actually just kind of in the last few years I've started writing them down because I'm worried that I'll forget all of the different jobs that I've had and it feels like a good archival project. so I'd have to go back and look at the list. oh, you know what? I I used to sell car insurance in a Mexican grocery store in Austin, Texas.

 so that's my retail experience. Those are my qualifications for doing this. During the pandemic I ran an online bookstore and a cooking club that kind of dovetailed with this online bookstore. So I like, I've got some friends who do it. So I got a lot of people I can talk to. Yeah, I guess I'm just, I'm completely unqualified for this job.

Kevin: I think that, listen, Adam probably saw more in you than you're giving yourself credit for when they ask you to just come out and stay, tell me a little bit about your work with Oyster South and how you got involved in that.

Adrienne: Well, I guess, again, the answer is Rowan Jacobson. So there's been a, a number of disruptions to the photo industry. So, I applied for a job with Billion Oyster Project, which I thought was like a slam dunk. And I didn't get it. And really I was like, oh no, what do I do now? So I talked to Rowan and I was like, wow, I'm kind of shocked and depressed. Can I come up to Vermont and just like, sit on the dock and stare at your pond and be depressed for a week and figure out my life? And he is like, come on up, join the club. So I went to Rowan's house and I was drinking coffee one morning thinking like, okay, so I've gotta figure out a new life for myself. How do I start over?  If I really need to figure out how to do something, I tend to like, okay, where's the list of available opportunities that I can try to match myself to. So I was sitting at Rowan's kitchen table, and I saw a posting for Oyster South was looking for somebody to help out. And, I, I remembered Oyster South from working in the Gulf on the Essential Oyster. So I texted Beth Walton, it was like, Hey, do you remember that organization, Oyster South? I just saw this job posting. They're looking for help. And she's like, Adrienne, I'm the executive director. I'm Oyster South. I need the help. So I put in an application, I had an interview with the hiring committee. So I started working with Oyster South last fall and then in October I came out to Hama Hama talked with Lissa hatched this plan to come out here. So, because my job at Hama Hama is, is really demanding and it is very difficult to manage a three hour time difference between the two coasts. Sure. I've definitely, I've scaled back a lot with Oyster South and my current official title is Special Projects Coordinator. which can mean a lot of different things,

Kevin: Are there any really interesting projects that you're especially excited about right now with Oyster South that you're working on?

Adrienne: Oh, the symposium. The symposium. That's the sym the symposium is so cool. The symposium is just like a three day science party.  I love the symposium because it's this mix of education and socializing and incredible food and drink. And just also, it's a chance for people who are working in this very, very difficult business to just like, get a little bit of a, I don't know if it's a break, but just like, just a little change. You just, you get to reset in the presence of your friends. I love the symposium.

Kevin: So can I throw a few quick hit questions at you

Adrienne: You can try. I'll see if I can give you a quick answer, not my specialty.

Kevin: Okay. what are your views on people who always photograph their food, like at restaurants

Adrienne: Oh, do it. Yeah. Have fun with it. It's, I think that making images is part of how you, you figure out who you are. So yeah, take as many pictures of your food as you want. I'm not annoyed.

Kevin: So, for an amateur photographer with their iPhone in hand. What would you say is the number one or two keys to taking decent food photographs?

Adrienne: Oh, turn off the overhead lights. For the love of God turn off the overhead lights. If you're designing a restaurant, don't use overhead lights. Big light, bad. Big overhead light very bad. 

Kevin: Big light bad. I like that.

Adrienne: Big light. Yeah. Big light, bad. Small, light. Good. So if you wanna get better at making photos, start by looking at great photos. Figure out what your own taste is because you'll never make anything that's not a product of your own influences. So if you wanna make something really cool, have as many experiences with images as you can and figure out what you like and what you don't like.

It's really common to see people come up with the same images and be like, oh my God, this is amazing. You're like I've seen that a million times. And like, it is, it is amazing because you haven't seen it yet. So having new experiences and looking at new things and turn off the overhead light. For the love of God. Those are my top tips.

Kevin: As a photographer and a stylist film versus digital, what's your thought?

Adrienne: Ooh well, I don't know how to operate a film camera, but I love it when other people do. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with film here. I think that printmaking is its own beautiful discipline and I've got screen overload. I'm addicted to my phone just like everybody else. So if I want a transcendental experience, that's probably not where I'm gonna go for it. So I'm gonna go film.

Kevin: Okay. color versus black and white.

Adrienne: I love color. color combinations just bring me so much joy. Black and white can be beautiful. I think that it's gotta be printed. Maybe my attraction to color has to do with food too. Because, color in nature is meant to communicate certain things and, the plant and the animal world. Yeah, I like, I like plants and animals probably more than I like people. So maybe that's why I like color.

Kevin: If you had no limits in terms of food styling, food photography, any creative aspect what would be your dream oyster or a food project to work on?

Adrienne: I would never want to have no limits because the meaning of creativity is to fight against limits. And if you don't have limits, you can't be creative. I think that when somebody gives you a project, they're like, oh, just do whatever you want. You're like I just feel like I'm dissolving. The ideas evaporate. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to struggle against. I need, personally, I need limits.

