Lower East

Talk, workshop and dinner

Visit in our Lower East Lab Berlin from the Danish folk high school Vallekilde Højskole.

Over two days in september 2023 we offered two different groups from the school a talk, a workshop, a little urban safari in the city – and a dinner in the evening in our Camillo’s Kitchen.

Two very lovely, cosy, creative and inspiring days. A lot of good talks, questions and reflections on the work, life, future and dreams took place in the lab.

Here some picture from the days.

 

Posters Camillo’s Kitchen

Four happy and jolly posters from Camillo’s Kitchen designed and illustrated by lower east. All recipes from the Italian-inspired cookbook from Camillo; spaghetti al limone, risotto ai funghi, polpette and spaghetti with tomato, almonds and basil.

The posters are so far mainly in the danish, english editions coming up – the spaghetti with tomato and almonds already ready for spaghetti–lovers all over the world. The posters can be ordered from lower east and Camillo’s Kitchen – a perfect gift for yourself or one you love.

 

Explore the lower east lab

Explore, use, rent, visit, enjoy the Lower East Lab Berlin. Our lab, placed centrally in lovely Kreuzberg, works as a design studio, a workshop space, a meeting room, a pop-up gallery, a pop-up dinner space, a co-working space, a work-away-from-home space – you can have talks & gatherings – you can use it as a showroom, for photo shoots or photo studio. You just have to fix a date with us. The size of the lab is 200 square meters. Study the pictures. And reach out if you want to know more! js@lowereastlab.de or +45 40636899.

Food Photography Courses

Lower East, Malthe Ivarsson & Camillo’s Kitchen proudly present: Camillo’s Food Photography Courses!

4 intense days together with the team behind the cookbook from Camillo’s Kitchen; writer & chef Jørgen Smidstrup, designer & illustrator Helle Marietta and photographer Malthe Ivarsson.

The cookbook “Food, that makes people talk to each other”, that came out in September 2017 and again in a second print September 2018, has been a big success on the Danish market. The book is filled with recipes, stories and more than 175 photos – now the team behind the book wants to share the learnings from creating the book.

Get inspired, get playful, learn about lighting, camera techniques, tips and tricks – share your thoughts, ideas and dreams with us and the rest of team. Practice & create photos both in the studio and on location during the course.

We have planned three courses so far; April 25th-28th in Berlin, Germany, July 18th-21st in Tversted, Denmark and October 3rd-6th again in Berlin.

Come join four playful and creative days – sign up either for our studio/lab in Kreuzberg, Berlin or wonderful summerdays in Tversted by the North Sea coast in Denmark.

We imagine that you would love to improve your skills, boost your ideas, develop new “tasty” food photos – and extend your creative network. Maybe you are a food writer and blogger, or a photographer, a chef, a culinary professional – or simply just ready to take new steps into the world of delicious food photos.

The teaching will be in English (and in Danish if/when needed).

Bring your camera (most cameras will be sufficient for this workshop, the ability to manually control the cameras settings is however essential, the ability to photograph in any RAW-format is also preferable) and your laptop with a photo editing software (if you don’t have any editing software you can download the trial version of adobe lightroom, it’s free for one month).

 

The program

1. day
On the first day of the workshop we will start out with getting to know each other over a lovely breakfast and good coffee. We will present our cookbook and the work behind. The rest of the day will be spent getting a fundamental understanding of all the practical and technical aspects of camera and lighting techniques. The day will end with a small food photography assignment and will end with a dinner out in town.

2 & 3. day
The second and the third day will be more practical. We will start out both days with breakfast and a thorough, constructive critique on the photos you have created throughout the previous day(s). There will also be talks and discussions about; what makes a good food photography, how to get there and how we create atmosphere in our photos with storytelling, styling, props and colour. The rest of these two days will be filled with hands on food photography and assignments, both in groups and alone. The second day will end with a dinner in the Camillo studio, while the evening of the 3. day will be an evening off.

4. day
The fourth and final day of the workshop will be focusing on finalizing your work. On feedback and constructive tips and directions of your future photos. We will talk about digital editing and we will help you edit your best photos from the past three days. Finally, we will print the photos and make an exhibition in the studio – and celebrate with a final joyful dinner!

