Rico Mandel

Rico has over 25 years of business experience in the creative side of marketing and advertising where he developed marketing campaigns for his clients always incorporating his photographs into his work. His photographic career spans 3 decades in both the commercial and fine art fields.

Rico’s photographic career spans 3 decades in both the commercial and fine art fields. His photographic subjects encompass his love of the natural landscape, urban interactions along with the culinary and industrial worlds. Over the years he has had multiple fine art exhibitions, has taught photography and developed a great deal of darkroom expertise. Today he works primarily in the digital realm bringing his vast knowledge in the darkroom and zone system to the digital darkroom. This is reflected in his digital capture technique and the output of his images.

His passion for the culinary world was catapulted through his chef training in Le Cordon Bleu program at the California School of Culinary Arts. He then pursued a career in the kitchen working for Wolfgang Puck catering and ultimately landing at the Saddle Peak Lodge where he worked for 4 chefs. In addition to his fine dining restaurant experience he has worked for several high end caterers in Los Angeles and created multi-course tasting dinners in private residences and catered parties and events.

He wanted to combine his 2 loves photography and the culinary world into one. He began a photographic series called Behind the Door - Chefs their food and their kitchens where he works a day in the kitchen to get the feel for the interaction between the chef and crew as well as the philosophy behind it. Then he comes back to spend a day photographing the cooks, the chef and his food. This led to work on his culinary blog and several cookbook commissions which he is currently working on. His blog concentrates primarily on the behind the scenes of the culinary world. His experiences working in restaurant kitchens, meeting artisanal purveyors, speaking with wine makers and touring their vineyards and his travels into the back roads of the culinary world. He has combined all his talents and passions to create Culinary Image Adventures, a company specializing in unique workshops, tours and travel experiences involving the culinary world, photography and travel.