Kevin: You need that tension. Yeah.

Adrienne: Yeah.

Kevin: Push/Pull tension going on there,

Adrienne: Yeah, because for me, image making is trying to escape the world that you're handed. So in order to create your little escape hatch. Somebody has to give you something that you're dissatisfied with. I mean, I think to be an artist and to be an image maker, you spend most of your life being just like upset about how things are and very, like, very malcontent and you have to be comfortable with that. Like, that's part of the deal. It's not that you won't enjoy things, you just, you're not gonna be happy with how they are and you're constantly going to be fighting them to make something new.

Kevin: The suffering of being an artist.

Adrienne: Yeah.

Kevin: The angst.

Adrienne: Yeah.

Kevin: What would you say is your strongest or most interesting oyster memory? Is there something that stands out to you?

Adrienne: Whew. My strongest or most interesting oyster memory. Wow. I am searching my mind and I can't answer that. I honestly have no idea. And I could maybe make like an entire film about that. Actually let, okay here's what I've got for you. Speaking of film, I saw the film Holding Back The Tide three times. And I went to see it on night one, because Pete Malinowski, Executive Director of Billion Oyster Project was gonna be there and I was trying to get that job. So I was like, I, I know his parents from Fisher's Island, right. and I, we've talked before, but I'd never met him. I was like, oh yeah, okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to this film and I'm gonna make a great impression on Pete. And instead the film was so moving that I went up to introduce myself afterwards. and I was just, I was crying because the film had moved me so much. So maybe that's why I didn't get the job at Billion Oyster Project was that I introduced myself with tears in my eyes. I thought it would be a compelling case for the attachment I feel to oysters, but maybe they weren't looking for somebody quite so emotional.

 Funny story the third time I went back to see it there was, so there was, they were doing panels every night, like a q and a panel. And on the third night. somebody, somebody couldn't make it. It was a last minute cancellation, so they got somebody to fill in for him, and it was this guy that I'd never heard of before. His name was Rutvik Patel. And so, he was he was leading the q and a. That night, I was like, oh, that guy's really interesting. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go introduce my myself to him. and he gave me his card. And a couple months later I was throwing a Texas oyster party in New York with Rowan. And Rowan asked me a very interesting question. He's like, Hey, I, I want to throw this party with these Texas oysters and get people in New York who care deeply about oysters to like just come together and experience them and like maybe, do some, some reviews of them can you put together a guest list mm-hmm. And invite some people? And the first person that jumped to mind was like, oh, Rutvik. I’m like definitely inviting that guy. Yeah. So he, he showed up just as a guest. And, was like, Hey, you guys, you mind if I, you mind if I take care of this experience for you? So he just shucked everybody's oysters for them to talking to, like, made the party. And that's, that's how he and I became friends. So that's actually, that's my, that is my most interesting oyster experience is that I went to this film. I cried. I didn't get a job, and then I met this incredible human.

Kevin: Oh, That's great. What is next for you?

Adrienne: I, tomorrow. I, whenever I try to make a plan for my life it doesn't work out the way that I, I think it's gonna work out, and usually it seems like everything is going completely off the rails. And then I look back five years later and I'm in a place that I never could have imagined. So I think at this point, as long as I, I have my health I, I think that I am just gonna see what happens. Yeah. And and I'm comfortable with very high levels of risk, uncertainty and discomfort in my life So, I'm just going to see where it all goes.

Kevin: That sounds like an outstanding plan.

Adrienne: Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin: Well, Adrienne, thank you so much for all of this time. It's been so interesting and it was really fun. So thank you again so much for being my guest.

Adrienne: Thanks, Kevin. This was, this was super fun. Let's do it again sometime.

Kevin: Absolutely.

That's it for today's peak into the wonderfully winding creative world of Adrienne Anderson. A huge thanks to Adrienne for sharing her stories, her chaos, her honesty, and her oyster eye with us. If this episode showed us anything, it's that one well-timed conversation, one accidental introduction or one random bike ride can completely reroute the trajectory of your life. Because the oyster world runs on people as much as on tides. Sometimes you follow the work and sometimes you just follow the people who make the work worth doing. And the right relationships, the unexpected ones, the ones you never see coming, can open doors you didn't even know existed.

If you wanna see the oyster images we talked about today, go flip through the essential oyster with fresh eyes because now you know exactly how many arguments and tiny half inch shell tilts went into making those images sing.

And if you're listening to this podcast and you don't own the book, you need to get it immediately. I mean, you are an oyster nerd after all. So to make it easy, I've put a link in the show notes. 

Thanks so much for listening to OYSTER-ology. If you enjoyed this episode, please Follow me, Rate it, and help Share it with someone who still doesn't understand why oysters need glamor shots. And please leave a comment on what you thought about this episode. I listen to everyone and I'd love your thoughts. 

And as a gentle reminder from Adrienne,

Adrienne: For the love of God turn off the overhead lights. Big light, bad. Small, light. Good.

Kevin: Please be sure to join me again next time as we pry open the shell of another interesting ology topic.



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Kevin Cox

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