A Basket Of Oranges & Tangerines

Food Still Lifes From A Family Dinner

Peter's Indian Birthday Dinner Pt 2 - The Food

All these home made dishes were excellent. Thanks muchly to Camille, Jenn and Patrick for all the time they spent getting the food ready. By far the best meal I have had in a long time.





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Baking Blow Ups.

Just some quick shots of some baking that Samantha and I did this week Pecan Tarts and some great rollup cookies called Rugelach.

Photos For Work

I was approached by one of my employers about taking some photos for an in-house Power Point presentation that will play on a couple of the TVs near the cash and take out area at our restaurant. The focus of the presentation has mostly to do with explaining the difference between a normal chemically pumped smoke meat brisket and the traditional, dry cure process we use.The next few posts will highlight some of finished work.

The Cherry On Top

Let me start by saying that this shot was a lot of work. First off I only had my 75-250mm telephoto with me, so setting up for a macro shot on a small table was a challenge. I had to play with distances, angle of the cake, height of the stack of books under the camera, shutter speed and the timer. Oh, and people moving around the room throwing shadows. In all, I took 25 shots before I knew this 1 second exposure was the one.

New Years Eve at Work

These are some shots of an oyster duo that we served as the amuse bouche course at work last night.

Savory Cheddar Jalapeno Scones

So, I am a cook by profession. Food plays a big part in my life. From time to time I like to take some shots of plates I've created or a new beer I've enjoyed. And of course food is great depth of field practice.

A couple of months ago, Samantha brought home some rustic savory scones from a baked good kiosk downtown. Nice earthy tones from the use of whole wheat flour and lots of herbs. This triggered a memory of an internet friend of mine doing an experiment with french bread dough, cheddar cheese and jalapenos.




I set to work converting my regular scone recipe (which gets all kinds of use) for the savory taste. Cut the sugar by 80%, mix the flour half all purpose, half whole wheat and try to watch it with the fresh rosemary. They turned out amazing first shot. And they definitely called for a photo.

Hiatus

I'm gone on vacation for a couple of weeks and will be unplugged. I am very excited to get some great photos and I hope the weather co-operates. I should be back to posting by July 12. In the meantime, I will leave you with a photo of a chocolate tart we made the other night.

First Week

The first couple of months with the the 1000D were forcefully all indoor work. Our harsh winters here had me scared to take the camera outside until it was warmer or had a camera bag. I spent about three days with the manual reading everything about the basic modes. Then I started looking for things around the house to practice on.

Being a cook it made sense to start by taking photos of things I cooked. The subject wasn't going to move on me and it would allow me to play around with angles too. One day I made a tray of vegetarian lasagna and figured it was as good a time as any to do some shots. First was a pic of the full tray of lasagna.


This was shot in basic mode with the built in flash. All the settings were on auto. There was no digital editing done to this photo. The reds and yellows seemed well defined and the angle worked. Next was to get a frame of the finished product on a plate. All the same auto settings, but it took a few shots to get the focus right because of steam rising from the lasagna itself. End product turned out pretty good.


All in all it was a good start. I have been cooking for over 20 years and seen people paid crazy money to produce far worse work for menus. My next challenge was to figure out how to shoot without the flash. This was the night the Creative Modes section of the manual got read. No turning back.