My 5 year old #400D. I’m thinking of when I can use you in partner with my #60D! 📷📷 #Canon #EOS #camera #photography #rebel #rebelxti #gadget (Taken with instagram)
This blog is a mix of her work and bits of her personal life (though the two often occur simultaneously).
She finds it a bit odd speaking in third person about herself.
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My 5 year old #400D. I’m thinking of when I can use you in partner with my #60D! 📷📷 #Canon #EOS #camera #photography #rebel #rebelxti #gadget (Taken with instagram)
This is also in the June issue of Yummy — Breakfast Quesadillas! This was shot waaaay back in February, nice to finally see it in the magazine. (:
Also one of my favorite pictures! ♥
I also like taking advantage of large window #lighting. 📷 #redhead #glasses #selfportrait #photography (Taken with Instagram at ABS-CBN)
Spent the latter part of the evening with Kiks, helping him with some Mother’s Day preps, relaxing over at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and just browsing through Fully Booked.
While it’s my choice of workplace many a time, I’ve always thought CBTL to be the best place to be late at night when relaxing, too. The ambiance is just so homey.
A favorite of mine when I’m hanging out at CBTL is their African Sunrise tea latte. It’s the perfect night cap for me. It’s just the right amount of sweet with a hint of fruity, plus there’s no caffeine so I don’t need to worry about not being able to sleep at night. I clearly remember that I had asked a barista one night at the CBTL near my house what the perfect latte would be for me, given that I liked my drinks sweet, but I wanted as little caffeine in it as possible so I could still sleep well that night. She immediately suggested I try the African Sunrise, and described it to me. Ever since, it’s what I always order at night when I hang out at CBTL. I kind of wish I remembered that barista’s name now.
Whoever invented the stroopwafel should be given an award. You put this little pastry on top of your hot beverage and let it sit for about a minute or two. The heat warms it, and softens the caramel inside. YUM.
While I’m not really the type to go out and party all night like a lot of people I know, I wouldn’t say no to going out and hanging out with a few good friends over hot beverages.
Another photo of the macarons, just because. I ate some more tonight, mmmm. I should really learn to bake these on my own, so that my Silpat finally finds some use.
Live view shooting is great and all, but I still feel like I compose shots better when I look through the viewfinder. I use the live view function when I’m shooting high or low angles, but I try to use my viewfinder as much as possible. I use live view to check if my white balance looks okay, to zoom-focus, and to double check exposure in tricky situations.
This completely escaped my mind after I had posted the set on the Bake Buddy Facebook page!
Iyay & I attempted to make cookie cups sometime in December! It was an idea I stumbled upon on the internet, and we thought we’d give it a whirl. It was great fun! Once the cups were done, we scooped some (Caratela!) ice cream into them and had our fill. SO MUCH SWEETNESS, it was crazy! I almost couldn’t finish my ice cream + cup.
At one point, we tried microwaving some marshmallows in another cup. It was pretty deadly. Haha!
Try it out yourself! Just turn over a muffin pan and mold the cookie dough onto it! Super fun to do. (:
One thing I absolutely love about Iyay (the mastermind behind Bake Buddy, and younger sister of Kiks) is her great passion for food. We spent many a time in their kitchen, attempting to make the macarons we so loved, and failed magnificently majority of the time (though what we ended up with were still pretty tasty).
She took up baking classes some time ago, made all sorts of sweet goodies, and shared them with me every time I came over. Eventually, they were finally taught to bake Parisian macarons. AT LAST! Since then, she’s been baking them more often. These sweet treats are always greatly enjoyed by a lot of her friends, so she invites them over to bake with her! I have yet to go over there and learn from my favorite baker, but for now, I’m enjoying the mountain of macarons she sent my way. (:
I’m not entirely sure she’s selling these alongside her ever delectable cookies at Bake Buddy, but feel free to send her a message! All of Bake Buddy’s contact details are on their Facebook page. Go go go! (:
I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do a pin-up photo shoot! It’s one of the first things that popped into my head to do when I first got into photography. ONE DAY.
As promised in a previous entry, a review of some sort on the new book I bought for myself, Plate to Pixel by Hélène Dujardin! I decided to photograph the book by what Kiks likes to call my little “camera shrine” (haha), because I figured taking a photo of just the book would be a little meh, and photographing it with some food and a camera in the background would be a little cliché. Heh.
Just a disclaimer, I don’t want to divulge too much of the contents of the book, since this will somehow ruin the experience of actually reading it yourself. I highly encourage you to get yourself a copy if you’re considering taking up food photography, whether as a hobby or professionally. For now, I’ll just be giving you general information on what the book is about and a few details on the content.
The lovely Hélène Dujardin, if you didn’t already know, is behind the blog Tartelette. I’ve come across this blog several times before when Google-ing for some recipes I wanted to try baking with Iyay. No wonder her name sounded so familiar! The photos on her blog are gorgeous, and now I know why — she was actually a chef-turned-food photographer. I knew right then when I read in the intro of the book that she ran Tartelette, that I was in for something great once I started on the book.
One of the best things about this book is that pretty much everything in it was her creation, from writing to photos. From that alone, you can tell that her love for what she does and sharing everything she knows with people who want to learn is genuine.
