Looks Good Enough to Eat

 Although I still love my sweeping landscapes and architectural treasures, the main thing that has been occupying me lately is food photography. It's been a bit of a learning process, in part because I've had to put a lot more thought and effort into lighting than I would in travel photography (where I generally just use natural light or, if pressed, a flash). For example, in this photo of a sandwich, I was still relying on ambient light in my kitchen. 

Not the worst photo ever, but the dark shadows on the plate and reflection of the overhead light make it look a bit sloppy. Not every photo using ambient lighting was a mess--I was happy with the photos below that use my kitchen's ambient light, for example--but I realized that I was going to need more control over the lighting situation, so I invested in two continuous softbox studio lights, and it's made life much easier.

Learning to take decent food photos has also been a learning process because, unlike wandering around from beautiful site to beautiful site when traveling, I've also discovered it's hard to get a nice variety of photos without becoming a collector of eclectic dishes and cutlery. Nonetheless, after a few bargain finds and a few splurges, plus some adventures with online tutorials for making backdrops and hours in the garden with some spray paint, I've ended up with a good mix of props and backdrops. Here are a few examples of the homemade backdrops in action: 

Finally, I've had to give a lot more thought to composition in terms of staging my shots. In travel photography, of course, you frame your shot carefully, move around to test different angles, etc., but I've never, for example, thought deeply about whether or not I needed to add a salt shaker in the background of a photo of the Eiffel Tower. Too much attention to little details and the food photo looks staged or, worse yet, cluttered. Too little and it can end up looking boring or flat. In this photo of a quinoa stew, for example, I think the scattered dry quinoa ended up looking quite messy, and I gave too little attention to whether the colors were complementary: 

Even temperature of the food can make a difference. I generally like to shoot food just after cooking/before eating, but some foods (hearty stews, for example) are easier to style when they're cold. I photographed both this lentil and kidney bean chili and this chickpea stew when they were cold because they held their structure and enabled me to better-capture the texture while cold:  

I'm still learning, but I think there's been a clear improvement in my food photography with some practice. And, it's not too bad eating all of these dishes, either! Here are a few of my favorite shots:

The Best Pest I've Seen

Have you ever wanted to visit a city with stunning architecture, enticing cuisine, bustling Christmas markets, a fascinating and complex history, and a quirky mix of old and new? Me too. That's why I visited Budapest over the Christmas and New Year holidays in 2017/2018. And, I know I always say this, but I was not disappointed. Just look at how gorgeous this city is!

With a bit of a hike (admittedly, in blustery, cold weather!), you could reach the top of Gellert Hill or Castle Hill, both of which offer stunning views of the city:

The cityscape at night wasn't too hard on the eyes, either...

And, I was absolutely obsessed with the Parliament building, which I must have photographed from every angle:

And I mentioned the food, right? I have to admit, given that I'm no longer a carnivore, I was a bit worried about what we might find. After all, when I went to Prague in 2011, the menus were very meat-heavy. But, what a pleasant surprise to find so many delicious veg options in Budapest! I was absolutely besotted with this city.

Layer Sandwich

There's a lot I've forgotten from my high school photography class (a lot more than I remember, I'd wager...), but one thing I do remember is the unit we did on negative sandwiches. Since digital was still rather expensive, we worked exclusively with film photography (yes, I know that sentence made me sound like I am reminiscing about the good ol' days when dirt was invented). The idea is to load two negatives into the enlarger and simultaneously create an exposure of both images.

The task is harder than it sounds, though--some photos work better than others: the contrast, how busy the background is, location of the subject in each photo, and a range of other factors determine whether you end up with a really cool image, or just a blob of indistinguishable nonsense. I seem to recall wasting rather a lot of expensive photo paper working to create a decent negative sandwich.

Much as I enjoy developing my own film, one of the beautiful things about digital photography is that I can create hundreds of terrible negative sandwiches without paying through the nose for my experiments. So, using layers in GIMP, I decided to throw together a few negative sandwiches--or perhaps layer sandwiches is more appropriate for digital? I've spared you the worst of them, but I think a few came out pretty well. Below are a few of the creations, as well as the original layered images. Some of these I think came out well. Others I think are examples of poor attempts.

As always, feedback is appreciated. I'd love to get your thoughts!

