This small but perfectly formed ebooklet represents my wife’s first foray into the world of publishing. Until recently she owned her own small commercial bakery but had to give it up for health reasons. Publishing was a logical progression as she is a more than fair writer – the success of her non-cooking blog, Minimalist Woman is testament to this fact. minimalist woman, minimalist cook – you’ve probably spotted the theme that is going on here.
While Meg, my wife, did the hard work of actually compiling and testing the recipes I got to do the fun stuff such as the photography and the layout work. I was never really much into food photography before we embarked on this project but as time goes on I’m getting to enjoy it more and more. It is probably the least abstract and easily judged type of photography there is. If the image makes someone hungry it works and if it makes them queasy it fails. Simple.
My serious photography does tend towards the sparse and this really seems to go well with the who minimalism thing that Meg is all about. This is a happy coincidence, it was never really discussed and she certainly didn’t try to direct me when shooting. Our system was basically,
Meg: “Steve I need a photograph of this”
Me: “Ummm OK”
sometimes less really is more.
The ebooklet is a sample of the work that will appear in the first full size version which is scheduled for completion towards the end of August. It contains seven very easy recipes (simplicity is the theme) such as basic roast chicken, ditto beef, several salads including tuna, chicken and a wonderful bean one along with the best chile I’ve ever tasted.
Whether you are into food photography or really good basic food it is worth checking out. I fully admit to being biased but I am really excited by this project and especially the work that Meg is doing.
Here is something a bit different – cubes of water melon being squirted with water – not as technically difficult as it looks. There was a reasonable level of ambient light so I just set the shutter speed to maximum flash sync, manually focused to a point just in front of where I intended to squirt, set the self timer and started squirting.
There are, in effect three light sources at work, flash on the left as you look at the picture, a lot of ambient from behind and a little from the right.
If you look at the feint trails with the on the left of the image as you look at you can see that the water drops appear a little in from the right. The trails are the highlights on the drops and the brightness of the trail shows when the flash went off in relation to the entire release time. The rest of the trail is the non flash shutter open time and more interestingly, gives an idea of the ambient light level.
Having a plastic working surface is really handy (this is a gray plastic fold out decorating table. The amount of water is deceptive – there is actually very little, about a teaspoonful in the whole shot and about a tablespoonful including what is out of frame so no studio flood to mop up.
After a run of monochrome illustrations and small restrained paintings it was great to get back to my first love, big, bright, loud, vibrant, loose, abstracts. Seriously this is my first painting bigger than 20″ x 16″ for around three months and it felt like coming home.
The painting itself is called cityscape and is very loosely based on the feeling that the Tel Aviv skyline in Israel gave me – it is certainly not representational, it is not a photograph or a view abstracted but rather a memory that is now 20 years old. The dimensions of the work are 4 feet x 3 feet.
This is also the first substantial work produced in my new studio which up until two weeks ago was my wife’s commercial bakery. It is a real step up, a lot more space, great lighting (no supplemental lighting whatsoever was used to make the video) and a door to the outside world. My last studio was tiny and had no windows. The difference is incredible and I’m really looking forward to working on some extended projects without feeling restricted.
Did I mention the wonderful light in the new space. I suspect that I will be mentioning it a lot more over the coming weeks and months.
The sky darkened dramatically this morning and a storm was obviously in the offing so I stuck the camera on a tripod and snapped a few shots through the studio windows.
The image is part of a weather vane (the part out of shot consisting of a metal rabbit and an arrow).
