Continue reading Spring Time Photography in Connecticut Weird weather we’re having.  Just last week we had a couple of gorgeous days and the parks were packed with people… and then we had a weekend of rain and crazy high wind and then last night the temperature flirted with 30 degrees.  I had just enough time to get out there and take a few shots of the spring colors before the petals fell off!

Does anyone know what kind of flowers these are?

I think these are tulips, right?

Anyway, I’m anxious to get back out there.  We had to cancel a scheduled outdoor shoot on Saturday because the weather was so bad… but we’re rescheduled for this Sunday which is supposed to be 70 degrees and sunny!  I’m psyched!

———–

So you may be wondering what this is.  It is yet another delicious culinary masterpiece from the wifey, “rocky road bars.”  It’s an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie base with a small layer of chocolate on top followed by a generous mound of melted marshmallows.  I could eat a billion of these things.  With the proper incentive I could be coaxed into divulging the recipe…

Continue reading Food Photography: Cookie/Brownie Thingies Apparently Sunday baking sprees are becoming a tradition around here.  Here’s a quick shot of a half-cookie half-brownie snack.  After looking at this photo for about 2 seconds I decided I just had to eat the screen.  Chomp!  Hmm, my sense of humor is weird on these freezing cold days.

The next bit of deliciousness isn’t

Continue reading Food Photography: Cupcakes For me, one of the best things about the holiday season is the abundance of home-baked goods in our kitchen.  This past weekend was a cupcake extravaganza.  Here’s a few sample shots of my wonderful wife’s creations:

The next bit of deliciousness isn’t cupcakes, it’s Kahlua-infused chocolate balls with a white chocolate shell!  Mmm…

I always like to impart some photography wisdom.  Notice how the chocolate glistens.  It’s all about the lighting.  I specifically set up the plate near a large sunny window to the left and then used an off-camera strobe to the right to gently fill in some of the shadows (I didn’t fill in all of the shadows though to create some drama).  In some of the shots you can see that I cranked up the strobe to get an interesting cross-lighting effect because my goal was to show as much texture as possible.  I don’t know about you but my mouth is watering!

Lighting is always crucial with food photography, particularly with a bundt cake.  One of the things I wanted to accomplish with this next shot was

Continue reading Food Photography: Bundt Cake More delicious baking from the wife today, this time a secret recipe!  This was shot with two strobes, one left, one right, on manual mode 1/64 power.

Lighting is always crucial with food photography, particularly with a bundt cake.  One of the things I wanted to accomplish with this next shot was to show the internal texture of the cake so I needed to ensure that the “hole” is adequately lighted.  I simply elevated the left flash to achieve the look I wanted.  Gotta love the shadows too.

And finally, enlarged to show texture.  Don’t you wanna grab a fork and dig in?

Continue reading Food Photography: Cookies My wonderful wife has been baking up a storm these last few days so I thought I’d share some photos to make your mouth water.  But first, a few tips on photographing cookies:

1. As with all food photography, setting the appropriate white balance is particularly critical.  Shooting indoors is almost guaranteed to induce a color cast.  To compensate, you’ll want to set a custom white balance.
2. Don’t be afraid to zoom in.  Make those chocolate morsels look huge!
3. Focus on texture.

Ahh, all wrapped up and ready to be delivered as a gift.  Notice the homemade fudge on the left?  Amazing!

Happy Holidays from all of us here at Goldchips Photographics!