 

An angel statue from the Berliner Dom with the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe layered over it

View from under the arches of the Eiffel Tower, with view of the city from on top of the Tower layered on top

Building on a corner in Montemartre, Paris with a view of the city from Sacre Coeur layered on top 

View of a mountain in Alaska with an image of the state flower, Forget-Me-Nots, layered on top.

A City So Nice I Visited Twice

In the summer of 2016 (winter in Cape Town), I had an opportunity to make a very short (2 day) excursion to Cape Town, South Africa, and I absolutely jumped at the opportunity. I'm so glad that I did, too, because Cape Town is such an amazing city!

I was disappointed that I was only able to spend 2 days there, but lucky for me another opportunity came along in the fall of 2017. And, after falling in love with Cape Town on my first visit, I couldn't wait to see some of the sights I had missed on the last trip. There's so much to love in Cape Town, but I'll highlight just a few of the more picturesque aspects below.

Cape Town offers spectacular views from atop Table Mountain, one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the world:

There are beautiful vineyards where you can drink locally produced wine and look at at the beautiful countryside:

And, of course, there are amazing opportunities to see wildlife: 

But I'll save the photos of penguins for another post. That's right. Penguins!

Take My Breath Away

In keeping with the grand tradition of this sporadically updated blog, I'll start by saying thank you for sticking with me despite my infrequent posts. The photography blog is always the first thing to go when things get busy at work, I'm afraid. I've learned my lesson about saying I'll try to post more often, but I'll at least keep a promise I made back in January of 2016 (yikes!)--to share some photos from my trip to India.

India was on my travel bucket list for a very long time, and in 2015 I finally got the opportunity to visit. To say that India is stunning doesn't really even begin to cover the experience of travelling in India. During 2 weeks of sightseeing, I managed to take 16.8GB of photos because I simply could not put my camera down. I lost of count of how many UNESCO World Heritage Sights we visited by the end of the trip. Below are just a few images of our trip. 

Delhi, India

Jaipur, India

Jaipur, India

Jaipur, India

Delhi, India

I have to say, while there were so many incredible sights in India, I can understand why the Taj Mahal tends to get top billing. The Taj is surrounded by a wall, so you can't see it as you are approaching the street. It is only after passing through one of the entrances that you see it perfectly framed in an archway and glowing softly in the light. Truly and literally, it took my breath away to catch my first glimpse of the Taj Mahal. It does not disappoint. 

Agra, India

It's hard to say for sure, but I think the image below might be my favorite shot from the trip. 

Agra, India

Mambo Italiano

One of my favorite places in the world to visit is Italy. In addition to amazing food and art, there's also no shortage of interesting and breathtaking sights. On my first visit to Europe (in 2004), we went to Rome and Paris. I carted my heavy Canon Digital Rebel SLR and several lenses all over the place, much to the dismay of my aching back, but thought it was well worth the trouble for a few of the shots I took:

The Colosseum 

Motorcycles in Rome--a ubiquitous sight

Fountain detail

No smoking!

It's interesting to see how my photography practices while traveling have changed. For one thing, I take a LOT more photos. On my first trip to Rome, which was one week long, I took 549 photos. On my most recent trip (last October), which was only 4 days long, I took 1,850! Of course, it's a lot easier to take goofy selfies with a point-and-shoot than an SLR, so that might help to explain some of the difference...  

I also now I carry a much smaller, lighter point-and-shoot camera when I travel, which might also contribute to the increase in the number of shots I take. I used to operate under the assumption that I needed a really fancy SLR to get decent shots, but the quality of point-and-shoot cameras has improved so dramatically since my first trip to Europe that I don't think that's the case any longer. In fact, most of my favorite shots are from the point-and-shoot, which can even do a decent job at night photography:

Piazza del Popolo, Rome

St. Peter's Basilica at moonrise, Rome 

In addition to repeat visits to Rome, I've also been back to Italy to see Florence and Venice (some of these pictures have been featured in other posts), as well as the Amalfi Coast. It's hard not to fall in love with the wealth of stunning landscapes! Until next time, I'll leave you with a few more of my favorite shots.

Sorrento, Amalfi Coast, Italy

Sorrento, Amalfi Coast, Italy

Amalfi, Italy

Amalfi, Italy

Florence, Italy

Florence, Italy

Florence, Italy

Sunset on the Lido, Venice, Italy

Venice, Italy