Prices and info
The price for the four days is DKK 8.500 (€ 1.150) per person.
Included in the price: the food, the breakfast, lunch and two of the dinners – and the three teachers. You take care of accommodation yourself.

We gladly help you with accommodation, in Berlin there are fine and cheap hostels, hotels and flats – and in Tversted there’s bed & breakfast, rooms and summer houses.

On our food photography courses there will be between 8 (minimum) and 12 (maximum) participants.

The locations
Lower East Lab Berlin, a design studio, popup restaurant, workshop space and the base of Camillo’s Kitchen – in a cosy backyard in the lively and very foodie Kreuzberg.
Tversted by the North Sea coast in Denmark, one of the most beautiful summer spots in the country up north. At an old school, now a lively cultural center.

Please feel free to sign up, and to write or call us for more information.
Jørgen Smidstrup camillo@camilloskitchen.com or +45 40636899

Hope to see you in April, July or October!
Helle, Malthe & Jørgen

Check out – and find the cookbook
camilloskitchen.com
lowereastlab.de

Gone fishing

For our ‘con amore’ project Camillo’s Kitchen we have created a poster with fish – illustrated by the creative Juliana Toro.
You find almost 40 different fish on the poster, and their names in english, danish, german, spanish and italian.

“Gone Fishing. Camillo’s Kitchen“ is the perfect kitchen or restaurant poster.
We have the posters in A3 and A1 format – if you want to buy a copy let us know.

See also www.camilloskitchen.com

work in progress – cookbook from Camillo’s Kitchen

During the next week or so we will finalize the design, the writing and the editing of the cookbook from Camillo’s Kitchen. Then we’ll send it off to the printing house – and cross what ever we have that everything will work out in the best way. Launch and tour dates to be announced very soon. The Lower East team behind and the photographer Malthe Ivarsson are looking very, very much forward.

Here’s a sneak peak from the finishing of the book; checking photos, creating illustrations, hand-drawing the last two letters (y and æ), writing, editing and proof reading.

Even a very beautiful poster with the most common fish will be produced, illustrated by the fabulous Juliana Toro – including the names of the different fish in four languages.

Please, keep hanging on here at the blog for more info.

Camillo’s Kitchen

We are working on the cookbook Camillo’s Kitchen; writing, developing, cooking, designing, illustrating, and now also doing the photos for the book, that’s gonna be published in September later this year.

We have teamed up with the talented photographer Malthe Ivarsson from Copenhagen. He is doing all the photos of the dishes for the book. In a fantastic team work with us and our creative interns Juliana Toro and Manne Mortensen we have created almost 100 photos already – one, little photo session is still missing here in June in the lab, and then we are done.

During summer we will finish the work, and then go to print in August. Exiting times!!!

Here’s a sneak peak; photos from behind the scenes. We have a lot of fun while shooting and are all of us enjoying the process a lot.

research, photos & inspiration

Lower East on tour with camera, note books and (of course) the macbook; doing research, finding inspiration and taking photos for the forthcoming cookbook from Camillo’s Kitchen. In Palma de Mallorca and in Lisbon. Especially the food scene in Lisbon was new for us, rich and very inspiring.

In Palma we saw the food market, Mercat de Santa Catalina as a little oasis in the hectic (and way too touristed) part of the city; Santa Catalina. We had a wonderful and joyful dinner at Duke, and also found the tapas at 13% very pleasant. In Lisbon especially Taberna da Rua das Flores and Cervejaria Ramiro stood out, with fantastic meals, lively atmosphere and a sweet staff. Also the two food markets Mercado da Ribeira and Mercado de Campo de Ourique was certainly worth the visit.

We also had time to look at art; at CCA Andtratx, Mallorca and at Es Baluard, museum for modern and contemporary art in Palma – and to have a very uplifting talk with the sweet people behind tings lisbon.

And now back to work with new energy and fresh inspiration.

Some food pics from the tour:

Dinners in the Lower East Lab

We do dinners in the lab! We just love to do that. Now and then, then and again, Camillo’s (pop up) Kitchen pops up with either Camillo’s Cafeteria or Camillo’s Paladar.

We also love to do all the other good stuff in our lab; the graphic design, the workshops, the talks, the meetings – and the quiet, creative days.

