Day 351

Happy New Year!

May you enjoy lots of love and laughter in 2012.

The weather has been so dark and wet today, I wasn't able to get outside for a photo shoot. So I stayed indoors and played with my food instead.

Day 315

I bought a punnet of strawberries at the supermarket today because a) I love strawberries, b) they're in season here and c) I had an idea for a photo shoot. My idea was to use a strawberry to represent a heart, but I didn't think to look at the shape of the strawberries in the punnet. They were all long and thin; shaped more like radishes than strawberries!

My favourite photo gear at the moment is white printer paper. Lots of pieces overlapped make a great background for indoor shots, and it's easy to erase the joins in Photoshop.

Is this hand protecting the strawberry, or about to crush it?

Experimenting with making something delicious look disgusting:

I was hoping the fork poised over the strawberry like this would look threatening, but it doesn't look threatening at all. I think that's because you expect to see the two together, and a fork is associated with eating rather than with violence. Thinking about it now, I should have got the hammer out of the shed and held it over the strawberry. I've still got some strawberries left. I'll try out the hammer idea tomorrow.

Day 292

Today was spinning and weaving, so I got to take another photo walk around one of my neighbours' gardens.

I managed to get one decent shot, of an insect drinking nectar. I'm not sure which version of the shot I prefer. Do you have a preference?

Yours truly, snapped by Gloria, looking every inch the intrepid photographer. ;-)

Here are the fig and ginger truffles I made to take with me. They're delicious and they disappeared very rapidly.

Here's the recipe, which I got from my friend Melissa Pasanen. She got the recipe from Jess Bongard, who adapted it from Ellie Krieger's book, "So Easy."

Fig & ginger truffles (Makes 12 to 16 truffles -- I got 14 out of it)

Ingredients 

8 ounces dried figs, stems removed
2 ounces crystallised ginger
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2.5 ounces bittersweet dark chocolate chips (I found the chocolate ran out two thirds of the way through, and I had to melt some more. I probably used about 4 ounces in total.) 

Method 

1. Put all the ingredients apart from the chocolate in a food processor. Process until finely chopped and beginning to clump.
2. Meanwhile, put the chocolate chips in a double boiler over simmering water, and stir until just melted. Turn out the heat but leave the chocolate pan over the hot water.
3. With damp hands, roll fig mixture into small balls.
4. Using a fork, roll the balls in the chocolate until covered, and then put on greaseproof paper.
5. Put in the freezer for 10 minutes to set the chocolate.
6. Store in the fridge, but serve at room temperature. 

Day 285

Tonight it was my turn to hold our monthly book club meeting. It's spring here and the nights are starting to draw out, so we were able to sit on the veranda sipping our drinks, listening to the skylarks and watching the sun go down, which was very nice indeed.

I put the camera on the tripod, set the shutter onto self-timer and then leapt over the electric fence in an attempt to get into the frame in time. As you can tell in this shot, I only just made it!

And here's one I took from behind the lens, complete with the ubiquitous Pookie.

Pookie likes sleeping under the veranda. I think all the noise we were making must have disturbed her, because she slinked off, disgruntled.

As part of the evening, my friend Judith showed me how to make the Kiwi national dish, pavlova. She makes her meringue with crushed vanilla pods and covers it with a home-made lemon topping instead of cream. It's incredible. I cut it into eight pieces. There were seven of us at book club, which means I've got a piece left for breakfast tomorrow morning. Being able to eat bizarre things for breakfast has got to be one of the many plus points of living on your own. :-)

I took quite a few shots of the pavlova, but none of them did it justice. I just don't 'get' photographing food. People and animals are easy: press the shutter when they're *doing* something. Flowers are easy: take them from an unusual angle and/or process the image in an unusual way. Landscapes are easy: wait for amazing light. But food; what can you do with food (other than eat it?)

And finally, an abstract shot. Can you guess what it is?

Okay, I'm off to do one of the following things: either clear up the mess, or to go to bed and leave the mess till the morning. I'll let you guess which.

Day 268

The first two images are a couple more from Wednesday that were originally in my reject pile. On second look I saw something in both of them that I liked. This first one was processed the most. I cropped it, tidied up the background a bit and then used one of Lightroom's cross-processing presets, which I tweaked slightly to bring back some of the blown-out highlights.

I caught this flower below dancing in the wind. I didn't do much processing, apart from some subtle colour adjustments to the magenta and purple channels.

Today's 'official' image is below. Some people can photograph food and make it look good. I'm not one of them -- yet! The weather was miserable today so I didn't get outside for a photo shoot. In desperation, I took a photo of a spiced apple muffin. Oh dear. Never mind. At least it tasted good!

Day 251

Our lovely neighbour Marg just brought us a pumpkin from her kitchen garden. It looks like I'll be making pumpkin soup tonight!

Day 128

Just lately I've started photographing food, which is not something I've taken photos of before. It's probably something to do with having a tripod at last, as well as the desperation experimentation that can be the byproduct of a 365 project. Of course, there's also the upside that you get to eat your subject once you've finished taking photos of it. :-)