Sunday, April 19, 2009

Food photography is hard, hand-held food photography is impossible

During a very delicious dinner recently, I decided to try my hand at food photography. I'd heard it is very difficult to do, especially as a professional with hot lights. It seems that once you get a pleasing looking composition, then your food is reflecting light in an unpleasing way. Despite this challenge, I decided to do it anyhow, because practice is always good, right? Well, I didn't have my tripod on me so I had to do the shots hand-held.

Hand-held indoor photography is also a difficult task due to generally poor lighting, and the combination of trying to get the food to look good and to keep my hands from shaking too much, I only ended up with one sorta okay photo out of about 12. Above you can see the final result.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Recipes for the lazy or: Magic Shell is a ripoff

Here's how to make your own Magic Shell chocolate ice cream topper and chocolate fruit shell:
Ingredients: chocolate chips.

Instructions:
Take a small pot, fill half with water.
When water boils, place glass mixing bowl on top.
Drop a few chocolate chips into bowl.
When chips start to melt, start stirring with spatula.
Continue to stir and drop chips in until you've got a nice sized pool o' chocolate.
Use liquid chocolate to cover fruit, ice cream, or whatever.
Never buy Magic Shell again.

It's almost embarrassingly easy to do. The best bit is you can use your favorite chocolate, not just whatever Smucker's wants to give you (no offense to Smuckers, please don't sue me).

So guys: impress your next date by looking like you can cook! Just don't try to cover your date in chocolate, unless she's into 2nd degree burns.