Artist renditions | 100 best things we ate and drank in 2012

Debbie Carlos shot two dishes for the 100 Best feature: Heng Shan–style preserved rice noodles at Lao Hunan (pictured above) and tripe tacos at La Chaparrita (next slide). "Sometimes I have a specific idea of how to photograph something, and sometimes I don’t," Carlos says. "The initial idea is often just a jumping off point anyway, and what really gets me from Point A to Point B is a lot of playing around. A dish like the rice noodles from Lao Hunan initially poses a big problem for me because there are just so many components, and the dish itself is so voluminous that it always tends to look like a big messy pile. After trying a number of shots, I ended up deciding to isolate each component of the dish, arranging it on my model’s hand in a way that was both careful and messy—a noodle draped down her arm, another dangling towards the back of her hand, a leaf of cilantro resting on her knuckle, a peanut balanced precariously between two fingers, a string bean extending out from a fingertip, with the sheen from the sauce visible where the light hits it. It’s an image that highlights what goes into the dish but also creates a strange narrative."

Aimee Beaubien shot two dishes from the 100 Best list: the roast chicken for two at the Lobby (pictured, above) and the crispy whole fish at the Savoy (next slide). "I began by looking at the food as sculptural objects from a variety of different angles," Beaubien says. "I generated a collection of prints to cut into with scissors to reorganize their appearance and the experience of reading visual information. A still life typically depicts an arrangement of inanimate objects. Photographs are not as static as they appear, and still lives are not so still when given the opportunity to combine multiple images. With my camera, I respond to the quality of light, color, texture and movement. I create paths for the eye to travel in and out of the collaged forms that I build. The elegant presentation of the whole roast chicken at the Lobby in the Peninsula Hotel was my starting point; from there I experimented with intensifying the background. The vivid colors, strong shadows and graphic shapes amplify the experience of looking."

Jeremy Bolen shot two dishes from the 100 Best list, the Boarding House Lunch from Big Jones (pictured above) and the charcuterie board at Paris Club (following slide). "I basically used methods that I use for my general art practice," says Bolen, "which is essentially trying to create a more 'additive' mode of photography. Normally, a photograph is 'subtractive,' because you're looking at one thing. I try to build cameras with multiple vantage points, to photograph several vantage points at once and combine them into one image. I basically rethink the kind of camera I'm going to use according to what I'm going to photograph. I made a camera with a few different vantage points to make the image for Time Out, and I'll incorporate the material [I'm photographing]. For instance, if I'm photographing fried chicken, I would incorporate that actual item—the actual food—into the image. That food will actually touch the negative at some point."