Last Friday it was time for Camillo’s Paladar (paladar is a term stolen from Havanna, Cuba, where the only good food you can get is in the half-private, family-run restaurants called Paladars). It turned out to be a lovely, very cosy evening with 18 guests (berliners of many kinds, danes and swiss flying and training in), all smiling, eating, talking, drinking, laughing, having a good time. The menu was a six course homage to the french cuisine – paired with just excellent german wines.

Among our guests, suddenly a brilliant photographer got inspired and popped up – the next day we got almost 100 wonderful, evocative and intense photos in our mailbox. Thank you so much to the photographer, Martin Studer from Switzerland. Here you can see a small and delicate selection of his photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s going on in the lab?

What’s going on in the Lower East Lab? These mid of July days are somehow calm. We are still working on 3-4 graphic design projects and trying to finish stuff by the end of the week – and we are getting closer and closer to a long-awaited holiday break.

We are really, really happy with our lab here in Berlin! The last 2-3 months we have had so many sweet, cool, funny, talented, interesting and interested people in the lab, for many different reasons and purposes. Thanks for that!

Just to mention some of the arrangements and events that has happened in the Lower East Lab:
• in May we had 15 architects from the Danish company, Mejeriet, on an Urban Safari – cruising Berlin on bikes with us, getting inspired and checking out “transformations“ in this wonderful city. The group of architects finished the evening, co-creating with us a delicious dinner, Camillo’s Paladar, in the lab.
• also in May we arranged a day-long Food Safari, for a group of (around 20) students, studying global nutrition and health at the Copenhagen-based school Metropol. After a introduction in the lab, we met with people, checked out new and inspiring food projects, visited food markets and tested delicious stuff ’unterwegs’. All day on bikes, daring to end the day with a tasting of german white wines…
• later in May we had an even larger group in the lab, attending Hack the City to discuss THE FUTURE OF WORK. The workshop was arranged by the Swedish city of Sundbyberg and was facilitated by the Stockholm-and-Malmö based innovation company Shuhuu.
• we have our monthly dinner in the lab; Camillo’s Cafeteria, where up to 20 people from the Berlin ’international scene’ show up, meet, talk, eat and drink a glass of wine (or two). We will be back with the cafeterias from August on. We also held three successful Camillo’s Chef’s Table, private dinnners in the lab during the spring.
• we managed to include a gastro teambuilding in the program; a group of 9 leaders from a pension fund showed up in the lab and under guidance from Chef Camillo, the group created a three course lunch dinner with three house favorites; potato-rosemary pizza, white asparagus and a asparagus-leeks-parmesan risotto. The process and teambuilding went very well. The food was delicious and the atmosphere fantastic.
• in June, a group of KaosPilot students from Switzerland joined our two day Urban Safari Berlin. On bikes, we checked out the inspiring start-up scene in the city, met and talked with creative and lively people. During the safari days the lab worked as a ’class room’ for sharing and reflecting. The safari turned out as planned and was very succesful. We are really happy with our urban safari concept!
• besides all this, we have managed to do a lot of good work during spring with our main ’thing’; the graphic design and communication. With great help from two trainees, Casper from Denmark and Amanda from Sweden, we, among other things, designed a book for Glasmuseum Ebeltoft, a brand new website for another art client – Hempel Glasmuseum, a visual identity for a swiss consultant, a series of posters for the KaosPilots Switzerland, a new website for a Berlin client – a big old factory which has developed into a cultural art and event space, one for a Swiss client and right now deeply in the design process with a new book for a Danish client, the book will come out this autumn.

Have a fantastic summer out there!

Impressions from the lab life:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Camillo’s Kitchen

“Artist in Residence“. Sounds good, right? The City of Stockholm, Sweden has been so kind to give Lower East a stay in “Villa Bergshyddan“, a cosy looking house at the waterfront in Stockholm. From May 12 to May 18 we will be working very concentrated on the writing and the designing of the cookbook “Camillos Køkken – mad der får folk til at tale sammen“ (“Camillo’s Kitchen – food that make people talk together“).

The books front page is more or less finished – and some weeks ago we where in Firenze and Bologna, Italy to write, get inspired and take more photos for the book. See examples below.