Since the book is too glossy to use highlighters and way too pretty to use a pen, I decided on sticking little mushroom post-its (I changed the Angry Birds ones because they annoyed me like anything) on pages where I found information useful and would like to remember. I intend to eventually write those things down in a little pocket notebook so I can remove the little sticky fungi so I can store this book properly in our office.
Plate to Pixel covers almost everything I need to know for my work, from how to properly setup your camera for a shoot, to what kind of supplementary equipment you’d need in certain situations, to basic ideas on how to compose a shot, to styling, and a whole lot more. I’m not afraid to admit that although I’ve been in the business of taking photos of food for almost two years, there’s still a lot that I would love to learn.
For one thing, I’m no chef, so styling food shots is a bit of a challenge for me. Thankfully I took up Visual Communication in college, so styling for a shot isn’t that too far away from designing a poster. It’s just that you’re presented with a different set of elements to come up with and/or arrange in such a way to convey your message.
The first part of her book covers the basics of photography, for all those budding photographers out there. In the photo above, she explains how aperture works, and the kind of results you can expect from different aperture settings.
After basic photography, she slowly moves forward to making use of light, both natural and artificial. She makes it very clear that natural lighting is the best kind of light to work with, and I agree. But some instances just won’t allow you to make use of that gorgeous sun, so she teaches you to be prepared.
Light plays a big part in photography, that goes without saying. Photography literally means writing or painting with light. Even without the book, I can tell you that majority of the settings on a camera are dependent on light, whether in quantity or in quality. Hélène stresses every so often the role light plays in each shot she takes.
Moving on from the technicalities behind your equipment, the book then turns toward food styling. Ah, something I can learn so much from!
I love how Hélène always describes how she came up with the photos she presents in the book — from the kind of lighting she used in order to achieve certain things for the dish, to actual styling, to pressing the shutter button.
Throughout the entire book, I was always amazed at how everything in her photos are so well thought of. Every choice of color, every prop in the background, every crumb is in the shot for a reason. This reminds me so much of what one of my professors always told us: “Everything must have areason.” In design, every choice you make needs to be backed up with a reason. Why is the text large, or sans serif, or blue? Why use green as a dominant color? Why use a certain illustration for your main image? We were taught that in good design, everything you place in it must have a reason for being there — answering with “I don’t know, it’s just looks cool”, or the ever annoying response to things like this “wala lang” is considered a mortal sin.
The same thing goes for food photography. Every element is there for a reason. Even how the light appears in the photo is backed up with a reason.
Another thing I love about the book is how Hélène shares some EXIF data in the captions of her photos. Like the 5 year old version of myself, I always got excited when it came to reading captions. I would always look at the photos first, read the captions, and proceed to read the main content of the book. (Or sometimes not read the content at all! Silly 5 year old Tracy.) I noticed that while she indicated the aperture, ISO, and kind of lens she used, she didn’t include the shutter speed with her captions, but I guess that’s just so you can experiment for yourself on how to get a certain look.
If there was only one thing I learned from this book (but I assure you, I learned quite a lot!), it’s to practice as much as you can. I noticed how Hélène always seemed to punctuate the book with the encouragement for you to always practice — whether in terms of photography or styling, it will always take practice.
There are so many things that I learned from this book, that I can’t even begin to list them all down here in this blog post. But I will say that it brought me back down to earth, helping me to realize that there’s so much more to my work than just taking a good picture. It’s important to know and assess every step you take to achieve great results, both on and off camera.
I used to be so stubborn, never letting my 50mm f/1.8 leave my camera when shooting, because I always thought that having the option of getting large apertures was important. After reading, though, I finally decided to revive my old kit lens which I’ve been neglecting for the past months and attached it to my camera. I took it with me to lunch today with a few relatives.
There was no styling involved, and this was just a quick shot, but the instant I saw the image through my viewfinder, I suddenly realized just what I was missing or felt was missing when I was shooting for work. The wide perspective that I could never achieve with my 50mm was suddenly so refreshing and felt so right. While I didn’t have that large aperture that I so loved, I remembered that great photos isn’t always about having beautiful bokeh. After all, bokeh wasn’t the star of my photos! I noticed that Ms. Dujardin hardly ever used large apertures like f/1.8 or f/2.8, and I realized just how silly I’ve been.
Another thing I learned about the author was that she valued her time in a way that she would prefer to practice taking photos than to post-process. She’s no purist who wants everything perfect straight from the camera, but I do understand the efficiency (as well as the feeling) of getting everything right from the get-go. Honestly, I like editing photos, even if it does take up some of my time. Aside from enhancing the photos I take and fixing things that I can’t off camera, it’s a bit therapeutic for me to be behind my laptop screen and editing my photos. I used to prefer staying away from editing my photos, but I grew to see it as part of my personal process. It’s all a matter of preference. Of course, I’m obviously not as busy as Ms. Dujardin, so I have more time to practice photography as well, like she said to.
I think I’ve rambled on enough. The book is a great read, both for photographers and stylists. It’s helped me understand and appreciate why chefs or stylists may style things a certain way, and I’m pretty sure any stylist who’d read this would think the same way about how and why photographers do what they do for a shot. If you’re either one, or both, I highly recommend getting yourself a copy of Plate to Pixel! Immensely informative, and not to mention beautiful.
