This Saturday my friend Shawna was gracious enough to come over and give me a lesson in Food Photography 101. She works as a real estate photographer, but has always loved photographing food as well. I wasn't about to pass up a chance to enhance my totally self-taught, just point and shoot skills. She had some good tips for me that I hope to use without holding up dinner for an extra 30 minutes while I set the stage. I made sure to pull all the photos Shawna took out of the batch so that 3 years from now when I'm going senile I don't claim them as my own.

Knowing I was going to need some food that would hold for this project, of course I turned to sweets. So I can simultaneously tell you what I learned about food photography while telling you about some great treats.

We started with a standard bundt cake to talk through the basics. This is a standard Blueberry Sour Cream Coffee Cake but it is totally moist and gooey and totally delicious. I would eat it for brunch just as fast as I would eat it for dessert.

I first learned that in most cases, the best angles to shoot from are straight over top (which I use a stool for) or getting eye level with the food. This was good to know because I almost never shoot from straight above. I always found it hard to get a good shot and was under the impression that this took away depth. I learned that shooting from an angle downward is actually the bigger culprit in making a photograph look flat.




We moved on to my Lemon Curd Tarts, for which there exists no recipe. I had leftover homemade lemon curd from Easter, so I whipped up a batch of my favorite powdered sugar tart dough, filled it with the curd, added some sweetened whipped cream and topped it with a fresh blueberry compote. These tarts helped me practice deciding what I wanted to be the focal point of my shot. From now on, I'll be trying to ask myself "What's interesting about this plate?" before I start shooting.
In this case it was the dribble.

We also talked about creating a context (oh man, that is just too close to some Strategic therapy verbage for me!) to make the photo successful. In the above photo, the context lies in the rims of the other tarts (not that I thought about this at all while shooting). In the below shot, the context is the blurry curtains and buffet. This is one of my favorite shots of the day because of the lighting and colors.

Here's the broader context ... but I'm always a sucker for the close-ups instead.


I applied the general rules of context and a focal point to my Hot Cocoa Cupcakes as well. These are, by the way, a cute-to-eat treat. Of course, I suggest you use your own chocolate cupcake recipe as opposed to the box. Heavens be.
In this case, I loved the shiny pole going through the middle of the tray.

And in this shot, I'm thinking more about highlighting the sprinkling of hot cocoa on top of the marshmallow than anything else. (It's almost like I have an SLR which makes me tres happy too.)

This shot is one for context, giving some alternating sizes and textures between the two dishes.


So there you've got it. Food Photography 101 (for the real, complete novice who doesn't know any lingo or any tricks) and a few new sweets to eat at home tonight.

Kimber and FP arrived at 2am on Friday morning. This makes them much better than me because I would be a total whiner if the situation was reversed and I had to drive 11 hours to get to them at 2am. Last year they arrived at 4am on Thanksgiving and it was too close to the morning so I couldn't go back to sleep. I figured 2am would be a cinch, but no dice. I spent the rest of the night awake and annoying Nate with my tossing.

We spent Friday SHOPPING ... checking out all the places Kim can't get to often living in small-town Oklahoma. The Container Store was one of her very favorites and it was funny to watch how excited this girl can get over recycling bins. Are we from the same family? I was actually surprised at how much FP has changed since I first met him. He was actually the one encouraging Kim to stock up on more stuff while she had it available. Nate got back from work while I was making Kim accompany on my core/back strengthening regimen.



We ate a yummy Italian meal at Gioco's down in the South Loop. Nate had a pork chop, FP had veal and Kim & I both opted for pasta dishes.



The next morning we had a big brunch together, since we knew we were going to be out all day. It was nice to have a lazy start ... and it was equally nice that FP's passport arrived just in time for his next day flight out of the country.



After brunch we did the downtown thing. We shopped at Water Tower & H&M, Kim & FP experienced our favorite beignets at the Grand Lux, we walked for miles down State Street, made it to Garrett's popcorn for way more sugar than we could handle, and chilled our fingers in the unSpringish weekend.


At Garrett's: