Tag: food

Turning Tasks into Photos

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I had to bake bread for a work potluck today.  That’s ok, I like cooking, and it seems others do too, because most of the time the dishes I serve are some of the first things to disappear.  I decided last night to do something simple, but often popular:  banana bread!

When it was done, the house sure did smell good from the caramelized sugar, bananas toasting, and who doesn’t like bread?  (I know, I know – lots of carbs aren’t good for you…)  But, every once in a while it’s fun to indulge.  As luck would have it, this particular loaf of bread had some nice colors and tones to it, so naturally, I started thinking about my other hobby – photography!

With bread there’s so much you can do from capturing details, to using a shallow depth of field, to creative lighting and shadows, everything becomes a cornucopia of possibilities.  Here’s a few of my selects from just ten minutes of prep, 60 minutes of cook, and ten minutes of shoot time!

Banana Bread 1

Banana Bread 2

Banana Bread 3

Banana Bread 4

Banana Bread 5

Want a slice?  What tasks have you taken and turned them into photo opportunities?  The lesson learned here today (hopefully anyway) is to take something you have to do and make it something you want to do!  In this case, it was a win-win scenario for me, but what about you?  Sound off with your own fun-filled (or food-filling) photo projects!

Great Green Gobs of Grapes!

Jason2 Comments

This week has been a particularly creatively filled one here on the blog:

  • Monday I shared the HDR image workup from last weekend and published the weekly podcast
  • Tuesday had another shot showcasing the benefits of looking all around for ideas (including behind you!)
  • Wednesday was the more detailed explanation of the Lensbaby Composer and selective focus

And now today, another source of inspiration from the kitchen!  I was cleaning some grapes for lunches and was struck not only by their size (these things were huge!), but also by the cool way the light in the kitchen was bouncing off each grape in the colander.  It helped that the colander is stainless steel and reflected some nice green tones back onto the grapes themselves, making them look even greener.  On instinct, I took a few, and here’s the best of it (and although it was taken with a 70mm Macro, this was not taken from macro range – that should tell you the size of these guys):

Grapes Galore!

Not too shabby for a “spur of the moment” capture.  Nothing like what you’ll see over at Mike Palmer’s blog (he does a lot of cool shallow dof work with food photography, and is a friend-of-the-blog), but a step in the direction of creativity anyway!  Catch an cool colors in your kitchen lately?  Share your thoughts, perspectives, links to other images, ideas and feedback in the comments section!  Keep on shootin’ and we’ll see you back here for the Friday post!