A year later…

Do you know what happens when you don’t blog (or for that matter, even turn on your computer) for more than a year? Every application you used (Flickr, WordPress) is now totally different and you have to relearn it all! Guess I should start posting more again! To start us off…here are a couple shots from a roll of film I had developed today! They are from a road trip to the ocean last Summer.

And now that I’ve used up the 20 minutes of Blake-playing-alone-time trying to log into wordpress and remember how to post photos, I must go. More later…(just how much later this time!?).

Food Photography Challenge ~ March

This months challenge was “Splash” and admittedly I strayed a bit this month…my idea originally was to do a dripping tea bag, which I though would qualify in a backwards kind of way…and I did actually photograph it but it turned out **horrible**.
I wanted to do a very clean fresh look for the tea shot and I didn’t even think that with all light-colored props a dark brown dripping tea bag would look very out-of-place (not to mention totally unappealing!). One rule of thumb I’ve learned regarding food photography is that if the photo doesn’t make you want to reach in to the picture and taste it then you failed!
Oh well! I still had fun and here are some of my best shots! Don’t forget to check out the other photographers our circle to check out there amazing splash concepts (I’ve seen a few sneak peaks and they are so awesome!). Click on Jennifer Olson | San Luis Obispo, CA Photographer  to continue the circle!

Almost there

This is the time of the year that Seattle folks start wondering when the constant rain and cloudy skys will end. The time when people take to Facebook and post strings of naughty words combined with confusing/shock symbols ?!?!!!! This morning it snowed, even. But these were on my coffee table when I woke up this morning which means it is spring somewhere!! There is hope after all!

Food Photography Challenge ~ February

This month’s challenge was a diptych (2 photos side by side) of a) an uncooked veggie or veggies and b) a cooked veggie dish. This challenge was much more my style so I decided to go with a moody look to match the unending dark and dreary winters that we have here in the PNW. I must say again, photographing food is HARD!! But I am learning so much and it’s fun to have a little challenge that makes me problem solve a bit.

Butternut squash and carrot soup

Head over to Elaine Melko | Chicago Photographer to click through this amazing circle of photographers to see what they came up with this month!

The recipe:
In a large pot combine
one cubed/peeled butternut squash
5 sliced carrots
2 sliced leeks (pale green parts only)
and 1 tbsp butter (or olive oil if you would like a vegan dish)
cooked covered over medium heat for 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally.
Add 4 cups reduced sodium chicken stock (or veggie stock) and boil covered for 30 minutes.
Take off heat and blend until smooth (I used an immersion blender for this, but you could just pop into blender).
You can also add a touch of cream and some nutmeg and pepper if you like, but I don’t think it needs it!
(recipe from Better Homes and Garden)

SO YUM!!!

Today

It was one of those days where it feels like there is always someone a)throwing crap on the floor, b)messing with something, c)bouncing up and down, or d)neeeeeeeeding. Actually, I’m sure today was much like any other day, just that when you’re sick it seems like the constant hummmmm of activity is just too much to take! TGIF!!

More from the archives…

a little imperfection

One of my goals for 2012 was to stop getting wrapped up in photo perfection. I’ll admit that sometimes I won’t even pull out my camera unless the light is amazing and the setting is beautiful and interesting. But then I am missing so much!! Especially when you consider that I essentially live in a messy, windowless box, lol. Okay it’s not really that bad, but sometimes that’s how it feels.
My life does not take place in a sunny open field so of course my pictures should reflect that! The point is to capture the moments in their own unique beauty, right?
These are some old photos I took that I deemed not good enough to hit the blog…not perfect light…not perfect enviroment…but perfectly imperfect to me because this is how we *are*, really truly.

p.s. These photos were taken a while back after Blake had finished up some painting. I **LOVE** that in the bottom four you can see Coen come in from his cartoons to flip the crepe he is making. Just something about that is so him!

Beach Combers

Embracing the Grain

In digital photography “noise” is NOT a good thing…but in film photography it can be (but they lovely refer to it as “grain”). I often add some grain back into digital shots, just ’cause I like the gritty, toothsome feel to it. B&W coming from a digicam can sometimes be so sleek and smooth it loses some of its omph. I wanted to test out some seriously grainy film so ran a roll of Ilford 3200 through my 35mm camera a few weeks ago. These shots might be pushing my grain tolerance even for me! But they are kind of arty. Next time I think I will try it with my medium format camera…I think that might be a better combination!

Food Photography Challenge ~ January

Recently I joined a great group of photographers who are cultivating their food styling and photography skills. The idea is that we will challenge ourselves each month with a specific assignment dealing with food photography and then share our final images on our blogs (scroll down for the link to the next photographer in our circle). SO FUN! I have already learned a ton from our Facebook group and it’s awesome to be amongst such talented and supportive photographers!

January’s challenge was “fruit on white”, no props, just one kind of fruit on a white backdrop. Sounds pretty simple but it was hard! Mainly because anything you do wrong will be SO obvious…since you are pretty much just working with light and fruit…nothing else to distract! I’ll admit I’m not really a “white background” kind of photographer…but this was a fun challenge!

So here it is!

We also decided we could play a little with some props after the challenge was complete so I used my back-up fruit…

I am so used to photographing people that I was really laughing at the fact that I would click the shutter and then wait for a different moment, then “nope nothing has changed…that pear is still there in the same spot”, lol. But seriously, next time we do a fruit shoot, it’d better be in the Summer…kinda hard to find fresh looking fruit mid-winter!!

Head over to Jennifer Grant’s Lifestyle Photo Blog | Michigan + Beyond to see her take on the challenge! (The blog circle will go around about 14 different photographers before leading back to me).