I'm so glad you found me! I'm a San Francisco photographer, and this blog charts my journey in the ever-evolving world of photography. One of the things I love about photography is that it's a journey, not a destination. I'm constantly learning and meeting wonderful people. Please peruse the blog to your heart's content, then check out my website and feel free to contact me! (I love hearing from you.)

“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow." – Imogen Cunningham

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” – Edward Steichen

Souvenir Foto School: Back in Session! Also, Amatomy of an Image, Week 6

If you recall, I participated in Souvenir Foto School once before, when the theme was the alphabet and the challenge was to photograph it in 30 days. That was difficult, but I made it through. The photos from that challenge are all on my Flickr photostream here.

This time the theme is food, and the challenge is to photograph your food at least once a week for six weeks. The week's photos are due by Sunday, but as I have a busy week ahead of me I wanted to get this one in now so I didn't have to worry about it. And what better excuse than to use it for my weekly Anatomy post?

So here we go!

Basics
Lens: my trusty 17-55mm f/2.8 at 55mm, never go anywhere without it (as you know)
ISO 200 (I was trying for a clean picture)
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter Speed: a fairly fast (for me) 1/100 of a second
Lighting: ambient plus an LED ring light that I actually didn't use as a ring light, I just held it to the front left of the yogurt bowl with some tissue paper to diffuse it, and as close as I could to get the softest light possible

The Story
So you may have noticed that I'm kind of an ambient light gal. I pretty much always try to use natural light to my advantage and at the moment I don't even own a flash (although that's about to change, since I ordered one today, congratulate me!) But I do own an LED ring light, mostly because the price was pretty awesome and I can't resist new camera gear from time to time. (You can see it on Amazon here, if you're interested. The price is kind of ouchless. I haven't used it extensively, so I can't really speak to its quality. But it so far seems worth the price.)

Our place is a little bit of a mess right now, what with all the construction and not really having a large living space for the both of us, so I knew a tight shot would have to be it. So I cracked open the pomegranate, got a bowl of yogurt (which I ate afterwards, even though that breaks all the food photography rules), and tried to arrange it all prettily. Then I got up on a chair, held the camera in the right hand and the light in the left hand and tried to contort myself so that I would get a good shot. I won't say it was the most graceful thing I've ever done; I was pretty glad that Evan wasn't there to see it all go down, but in the end I got my photo, and that's what matters, right? I'm kind of pleased that the final image looks a bit dark and wintry, because pomegranates are winter fruit.

Anyway, as always, let me know what you think!