09/29/2026
Some of my favorite moments from Santa Fe’s Food & W**e Festival’s Phenomenal Femmes Wednesday afternoon at COYOTE CAFE & CANTINA 🐺
I’ve always loved photographing hospitality from the side you don’t usually get to see.
Because as a guest, you see the finished plate arrive at your table. I get to see fifty of them being built at once.
You see the glass of w**e placed in front of you. I see the bar lined end to end with glasses before the first pour.
You see a beautiful luncheon unfolding over a few hours. I see the lineup beforehand, the conversations at the pass, the hands reaching across one another, the chefs working shoulder to shoulder, the servers finding their rhythm, the plates waiting beneath the heat lamps and that split second when a course is ready and the entire room seems to move at once.
And then I follow it out of the kitchen.
That’s the part I love most about photographing hospitality. Moving between those two worlds and getting to tell the whole story: the work and the celebration, the kitchen and the dining room, the people making it happen and the people experiencing it.
And on Wednesday, there was another photographer moving through all of it with me — which made me smile when I caught her on the other side of my camera. There is something pretty wonderful about photographers photographing photographers while everyone else is busy doing their own jobs.
I also have to say how incredibly kind the chefs and teams have been about letting us into these spaces. Kitchens are working rooms. They’re fast, tight, hot, busy places where everyone has a job to do, and allowing photographers to move through them requires trust. We’re constantly watching where we stand, moving when they move, getting the shot and getting out of the way. Being welcomed into that world is never something I take for granted.
Phenomenal Femmes was beautiful from the dining room.
But from where I was standing, some of my favorite moments happened before the plates ever made it through the kitchen doors.
This is the hospitality story I love telling. The part you experienced — and all the parts you never saw. 🖤
